The terms SKR03 or SKR04 almost always come up in the first serious conversation with your tax advisor. This post clears up what they mean, what role they play in your bookkeeping, and why you don’t need to dive deeper into the topic with easybill.
SKR03 and SKR04: What’s behind them
SKR stands for Standard Chart of Accounts. DATEV has developed several of them—general ones and industry-specific ones. SKR03 and SKR04 are the two most common. Both can be used by companies of any size and legal form and do not cover any industry-specific special cases.
Behind a chart of accounts is a straightforward idea: Every document your business receives or creates must be assigned to an account. The phone bill goes to “telephone costs,” the laptop to “operating equipment,” the office rent to “rent.” The chart of accounts determines which four-digit number that account has. This is the basic principle of double-entry bookkeeping: Every business transaction is debited to one account and credited to another. SKR03 and SKR04 provide the numbering scheme for this.
There are also industry-specific variants: SKR49 for associations, SKR70 for restaurants and hotels, SKR80 for dentists. For sole proprietors, freelancers, and most small businesses, SKR03 and SKR04 are the relevant frameworks.
The difference between SKR03 and SKR04
Both charts of accounts cover the same content. The only difference is the arrangement of the accounts. SKR03 follows the process-structure principle: The order is based on a company’s typical workflows, from procurement to service delivery to billing. SKR04 follows the financial-statement structure principle: The accounts are organized according to the structure of the balance sheet and profit and loss statement.
| SKR03 | SKR04 | |
| Structuring principle | Process structure | Financial-statement structure |
| Logic | Accounts by business processes | Accounts by balance sheet and P&L |
| Typical for | Freelancers, small GmbHs, SMEs | Mid-sized businesses with balance-sheet needs |
In practice, that means: “telephone costs” has account number 4920 in SKR03, and 6805 in SKR04. Same content, different number. Both charts of accounts meet all legal requirements.
Who determines the chart of accountst
You usually coordinate the decision between SKR03 and SKR04 with your tax advisor. You set the chart of accounts when setting up your bookkeeping. This needs to be done once, usually when you start the business or when you change tax advisors.
Switching later is time-consuming. All existing postings would have to be transferred to new account numbers. Export templates, bank rules, and automations in the accounting software would also be affected. In practice, the chart of accounts often remains stable for the entire lifetime of the business.
What you need to know: Ask your tax advisor which chart of accounts they use. As a rough guideline, most freelancers and small GmbHs work with SKR03. SKR04 is more common among mid-sized companies where regular balance-sheet and P&L analyses are the main focus.
If you work without a tax advisor and do your own bookkeeping, you choose the chart of accounts when setting up your accounting software. SKR03 is a sensible starting point for most small businesses. If in doubt: a quick check with the tax office.
Why you don’t need to know account numbers
When a tax advisor talks about “account 4920,” it can sound like required reading. That’s a misunderstanding. Posting to accounts is an assignment problem, not a knowledge problem. You need to know that you received a phone bill. Which four-digit number is responsible for it is determined by the chart of accounts. You can look it up or have it done automatically.
What you need as a business owner: capture documents completely and on time. Assigning them to a ledger account is the job of the accounting software or the tax advisor.
Important for GoBD compliance: incorrectly posted documents provide your tax advisor with faulty data. That leads to corrections, follow-up questions, and can become an issue during a tax audit. Correct posting is not a convenience, it’s a bookkeeping standard required by law.
There’s also a communication issue between tax advisor and client. The tax advisor thinks in account numbers. You think in categories like “operating equipment” or “travel expenses.” Both mean the same thing. Software that shows both at the same time closes this gap without either side having to change the way they think.
Pre-post documents: How AI takes care of it
This is exactly where easybill’s automatic AI pre-posting comes in. You upload a document as a PDF, photo, or e-invoice. easybill doesn’t just read numbers; it recognizes the business transaction. An invoice from a cloud provider is categorized as a hosting invoice. A receipt from an office supply store as office equipment. This categorization comes from the document’s context, not just the amount.
This results in an automatic booking suggestion: ledger account and everyday category in one. You see “account 4920” and right next to it “telephone costs.” No looking things up, no translation work between your everyday language and the accounting language of your tax advisor.
You set which chart of accounts you use once in the settings: SKR03 or SKR04. After that, the software automatically takes your choice into account for every new document. You can review and adjust each suggestion before confirming it. Pre-posted documents go directly into the DATEV export. Your tax advisor receives correctly assigned ledger accounts instead of unposted files they have to rework. That saves time for both sides.
