Activities that are permitted without any specific qualifications

Anyone is allowed to carry out routine jobs in bookkeeping and keeping records which are of significance for taxation purposes. This includes:

• clerical and computing work
• data entry from receipts which have been assigned to an account by the client or another person who has been authorized to do so
• data entry from the client's binding accounting vouchers or another person who is authorized to issue accounting vouchers
• data compilation using specified programs, however not the legal recognition of the facts (e.g. assigning receipts to accounts and issuing accounting vouchers)

Activities, which are permitted only with specific qualifications

Persons with more extensive authority are those who

• have passed the final examinations for business administration or have undergone an equivalent preparatory training
• and have subsequently worked in accounting for at least three years for at least 16 hours per week.

Note: An equivalent preparatory training is e.g.

• A three-year apprenticeship as finance recruits or a completed training as cooperative auditors which is concluded by the tax inspector examination.
• A final examination for the tax consulting profession.
• Persons with higher education (e.g. having passed the accountant examinations or a degree in economics) are on a par with the certified commercial and specialised assistants.

These persons may perform the following activities:

• posting current business transactions (assigning to an account, issuing accounting vouchers), i.e. the registering of business transactions by means of basic accounting records (listing incoming or outgoing documents, keeping cash journals, filing account statements for each account separately)
• posting current business transactions by generating posting records
• data acquisition for external EDP accounting (with the interposition of a tax consultant, according to a classification of accounts set up by the tax consultant)
• technical compilation of the figures for the annual financial statements and business assessment of the figures in the form of key data (not: preparation of the annual financial statements, not even in the form of a program-controlled printout = "balance sheet at the push of a button")
• assistance in setting up the bookkeeping which is fiscally irrelevant (e.g. by assisting in the choice of bookkeeping system, of the devices to be used, the type and manner of registering receipts or the printing out of the bookkeeping results)
• producing current payroll accounting and income tax notification