RecruiterCloud

Audit

Why Your Tax Advisor Cannot Protect You from an Audit

It is a common misconception that audits take place exclusively at your tax advisor's office. While a traditional tax audit is often conducted there, the tax authorities draw a strict distinction between bookkeeping (handled by the advisor) and document creation and archiving (handled within your company).

A tax advisor can only assume part of the responsibility. They record the final receipts, but have no insight into how those documents originated. The burden of proof—for instance, which framework agreement an offer was based on, or who originally created a document and when—remains entirely with the company.

GoBD Compliance

The core requirements of the GoBD are the immutable archiving of documents and the seamless traceability of the creation and modification process. For every version of a document, it must be clearly established: Who created it, when, on what basis, and who modified it at what time? This responsibility cannot be delegated to an external service provider.

GoBD Compliance? You Get It Automatically

With RecruiterCloud, you get GoBD compliance automatically. You only record the revenue; RecruiterCloud handles everything else for you: It generates the associated document (the electronic invoice), links it to the transaction, archives it in an audit-proof manner in Amazon S3 storage, and logs its creation in the audit trail. All of this happens only when the revenue is finalized (locked). Before that, you can make changes at any time without creating a new version of the document.

The Audit Trail: Ensuring document traceability requires seamless documentation of all changes made to a record. RecruiterCloud ensures this through an integrated audit trail: The creation and every subsequent modification of a document are automatically logged, including timestamps and user IDs. This allows you to track at any time with a single click when a document was created, who created it, and who made which changes over time – a requirement that is nearly impossible to meet in a legally compliant way using programs like MS Excel or MS Word. This audit trail is available for all GoBD-relevant information categories.

Process Documentation

Procedural Documentation: A Key Focus of Tax Audits

During an on-site audit at your business premises, the procedural documentation (Verfahrensdokumentation) serves as the central foundation. The tax authorities do not only check for formal completeness but specifically for practical implementation: they verify whether the documented processes are actually "lived" in daily business operations and meet the requirements for traceability.

Thanks to integrated procedural documentation (see example on the right), you can face any on-site audit with peace of mind. For every GoBD-relevant information category, there is a GoBD button next to the help button that leads you directly to the corresponding documentation. This ensures that your documentation is always complete and up to date—allowing you to sit back and relax when the auditor wants to see all the details on-site.

The Linked Transaction Chain (Vorgangsverbund)

A major pillar of the GoBD is the so-called Linked Transaction Chain (Vorgangsverbund). This means that an invoice must not be viewed in isolation; it must remain traceable within the context of its creation. In RecruiterCloud, you assign every business transaction (e.g., offer, invoice, credit note, reminder, etc.) to a specific business process or project. This allows you to effortlessly prove during an audit exactly how a claim originated. With a single click, you can generate a comprehensive transaction file containing all documents belonging to a specific business process.

Audits at your office premises

The tax office has three legal options for showing up at your premises unannounced:

The Audit: For several years now, the tax office has been using instruments such as sales tax audits and cash register audits. This involves officials turning up unannounced at your premises during business hours. They want to see:
How are invoices issued?
Where are the original receipts stored?
Is the procedural documentation implemented on site?
Audit of the “IT system”: The GoBD requires that the tax office has the right to access data (Z1, Z2, Z3 access). Since your invoices are created and archived in RecruiterCloud, the tax office must be able to verify that this upstream system is secure. Since the tax advisor only has the accounting records in their system (e.g., DATEV), they cannot verify the audit compliance of your upstream system—you must do this on site (or by granting system access).
Responsibility for primary documents: The tax advisor is only responsible for proper accounting. As an entrepreneur, you are responsible for the proper recording and storage of original documents. If the auditor has doubts about the authenticity or immutability of a document, they will always want to check the source—and that source is in your business.