Determination of profits
The income statement (EÜR) and the balance sheet are two different methods for determining profits. Scopevisio is primarily aimed at companies that prepare balance sheets.
The balance sheet shows the assets (assets) and the financing (liabilities) on a reporting date.
Profit is calculated by comparing equity at the beginning and end of the year.
Business transactions are recognized on an accrual basis (e.g. provisions, accruals).
The legal basis (in Germany) can be found in the German Commercial Code (HGB).
Scopevisio presents receivables and liabilities as open items. This presentation corresponds to the accounting approach.
The EÜR is a simplified tax-based profit calculation for smaller companies, freelancers and the self-employed.
It is based on the inflow and outflow principle: income and expenses are taken into account at the time they are actually paid or received.
This results in a simple comparison of income minus expenses = profit/loss.
The legal basis for Germany can be found in Section 4 (3) of the German Income Tax Act (EStG). This is why the income statement is also known as the 4/3 statement.
Classic income statement accounting therefore only records the cash flow (bank, cash register) and directly addresses expense and revenue accounts on the other side. There is no need for open item accounting.
This also means that the accounting settings should be changed.
If you still want to work with open items, Scopevisio offers a pre-filled EÜR report in the work reports (when using a standard account framework), which carries out the profit calculation based on the clearing information. You can import it via the Missing standard reports link. Only this report determines the profit according to the specifications of the EÜR for tax purposes due to its special calculation. All other reports (especially BWA) use the posting date (as for balance sheet preparers) and are therefore suitable for other recipients.
To implement the EÜR, we recommend consulting our advisory service.
Type of taxation
In Germany, there are three types of taxation: debit taxation, actual taxation and the small business regulation according to §19 UStG. With the latter, you simply do not participate in the VAT procedure.
The standard for Scopevisio is debit taxation. VAT and input tax are included in the advance VAT return on the posting date of the outgoing or incoming invoice, regardless of the time of payment.
Actual taxation changes this behavior for sales tax (but not for normal input tax). The pro rata VAT is only included in the VAT return on the posting date of the clearing payment. The entry of an open receivable (customer to revenue) initially posts the VAT portion to the "VAT, not due" account. Check the tax matrix for correct allocation of the accounts. Only when an incoming payment is assigned and posted to an open item is the sales tax portion posted from "Sales tax, not due" to "Sales tax".
A change from ACTUAL to TARGET taxation and vice versa is not intercepted separately by the software. If this is necessary, please contact our advisory service.
Combination of taxation and profit determination type
While there are no specific legal prohibitions of a combination, the standard in Scopevisio is the use in the combination of accounting + TARGET taxation. Other combinations are conceivable and possible, but may require manual intervention.
The following combinations are only intended to show how common and widespread a certain combination is.
Target taxation | ACTUAL taxation | §19 UStG | |
Accountant | Standard | rarely | very rare |
| very rare | most frequent combination with EÜR | for small businesses and focus on B2C |