Two companies bring in the same number of documents, and one pays twice as much. It is not arbitrary – what decides it is the number of lines that need to be booked. We explain how that happens and what you can do about it.
When a business owner pictures an accountant's work, they see a pile of paper. But that pile does not say how much work is in it. One invoice can be booked with a single line, and another, just as large, needs three.
The main difference comes from value added tax. If you are not a VAT payer, it is simple: an invoice for 240 euro comes in, 240 euro gets booked, done. One line. If you are a VAT payer, you have to book the tax base and the tax itself separately – one invoice suddenly becomes two lines. And if it includes goods at two different tax rates, or it is a purchase from another EU country, a third line is added.
When we ask a company to estimate its number of documents, it almost always counts the bank statement as one. After all, it is one file a month.
But the item is not the statement itself, it is every movement on the account. A company with thirty payments a month brings thirty items from the bank – and for a smaller s.r.o. that can easily be a third of the whole month. That is why the calculator's result tends to be higher than people expect: we have not forgotten to go easy on you, we have simply counted in what is not visible.
| Receipt | Not VAT-registered | VAT-registered |
|---|---|---|
| 20 domestic issued invoices | 20 | 40 |
| 15 received invoices with a single VAT rate | 15 | 30 |
| 3 received invoices from the EU | 3 | 9 |
| 25 bank statement lines | 25 | 25 |
| Total items | 63 | 104 |
The same pile of paper. The first company fits comfortably into the basic package, the second one has just gone over it. And yet it is not doing anything differently – it is just a VAT payer.
The number of items is not set in stone. Most companies can reduce it without limiting anything in how they do business.
Five separate payments to the same supplier are five lines in the bank. One combined payment is one. With regular suppliers this can be arranged, and it is the quickest saving.
When private payments also pass through the company account, each one is an extra item – and, during an audit, an extra question too. A separate account costs a few euros a month and saves you both.
If you can fill up using a company card with a monthly statement instead of twenty separate receipts, that turns into one invoice instead of twenty documents.
This will not reduce the number of items, but it saves money elsewhere: a document that arrives six months late can no longer be disputed with the supplier, and often cannot even be claimed.
One could set a single flat amount per company regardless of the number of documents. It looks simple, but someone always ends up paying for it: either the company with five documents pays for the one with a hundred, or the accountant has to build a reserve into the flat fee in case the workload grows – and everyone pays for that.
Charging by item is more tedious to explain, but it is fair in both directions. And above all, it can be checked: the price list states exactly how many items result from which document, so you can work it out yourself without us.
Send us the documents for one typical month. We will count the items and tell you the exact amount – no obligation, free of charge.
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