Shopify in DATEV: order number and collective debtor
Why every Shopify sale is booked to one collective debtor, and how the order number reaches the booking batch as Belegfeld 1.
The app books every sale to a single debtor account, the collective debtor, 10000 by default. There is no account per customer, because the app reads no names and no addresses.
Belegfeld 1 says which order a row belongs to. It holds the Shopify order number without the # sign, so #1001 becomes 1001.
Why one collective debtor
A debtor account per customer needs names and addresses. The app reads none of them, and no email addresses either. So all of a shop's sales go through one account, and every row carries the order number.
10000 is a default. If your tax adviser keeps the collective debtor under another number, you enter it once in the settings. A personal account has one digit more than a G/L account, so with four-digit G/L accounts it has five.
Why the order number goes in Belegfeld 1
DATEV's format description calls Belegfeld 1 the invoice or document number, used there as the key for settling open invoices. It takes only the letters A to Z without umlauts, digits, the asterisk and the characters $ & % + - /, up to 36 of them.
Shopify puts a # in front of the order number, and that is not allowed there. The app leaves it out. Any other character the field does not take, such as a full stop, a space or an umlaut, becomes a hyphen. The Buchungstext keeps the order number as it is.
Source: https://developer.datev.de/de/file-format/details/datev-format/format-description/booking-batch (read on 27.09.2026)
The order number, not an invoice number
Belegfeld 1 carries the Shopify order number. If another app writes your invoices with numbers of its own, those numbers are not in the file. In that case, tell your tax adviser that Belegfeld 1 is the order number. Belegfeld 2 stays empty.
What stays on the collective debtor
Sales are on the debit side, refunds on the credit side. Shopify Payments payouts are not in the file. After the import, the collective debtor carries the month's total until your tax adviser books the incoming money. The month page shows that amount as the balance of the collective debtor.
In the app
How to check the account and the numbers before you hand the file on:
Open the settings. The collective debtor account is under Accounts. Leave the field empty for the default, or enter your tax adviser's number.
Open a month that is over from the month list.
Under Booking records, each row shows its date, account, contra account, amount and text. The text names the order number.
What the app does not do
One account for all, one number per row. So:
It opens no debtor account per customer.
It keeps no open items and settles no payments.
It writes no invoice number from another app into Belegfeld 1.
It changes no order number in Shopify.
Next
What your tax adviser needs for the import is on the page for tax advisers. The home page shows sample rows, and the support page answers the questions before your first export.