Integrate time tracking with Lexoffice or DATEV

Why the integration question comes up so often

In conversations with freelancers and small agencies I keep hearing the same story: hours are tracked, yet at the end of the month they still end up in a separate spreadsheet because the accounting software does not pull them automatically. That costs time and energy. It is worth looking at the real options in detail.

Direct API connections – what is possible today

Jomawo does not offer a native two-way API to Lexoffice or DATEV at the moment. That may sound disappointing at first, yet in practice it is often less of an issue than expected. Most users rely on export files that both systems handle without problems. If you really need an API, check whether DATEV Unternehmen Online or Lexoffice itself offer extensions that can read Jomawo data later.

Export formats that actually help

Through the timesheet export you can download CSV, PDF and Excel files. Lexoffice can import these via its invoice assistant. DATEV accepts the CSV import through booking stacks or the DATEV connector for documents. The key is the correct column order: project, date, duration, employee name and hourly rate.

A concrete everyday example

Take a freelancer charging €95 per hour. On average he forgets 2.5 hours each month because he entered them in a separate table afterwards. That equals €237.50 in lost revenue. Using the export from Jomawo and direct import into Lexoffice removes this extra step. At the same time the error rate drops because no manual transfers are needed. With four projects per month the difference quickly adds up to more than €900.

How the route to Lexoffice works

1. Filter all recorded times for the desired period.
2. Export as CSV with the columns project, date, hours, description, hourly rate.
3. In Lexoffice start the revenue import assistant and upload the file.
4. Lexoffice automatically assigns the items to the matching invoices.

A small tip from user feedback: before importing, make sure project names in Jomawo match the service items in Lexoffice exactly. Otherwise duplicate entries appear.

The route to DATEV

DATEV often expects a slightly different structure. The DATEV-compatible CSV export via the “booking stack” function helps here. The file already contains the chart-of-accounts numbers that you can store once in Jomawo. After that the import into DATEV Unternehmen Online or Classic runs largely automatically. Users still working with older DATEV versions are better off using the PDF export and booking manually – more effort, yet legally sound.

Comparison of export options

Legal and practical limits

The 2019 ECJ ruling and the 2022 BAG decision require that working hours are recorded objectively, reliably and accessibly. The export itself is unproblematic as long as the original data remains in Jomawo. Deleting the files after a single export violates the documentation obligation. That is why I recommend keeping the raw data for at least six years.

What is still missing and how to handle it

Some users want a true push transfer without manual exporting. As long as Jomawo has no direct DATEV or Lexoffice connection, the export remains the most reliable route. If you issue many invoices you can create monthly summary CSVs via the reports feature and use them as import templates. This saves roughly 15–20 minutes per month.

By the way, among our users I often see that they start with the CSV export and later, when volume grows, switch to middleware such as Make or Zapier. That is not mandatory, but an option for growing teams.

Practical conclusion

Direct integrations are not available yet, but the export path works reliably and is perfectly sufficient for most freelancers and small agencies. If you use Lexoffice or DATEV you save noticeable time and reduce transfer errors with clean exports from Jomawo. Just try the CSV export – usually one test month shows whether the process fits.

Find out more at jomawo.com/en.