Payroll accounting

What it is: Payroll accounting covers all tasks around your employees' monthly payroll, from calculating pay to reporting to the tax office and social security agencies.

What it costs: At cleverlohn you pay a fixed price per payslip, from €13 per employee per month, with no hidden extras.

How it works: You provide the data. Your dedicated payroll manager at cleverlohn runs the payroll. You approve. Done.

Why digital is better: No paper folders, no flood of emails, no waiting for the tax advisor. Everything runs through one platform, automatically and traceably.

Payroll accounting, also called Lohnbuchführung or Entgeltabrechnung in German, is the entire process of monthly pay processing for employees. It is a legal requirement for every company with employees.

In practice this means a correct payslip must be created every month for every employee. This results in notifications to the tax office (wage tax return), the social security agencies (contribution statement) and the responsible health insurer. Errors in these processes can lead to back payments, fines or tax audits.

Payroll accounting is also more than numbers. It involves correctly applying tax classes, allowances, social security obligations, benefits in kind and statutory special payments. Relying on outdated processes or error-prone software risks more than stress.

Wages vs. salary: what's the difference?

A salary is a fixed monthly amount, regardless of hours worked. Wages are calculated based on hours actually worked. For payroll this makes little difference in practice, because both are subject to payroll accounting. In everyday use the two terms are often used interchangeably, at cleverlohn too. Find out more about wages and salary in our guide.

Payroll accounting is a monthly recurring process with fixed deadlines and legal requirements. If you forget a step or act too late, you may end up paying for it.

Monthly tasks:

• Calculating gross and net pay, taking into account tax class, social security and allowances
• Creating payslips for all employees
• Submitting the wage tax return to the tax office (deadline: 10th of the following month)
• Contribution statements to the health insurers and collection of social security contributions
• Notifications when employment starts or ends
• Booking all payroll movements in financial accounting

As needed and annually:

• Wage tax certificates for all employees (annually by February)
• Annual reports to the social security agencies
• Issuing employment certificates and A1 certificates for work abroad
• AAG reimbursement claims for illness or maternity leave
• Adjusting to changed social security contributions and contribution ceilings (at the turn of the year)

At cleverlohn, trained payroll accountants take care of all this. You don't have to keep any of these deadlines in mind.

Payroll accounting doesn't end with the payslip. Every payroll run produces booking data that must be transferred to financial accounting: payroll expenses, employer contributions, provisions. Doing this manually builds errors and lost time into the system.

At cleverlohn the payroll data is prepared for your accounting software. No manual typing, no duplicate entries, no reconciliation errors between payroll and accounting. The data flows straight into the next step of your finance process.

For you this means faster month-end closings, consistent figures and clean records for your tax advisor.

In practice: cleverlohn exports the prepared booking data automatically, compatible with common accounting solutions and without any manual transfer on your part.

There are three common ways to organise payroll accounting. All of them have their place. They just don't suit every business equally well.

Conclusion: Software assumes you master payroll accounting yourself. Tax firms are often slow and expensive for smaller businesses. cleverlohn combines both: real service at a predictable fixed price.

No hourly rate, no guesswork. At cleverlohn you pay a fixed amount per payslip, monthly, predictable, without surprises.

One-time setup costs: €30 for the company setup + €15 per employee at the start.

Note: Prices vary by industry. Hospitality or leisure businesses have more payroll effort than IT or creative companies, for example. This is reflected in the price. You'll get your exact quote in a consultation.

1. Wrong tax class or outdated ELStAM data

Wage tax is calculated from the wage tax attributes (ELStAM) stored with the tax office. If an employee changes tax class and this isn't updated, payslips will be wrong. At cleverlohn, ELStAM data is retrieved automatically.

2. Calculating social security contributions incorrectly

Contribution rates and contribution ceilings change every year. Calculating with outdated values means paying too little or too much. Both can cause problems with the health insurer. cleverlohn updates all rates automatically at the turn of the year.

3. Missing deadlines

The wage tax return must reach the tax office by the 10th of the following month. Contribution statements go to the health insurers. Missing these deadlines risks late payment surcharges. At cleverlohn the system monitors all deadlines.

4. No test payroll before sending

Errors are often only noticed once the employee already has the payslip. cleverlohn first creates every payroll as a test payroll that you can check before final approval.

5. Reconciling payroll and financial accounting manually

Transferring payroll entries into financial accounting by hand leads to errors sooner or later. cleverlohn passes on the booking data automatically.