The audit before the audit.
Between the document, the books, the business and the expert report there is today no unbroken chain. Document capture reads and stops at the total field. Accounting software posts entries but does not check itself against the documents. Audit software counts postings and knows nothing of quantities. Sector costing produces a single figure and knows nothing of documents. The expert works by hand.
At every one of these boundaries an assumption is made. In a Betriebsprüfung (German tax field audit) it is precisely these assumptions that become the scope for estimation.
AAA — Advanced Accounting Audit closes the chain: from the original document through the individual line, the account allocation and the quantities of the business, to the recalculated revenue and the table that goes into the written submission. The calculation engine for production businesses is PRO Gramm — every gram on its way to the last cent. Every figure leads back to file, page and position. No document leaves the house.
What can be established may not be estimated
§ 162 AO (German Fiscal Code) permits estimation only in so far as the tax bases cannot be established. The same condition appears in every European fiscal code, merely under a different number. That is the whole purpose of this software: to establish what used to be estimated.
Legal bases across Europe →01
What the system says, you can show.
Every document is secured unaltered on arrival and identified in a tamper-evident way. It remains traceable down to the last figure in the expert report: file, page, position. The figures rest on the invoice itself, not on a transcription of it.
02
You find the gap first.
Each document is matched to exactly one posting. Duplicates, missing invoices and unposted documents appear as a list of open points with your adviser — not as a finding in the audit report. This also brings suppliers' errors to light: VAT miscalculated on an incoming invoice puts your input-tax deduction at risk, through no fault of your own.
03
A second opinion without an accusation.
The allocation that follows from the document itself runs separately alongside your adviser's allocation. Every divergence is sorted by cause: reading error, supplier error, posting error, open question. Each confirmation improves the next allocation, and because every account belongs to a part of the business, divisional accounting emerges as a by-product — without a cost-centre project.
04
Every gram on its way to the last cent.
PRO Gramm recalculates the business from what actually passes through it: hospitality and retail from purchasing and recipes, agriculture from animals, feed and yield, events from performers, bar sales, admission and fees. The accounting export is read in full, mixed accounts are separated, and revenue can be derived backwards from purchasing — with prices refined step by step from statistics through the price list to the document.
05
A point value can be disputed. A range with a source for each limit cannot.
Recalculated revenue appears as a range with reasoned upper and lower limits, broken down by the causes of its width. Declared revenue is located within it. Uncertainty about prices or recipes is not calculated away but shown.
06
Every difference disclosed, none smoothed over.
Per document: the wording, our own calculation, the books, the difference and the evidence. Where a figure is missing, the gap stays visible and named. Anything unresolved remains under watch until it is cleared. The system cannot flatter the numbers, not even by accident.
07
The form in which submissions are actually made.
Every disputed quantity appears as Declared (the books), Recalculated (the range) and Authority (assessment, audit report) — each line with document and page. The expert report comes out of the same run, in German, Italian and English.
08
No surprises during the audit.
An index of our own drawn from the books, cash, bank, payroll and documents, with its test rules disclosed — not a black box. Beside it stand the official Richtsätze (German official sector benchmark rates) as an unaltered reference. Plus two figures usually missing: how sound the data basis is, and which single input carries the result.
09
Then the other side has no yardstick either.
For some types of business there is no official comparison figure. That is not a weakness of the calculation but its advantage: where no Richtsatz exists, the calculation from the business's own quantities remains the only substantiated figure in the room — and it carries its source down to the document.
10
Here data protection is not an add-on but the way it is built.
Reading, reconciling, recalculating and the expert report all run on one machine: yours or your adviser's. No cloud, no transmission. Clients are kept separate in the data store. Even the questionnaire used to collect missing details works without a server.
11
The same result the second time too.
Every run is repeatable and carries a checksum. If a court asks for the same run, the same result comes out. That is what separates evidence from a calculation.
12
Responsibility stays with the professional.
Manual decisions are recorded and never overwritten automatically. Every assumption carries a marker. The system supplies the verifiable basis; the decision is made by whoever has to answer for it.
13
Before the appointment arrives.
A year's documents read, reconciled against the books, the business recalculated: a finding per document, a list of open points, the range and a checked data carrier. On request continuously — monthly or quarterly — so that nothing piles up towards the year end.
14
Answers in days rather than weeks.
The auditor's questions are answered from the system: document, page, posting, calculation. Disputed quantities in three columns, together with what a subsequently supplied record changes in the result. Also available as a second opinion on a single subject — cash, cost of goods, account allocation.
15
For objection, litigation and criminal proceedings.
A chain of evidence from the original, the mathematical proof of whether books, documents and quantities are compatible with one another, and an expert report from the same data — repeatable on the court's request.
Three parties, three mandates. None of them is superfluous — but the chain tears between them, and that is exactly where the scope for estimation arises.
| Task | Tax adviser | Tax audit | AAA |
|---|---|---|---|
| Posting documents | their mandate | takes the posting as given | reads the document and checks it against the posting |
| Securing the document as evidence | not mandated | requests the original | secures it unaltered, traceable down to the line |
| Every posting against exactly one document | sample | sample on the data carrier | complete; duplicates and gaps named |
| Recalculating the business from quantities | not mandated | yield and mark-up costing | the same calculation, as a range with a source |
| The result | annual accounts and return | point value with scope for estimation | a range with reasoned limits |
| The source of a figure | from the books | calculation path in the audit report | file, page, position |
| Repeatability of the result | — | — | every run with a checksum |
| Where the data sits | at the firm | on the data carrier handed over | on one machine at yours or your adviser's |
It replaces neither your tax adviser nor your legal representatives. It does not keep your day-to-day books and it guarantees no audit outcome. It finds what is in the documents, the books and the quantities — and shows what is missing. Prices without a price list and staff hours without records remain assumptions and are marked as such. Work reserved by professional law stays with the professional.
