SKR03 explained
SKR03 is a chart of accounts: a numbered list of accounts that business transactions get booked to. It comes from DATEV and, together with SKR04, is the standard most German tax firms use. Anyone keeping books in Germany is almost certainly booking into one of the two, usually without ever having consciously chosen which.
Worth stating up front: a chart of accounts is not a legal requirement. The law requires proper bookkeeping, not a particular account number. SKR03 is a convention that won out because it is practical and because DATEV software, tax firms and auditors all know it.
The only real difference from SKR04
Both charts contain essentially the same accounts. They just order them differently.
SKR03 follows the process-ordering principle. The account classes roughly track how a business operates: fixed asset and capital accounts, financial accounts, goods received, operating expenses, and finally revenue in class 8.
SKR04 follows the closing-structure principle. The order mirrors the structure of the balance sheet and the profit and loss statement: fixed assets first, then current assets, equity and liabilities, then income and expenses.
The difference shows up in a single line. Revenue at the full VAT rate:
SKR03 8400 Erlöse 19 % USt
SKR04 4400 Erlöse 19 % USt
Same transaction, same result, a different address. Economically the choice changes nothing. What changes is where an entry lives, and therefore which account number appears in a guide, a software setting, or an import file.
In practice this means you rarely choose a chart at all. Your tax firm set it, often years ago, and switching mid-financial-year is unpleasant enough that it seldom happens. So the question that matters to you is almost never "which is better," but simply "which one do we have."
Where the chart of accounts stops helping with crypto
This is where it gets interesting, and where the comfortable answer runs out.
Both charts are older than the asset class in question. They know bank accounts, cash registers, receivables, payables and inventory. An account called "stablecoins" or "crypto holdings" does not exist in the standard.
The result is a practice that diverges. A crypto receipt gets booked:
- through a clearing account, treating the receipt as a transitory item pending later conversion to euros,
- through an account for other assets, since the German Finance Ministry classifies crypto-assets as other economic assets rather than foreign currency,
- or through a purpose-created account in the free number range, so the holding stays visible in reporting.
All three occur in practice. There is no single, binding standard for this, and anyone selling you one account number as "the correct one" is selling a certainty that does not exist.
This is why account 1370 shows up in our own examples explicitly as an illustration and not a recommendation. In our own code that account is still flagged as unverified, awaiting sign-off from a tax firm before it appears anywhere as advice. We would rather write that down than present a number that looks more confident than it is.
What counts instead
When the account number is not unambiguously prescribed, the requirement shifts from the choice to the justification. In practice a tax auditor rarely asks "why this exact account," but two other things:
Was the mapping traceably justified? It has to be visible which reasoning or rule put the receipt on that account, not merely that it sits there.
Was it consistent? The same kind of transaction belongs on the same account across all periods. A switch mid-year, without a documented reason, is far more conspicuous than the original choice would ever have been.
That is precisely why every entry in our system carries not just the account number but the rule it came from, along with the timestamp and rate source. Not because it looks tidier, but because the account number alone does not answer the question that gets asked later.
Frequently asked questions
How do I know whether I'm on SKR03 or SKR04? From the books themselves: if revenue accounts sit in the 8000s, it's SKR03; if they sit in the 4000s, it's SKR04. When in doubt, your tax firm knows immediately.
Do I have to switch charts if I start accepting crypto payments? No. Both charts can represent crypto receipts, and both lack a dedicated standard account for them. Switching would not solve the problem, only move the numbers.
Can I create my own account? Yes. Doing so within the free number ranges is common and often the cleanest option, because the holding then stays visible in reporting. The setup should be agreed with your tax firm so it fits the existing structure and maps correctly at year-end closing.
Then why cite an account number in your examples at all? Because a journal entry without accounts isn't a journal entry, and an abstract example helps nobody. The number stands as a placeholder for a decision that has to be made in your books, not as a specification from us.
This post is part of a glossary series covering the terms that come up constantly in crypto bookkeeping: SKR03, GoBD, EXTF, debit and credit, reverse charge. It is not tax advice. The specific account mapping belongs with your own tax firm.