Eigenbeleg generators compared: templates, tools and chat

Transparency: this page is published by Belegomat. We compare as fairly as we can — including the cases where other solutions fit better than ours. Belegomat is a chat service that turns a photo of a restaurant receipt into a structured German-compliant replacement hospitality receipt (Eigenbeleg) as a PDF.

The four routes to an Eigenbeleg

An Eigenbeleg is a receipt you create yourself to replace a missing original — a concept every freelancer and expat doing business in Germany runs into sooner or later. Which mandatory details belong in an Eigenbeleg is set by law; the tool you use to create it is not. In practice, four routes have established themselves:

• Word or Excel: you build the document entirely yourself. Maximum freedom, but you have to know all the mandatory details.
• Download template: providers such as Lexware offer free Eigenbeleg templates as Word or PDF files. BuchhaltungsButler and Candis also publish free templates on their blogs.
• Online generator: web forms such as the free Eigenbeleg generator from sevdesk, quittungs-generator.de or rechnungen-muster.de turn your entries into a PDF.
• Chat service: Belegomat captures the data from a photo (OCR) and asks for any missing details in a dialogue — specialised in the replacement hospitality receipt.

Alongside these, there are classic expense tools (such as Circula or Expensify). They are subscription systems for ongoing expense workflows in teams — they are not designed for the single missing receipt, which is why they do not appear in the table below.

Comparison table: templates, generators and chat

To put this in context: “partially — added manually” does not mean these offerings are bad. They reliably cover the general Eigenbeleg fields (payee, date, amount, reason, signature). But the special mandatory hospitality details — occasion, host, persons entertained — are usually not provided as dedicated fields and have to be added by hand. And that is exactly where most gaps arise in practice, especially if German tax jargon is not your first language.

When a simple template is all you need

A download template is the right choice when you want a blank form you can fill in at your own pace — say, for a tip, a parking machine that issued no receipt, or a small cash purchase. These cases are simple, the mandatory details are manageable, and a Word or PDF document is easy to file and print.

Lexware offers such free Eigenbeleg and replacement-receipt templates for download; BuchhaltungsButler and Candis also provide templates on their blogs. For hospitality cases, we have our own free PDF template with all seven mandatory details. If you fill in a template completely and with discipline, you end up with the same result as any generator delivers — just by hand.

When an online generator makes sense

Online generators such as sevdesk’s, quittungs-generator.de or rechnungen-muster.de are handy if you regularly create general-purpose self-issued receipts and want a cleanly formatted PDF without doing any layout work yourself. You fill in a web form, the result looks tidy, and it costs nothing.

In fairness, it is worth saying: the sevdesk generator is part of sevdesk’s marketing for its own accounting suite — that does not make it worse, but it explains why it is free. The real limit of all these generators lies elsewhere: they are built generically, and most of them are German-only. You have to know the mandatory hospitality details yourself and add them, and you type every figure from the original receipt in by hand. For a simple Eigenbeleg that hardly matters; for a restaurant receipt with many line items it becomes tedious and error-prone.

When the chat route wins

The chat route plays to its strength in one very specific situation: the receipt exists, but it is incomplete. The classic case is a restaurant receipt that is missing the occasion and the participants — precisely the details the German tax office (Finanzamt) demands for the hospitality deduction. Instead of typing the date, the amount and every line item into a form, you send a photo: the data is captured via OCR, and the dialogue asks specifically for whatever is still missing.

This guided completeness check is the real difference compared with a template or a generator. A template does not notice when you forget the occasion — a dialogue does. The result is a replacement hospitality receipt as a PDF that contains all mandatory details in a structured form.

Honestly, the chat route also has clear limits: Belegomat runs exclusively on Telegram — if you do not use Telegram, or do not want to, this is not for you. It is a single-case tool for hospitality receipts, not an expense workflow and not accounting software. And it is a young service without the long track record of the established providers.

The limits of every tool

Whichever tool you choose — there are three things none of them can do:

• No tool guarantees acceptance. The tax office decides case by case whether an Eigenbeleg is accepted. Completeness and plausibility improve your chances — nothing more.
• No input VAT deduction. As a rule, no input VAT can be recovered from a self-issued receipt — that requires a proper invoice under Section 14 UStG. More on this in the article Eigenbeleg for business meals: what the tax office accepts.
• No substitute for advice. In complex or disputed cases, no generator helps — a tax adviser (Steuerberater) does.

An Eigenbeleg remains a documented fallback. The best tool is the one that lets you create it completely and promptly.

Conclusion

For simple cases a free template is enough, for regular general-purpose self-issued receipts a web generator is convenient, and when you are holding an incomplete hospitality receipt, the chat route via photo is the fastest. Every option compared here is free — what matters is not the price, but whether all mandatory details end up documented completely and plausibly in the end.

This article is not tax advice. Recognition is always decided case by case by the competent tax office (Finanzamt).