What gets transferred
Every transferred order becomes a document in sevdesk that mirrors the Shopify data: the buyer's contact details, individual line items with quantity and unit price, shipping as its own line, discounts, and the assigned tax rates.
The document reference carries the Shopify order number. That makes every sevdesk document traceable to one order — the precondition for your tax adviser to reconcile payouts against individual documents.
When an invoice is created
The transfer is triggered by payment. That is a deliberate choice: an order that is created and never paid should not produce a document that later has to be cancelled.
In practice: integration, billing and automation have to be active, then zrapp transfers paid orders through the paid flow. If you prefer control, leave automation off and transfer individual orders by hand from the dashboard.
How the tax treatment is decided
Which tax treatment ends up on a document is decided in a fixed order — from the most specific rule to the most general. It draws on your configuration, the delivery country and the data present on the order.
An example of that order: a small-business shop sells to a French company with a VAT ID. Priority 0 applies, not reverse charge — the document is issued with the Section 19 note, because the small-business configuration takes precedence.
The assignment is a technical process based on your inputs. Missing or contradictory data and special tax cases remain items to review. This article is not tax or legal advice; it reflects September 2026.
- Priority 0 — small business: if zrapp is configured for the small-business rule, all documents are issued without VAT and with a reference to Section 19 of the German VAT Act. This rule beats every other.
- Priority 1 — reverse charge: if the order data contains an EU VAT ID for a business customer, the order is treated as an intra-Community supply without VAT.
- Priority 2 — standard rules: delivery within Germany with German VAT, EU consumers depending on your OSS configuration, non-EU without VAT.
- Priority 3 — fallback: if no rule applies clearly, the order stays an item to review rather than being transferred with a guessed tax rate.
Setting it up
You need an active Shopify store, a sevdesk account with access to the API token, and a decision on whether you operate under standard taxation or the small-business rule.
During setup, zrapp compares your chosen tax status against the settings in your sevdesk account. Choose standard taxation while sevdesk is set to small business and you get a warning — before it turns into incorrect documents.
- Install zrapp from the Shopify App Store.
- In the zrapp settings, click „connect sevdesk“ and paste your sevdesk API token.
- Set the tax rules: small business or standard taxation, OSS participation, invoice dispatch.
- Transfer a single order by hand and check the resulting document in sevdesk.
- Only once the test document is correct, switch automation on and keep an eye on the review queue.
What flows back to Shopify
The connection does not only run one way. After each invoice, zrapp writes the document data back onto the Shopify order as metafields in the `zrapp` namespace — including document ID, number, status and the timestamp of the transfer.
That lets you see on the order itself whether a document exists and under which number. The fields can be used in Shopify Flow, shown in reports or read from your own integrations.
In sevdesk, each document additionally gets a tag by tax treatment — domestic, reverse charge, OSS, non-EU, small business or country-XX. You can filter by tax type directly in sevdesk, which noticeably simplifies the VAT return and the handover to your tax adviser.
Fees and payouts: why the bank account looks different
Payment providers deduct transaction fees before the money reaches you. On a 100-euro order with a fee of 1.9 percent plus 25 cents, 97.85 euros arrive in the payout — while the document is for 100 euros. Both are correct.
zrapp deliberately puts the full order value on the document and does not post the fee. It is recorded separately, for example through the bank reconciliation in sevdesk or as its own expense document.
On top of that, Shopify pays out in batches rather than per order. A payout covering several orders is normal — the document references make the reconciliation possible.
Credit notes and refunds
On a refund, zrapp automatically creates a credit note for the full invoice amount — even when you only refunded part of it in Shopify.
Partial refunds therefore have to be corrected in sevdesk by hand. If you would rather avoid that, switch the automatic credit note off in the zrapp settings and issue credit notes yourself.
sevdesk or Lexware Office?
Both cover the core: issue documents, assign VAT, hand over to the tax adviser. The differences are in the detail — pricing, day-to-day handling, the scope of the mobile app, and the question of which system your tax adviser already uses.
In practice that last point weighs heaviest. If your firm already works with one of the two, the decision is usually made before the feature comparison begins. If you still have to make it, prices and features sit side by side in sevdesk or Lexware Office for Shopify.
zrapp supports both. If you use Lexware Office, the setup is described in connecting Shopify to Lexware Office.
Honest limits
So you know where you stand — this is what zrapp deliberately does not do:
- No qualified VIES check: the reverse-charge assignment uses the VAT ID present on the order. Whether it is valid is for you or your tax adviser to verify.
- No direct DATEV transfer: zrapp creates documents in sevdesk. The DATEV export then runs through sevdesk itself.
- Not every tax case is automatic: special cases and missing or contradictory data remain items to review.
- No partial credit note: refunds always produce a credit note for the full amount.
