For Nebenberuf, freelance evenings and Kleinunternehmer

Invoices for the work you do on the side.

Two things, done properly. Write a German invoice that has every mandatory field on it, and open the XRechnung and ZUGFeRD files your business customers started sending in 2025. Nothing else. No chart of accounts, no onboarding call.

Write an invoice Open an E-Rechnung

Free for 3 invoices and 3 E-Rechnungen a month. No account needed.

The two jobs

Outgoing

A correct invoice in under a minute

Fill in a short form and watch an A4 page build itself as you type. Skrolla keeps track of the mandatory fields for you: both addresses, a sequential number, the invoice date and the date you did the work, your Steuernummer or USt-IdNr., and the right sentence about tax.

Kleinunternehmer mode: no VAT anywhere on the page, plus the § 19 UStG notice
Domestic VAT: 19 %, 7 %, 0 % or your own rate, per line if you need it
Reverse charge for EU business customers, with the wording the Finanzamt expects
EUR, USD, GBP, CHF — and an invoice in English or German, whichever your customer reads

Write an invoice

Incoming

Read the E-Rechnungen you are now required to accept

Since 1 January 2025 every business in Germany — Kleinunternehmer included — has to be able to receive and read a structured e-invoice. You do not have to issue them. You do have to open them. An XRechnung is a raw XML file: useless in a mail client, fine here.

Drop in XRechnung XML in either syntax, UBL or CII
ZUGFeRD and Factur-X PDFs: Skrolla pulls the embedded XML out of the PDF
See seller, buyer, number, dates, line items, tax breakdown and payment details
Download a plain, readable PDF and keep a copy in a local archive

Open an E-Rechnung

Try it without a real supplier file

Three sample E-Rechnungen ship with the app: a Kleinunternehmer invoice in UBL, a mixed 19 % / 7 % invoice in UBL, and a cross-border reverse-charge invoice in CII. One click parses one.

Open a sample E-Rechnung

Privacy is the architecture, not a promise

Invoice drafts, seller profiles and every file you drop in stay in your browser — localStorage and IndexedDB. Skrolla has no invoice database and no upload endpoint, so there is nothing on a server for us to lose. The trade-off is honest: clear your browser data and your archive goes with it, so export anything you need to keep.

What Skrolla is not

It is not accounting software. It will not do your EÜR, your Umsatzsteuervoranmeldung or your DATEV export, it does not chase late payers, and it does not send e-invoices on your behalf. It writes invoices and reads e-invoices. If your side gig grows into something that needs a ledger, you will outgrow this — and that is fine.

Not tax advice

Paying for Skrolla does not buy tax advice. Skrolla is a document tool; it is not a Steuerberater and does not check your invoices for tax correctness.

How it works

Straight answers

Do I have to issue e-invoices as a Kleinunternehmer?: No. § 34a sentence 4 UStDV lets you always send a "sonstige Rechnung" — a PDF or paper invoice. What you cannot opt out of is receiving: since 1 January 2025 every business in Germany must be able to accept, read and archive a structured e-invoice. That is the half Skrolla covers.
Is a PDF an e-invoice?: Not on its own. A plain PDF is a "sonstige Rechnung". An E-Rechnung in the legal sense is structured data in an EN 16931 format — XRechnung XML, or a ZUGFeRD PDF that carries the XML inside it. That is why an XRechnung looks like machine noise when a supplier mails it to you.
Does Skrolla generate XRechnung files?: No, and that is deliberate. Issuing valid, validator-passing XRechnung is a much bigger promise than reading it, and as a Kleinunternehmer you are exempt from issuing anyway. Skrolla writes clean PDF invoices and reads the structured ones you receive.
Where is my data?: In your browser. Drafts and seller profiles sit in localStorage, the E-Rechnung archive sits in IndexedDB, and files you drop in are parsed locally — they are never uploaded. Only a Pro subscription touches a server, and that goes through Stripe.
Do I need an account?: No. The free tier needs nothing at all. Pro is unlocked by a signed cookie set after Stripe checkout, so there is no password to forget — and no user table to breach. Clearing cookies means running checkout again from the same email.
Is this tax advice?: No. Skrolla puts the standard mandatory fields and the standard legal sentences on the page, with sources cited so you can check them. Your situation may not be standard. A Steuerberater costs less than a Nachzahlung.

Write your first invoice

No sign-up, no credit card, nothing to install. The free tier is a real tier, not a trial.

Write an invoice See pricing