You got a deposit - "Pfand" - on your bottles, cups, or other and don't know how to work with that in orderbird? Not for long! Read here how to do "Pfand" with orderbird so that you can do right by your customer and the tax office.

Attention!

Please take note of the following information: orderbird does not offer legal or tax advice.  Everything we write reflects our experience and the experience of our customers. Any information with legal or tax aspects is in no way to be considered legal or tax advice. Therefore, it may be that this approach is not applicable to you and your business in particular.

For binding statements, please contact your tax advisor. orderbird excludes any liability for the topicality, correctness and completeness of the information that orderbird provides here with regard to tax procedures.

In a nutshell

• Create a family group in which your deposit items should be located.
• Create an item "Deposit taken".
• Create an item "Deposit returned"
• Book one of the items whenever the corresponding case occurs or create an order process so that the deposit is booked automatically
• Calculate the items on MY orderbird against each other and pass the balance to your tax advisor
• Important: Deposits may not be discounted! Be careful with deposits in order flows

Let's go

Pro-tip: If you want to evaluate your deposit via DATEV, we recommend that you create a separate family group for all deposit items with the same tax rate. All "Deposit taken" and "Deposit returned" items with the same tax rate would be in one family group.

1. Create the "Deposit taken" item

1. In the orderbird app main menu, go to Settings > Orderpad > Menu and select a family group or create a new one where you want to put the "Deposit taken" item.
2. In the family group, press the small blue plus sign at the bottom left and then enter the name of the item at the top right under "Name", e.g. "Deposit taken".
3. For "Price" you enter the corresponding deposit value.
4. Enter the correct VAT rate for the deposit item. This is usually based on the enclosed product:
   • For example, a deposit on milk bottles has a VAT rate of 7%,
   • Cola, beer, soda or water are taxed at 19%.

2. Create the item "Deposit returned"

1. Press the small blue plus sign in the family group at the bottom left and enter "Deposit returned" in the Name field at the top right.
2. For "Price", you first type in the corresponding deposit value and then press the minus symbol on your keyboard. Now the cash register shows you that you are not allowed to enter a negative value. You can ignore this warning when creating "deposit returned" items.
3. Afterwards you enter the corresponding VAT rate.

3. optional: DATEV-accounting for deposits

If you want to evaluate your deposit via DATEV, we recommend that you create a separate family group for all deposit items with the same tax rate. All "deposit taken" and "deposit returned" items would be in one family group. This could have the following DATEV account assignment:

Deposit 19 % family group (e.g. cola bottles, beer bottles, mate bottles, deposit cups).

Total sales: leave empty
regular sales tax (In-house): 8540
reduced sales tax (to go): 8540

Please be sure to ask your tax advisor for help with the DATEV account assignment. Only they can give you a binding statement. 

4. Booking deposits

As soon as you hand out a product with a deposit to your customer, simply add "Deposit taken" to the respective product. When the guest returns the bottle/cup/..., you just book "deposit returned".

Important

• Please note that deposits may not be discounted! If, for example,  you have a set menu with an order flow, in which a beverage can be selected including deposit, you may not apply a discount to the menu!
• If you already work with deposits in your business, we recommend you to make possible changes to the settings at the change of the month. This way you make sure that two different procedures do not complicate your monthly report and you have a clean change at the end of the month.  

Tips

How can I set it up that the deposit is automatically added to certain beverages?

Create a mandatory order flow for the item that is sold with a deposit (for example, for Coke 0.33). Name the order process "Deposit" and the order step "Deposit" (a short tutorial on "Creating an order flow" can be found here). As selection item for your order step, you select the item "Deposit taken". In the overview of the item selection, you drag the slider at "Cola 0,33" to blue. Coke 0.33 is now defined as the default item for the order process.

This means that every time someone orders the Coke 0.33, your cash register will automatically add the deposit. This way you can create an order flow for every drink or item in your menu that should be booked with deposit.

Important

Please note that deposits may not be discounted! In this example you may not apply a discount on the Coke 0.33!

How do I work with deposit for RECUP cups?

If someone wants to enjoy your coffee in their own RECUP cup, you can create one (or more) deposit items for it just like described above. For example, name the items "RECUP deposit taken" and "RECUP deposit returned" and make the appropriate settings.

You can then also link "RECUP deposit taken" to selected coffee specialties via the order process so that the deposit is automatically called up and you do not have to book it separately.

Please note that deposits may not be discounted!

How do I evaluate deposits?

If you have saved your deposit items in separate family groups with DATEV account numbers, you can easily see your deposit balance at the end of the month from your DATEV export. 

If you do not use DATEV, you can also see it on MY orderbird: Go to MY orderbird > Sales Dashboard and scroll down to the  "Detailed report". Select the "Product" tab at the end and search for "Deposit". Now you can see how much money you have received for deposits and how much you have returned, so you can calculate the balance.

You can enter the balance in your external cash book. Your tax consultant can then calculate the sales tax or sales tax reduction.

If you use the integrated orderbird Cashbook, then you do not need to note the deposit separately in the cash book, because it is automatically transferred to the cash book for cash sales. However, the turnover is not declared as "deposit", which is why it makes sense in any case that you calculate deposit turnover as described above via MY orderbird and discuss it with your tax advisor.

I have different deposit values - what do I do then?

If you have several deposit items with different deposit values or VAT rates, then you simply create several corresponding items:

"Deposit taken +0,25€ 19 %"
"Deposit spent -0,25€ 19 %"
"Deposit taken +0,15€ 7 %"
"Deposit spent -0,15€ 7 %"
etc.

Deposit and discounts are not compatible!

Again, because important: Deposit may not be discounted by law. Therefore, you may not apply any discounts to order processes that contain a deposit item. And of course, deposit items may not be discounted directly.