Annual Rebates in the B2B Shop: Show Tiers and Rebate Status

A rebate paid after the fact reduces the consideration for supplies that were invoiced long ago. The German VAT Act treats this as a change in the taxable amount: the business that made the supply must correct the tax owed on it (Section 17(1) sentence 1 UStG). Correspondingly, the input VAT deduction must be corrected at the business to which the supply was made (Section 17(1) sentence 2 UStG). The supplier therefore gets part of its output VAT back, and the customer gives part of its input VAT back. For both sides the rebate is not just a payment but a booking with tax consequences.

Timing is what matters for accounting. The corrections must be made for the tax period in which the change in the taxable amount occurred (Section 17(1) UStG), not retroactively in the months in which the goods were delivered. The original invoices remain unchanged. The tax authorities name exactly this case: for a later payment under rebate or bonus agreements based on annual purchase volumes, the original invoice does not have to be corrected (BMF, UStAE 17.1(3a)). That spares you reissuing twelve months of invoices, but it moves the work to two other places: the invoice itself and the document for the rebate.

The second place concerns mixed ranges. The standard VAT rate is 19 per cent (Section 12(1) UStG), and for certain supplies the tax is reduced to seven per cent (Section 12(2) UStG). If the consideration for supplies taxed at different rates within a period is changed jointly, and the Act expressly names annual rebates and annual refunds, the business must give the recipient a document showing how the change is split across the differently taxed supplies (Section 17(4) UStG). A wholesaler whose range includes items at both rates therefore needs revenue per VAT rate, per customer and per rebate period. Its own records must also show how the consideration is split across the rates (Section 22(2) UStG).

In everyday business, almost anything that gives money back to the customer is called a credit note, in German a ‘Gutschrift’. In German VAT law the word is taken: a Gutschrift is an invoice issued by the recipient of a supply for a supply or service of the business, provided this was agreed beforehand (Section 14(2) sentence 5 UStG). Such a document must carry the word ‘Gutschrift’ (Section 14(4) sentence 1 no. 10 UStG), for e-invoices for example by selecting the corresponding invoice type (BMF, UStAE 14.5(24)). This refers to self-billing by the customer, not to the supplier’s rebate statement.

Nor is the rebate document an invoice correction. If only the taxable amount changes after invoicing, no invoice correction is required (BMF, UStAE 14.11(4)). A later payment under a rebate agreement is a change in the taxable amount under Section 17 UStG, so an invoice correction within the meaning of Section 31(5) UStDV is not required (BMF, UStAE 14.5(19)). An exchange of documents is only prescribed in the cases of Section 17(4) UStG, that is, where the rebate covers supplies taxed differently (BMF, UStAE 17.1(3a)). And that document may, but need not, be issued as an invoice for VAT purposes (BMF, UStAE 17.1(3a)).

In practice this leads to a simple rule: the document your ERP generates on the cut-off date should be called what it is, for example “Rebate statement 2026” or “Document on reduction of consideration under Section 17(4) UStG”. It refers to the rebate agreement and the period and shows the reduction per VAT rate. The word ‘Gutschrift’ remains reserved for the procedure in which your customer does the invoicing. This also makes it easier for your customer’s accounting team to match the document, which they need for their input VAT correction. Agree on the name and on whether the document also carries the features of an invoice with your tax adviser.

The rebate status belongs where buyers look anyway: on the start page of the customer account, next to open orders and documents. In a B2B customer portal based on Shopware CE, a dedicated area can be created for it that draws its values from the ERP. The shop does not calculate the rebate itself. It only knows the orders placed through it and knows nothing about the reorder placed by phone, the EDI order from the central warehouse or the return that was booked at goods receipt yesterday. A rebate area should show at least the following:

Not every buyer on a company account needs to see rebate amounts. In accounts with several users, the display belongs to a separate permission given, for example, to purchasing management and the managing director; how such roles are set up in Shopware CE is shown in the article on customer groups, roles and permissions. For groups of companies with a joint rebate, head office sees the total status and each site its own contribution.

A nightly sync from the ERP is usually enough for the data. More important than real time is that the figure can be traced: the customer should be able to see which invoices and returns make up the amount. A simple list of the rebate-relevant documents with date, number and net amount answers most questions before they are asked. The note “provisional, the settlement on the cut-off date is binding” protects both sides from misunderstandings, for example when a complaint in December lowers the figure once more.

On the cut-off date the ERP determines the relevant revenue, waits for the agreed returns deadline and generates the rebate document. Because output VAT and input VAT are corrected for the period in which the change occurs (Section 17(1) UStG), the document date should be agreed with accounting. The document goes to the customer, the booking to financial accounting and a copy to the customer account in the shop. So that customer and supplier see the same figures, the document should carry these details:

In the customer account the document lands in the same archive as invoices and delivery notes. Which retention periods apply there and how such an archive is built is covered in the article on where order documents live and how long they stay. The connection between ERP and shop for rebate status, document list and rebate document is a classic integration task: one read channel for figures and one document channel for PDF or structured data. Both can usually be attached to an existing ERP connection rather than building a new one.

A rebate area in the customer account is not a major project if the order of work is right. A sensible approach starts with the data and ends with the display. A good time for the first two steps is before a new rebate year begins, because then every invoice of the year carries the reference from the start:

We implement such rebate areas as an extension in Shopware CE and connect them to the ERP through the existing interface or an additional read channel. The effort depends mainly on how cleanly the agreements are already stored in the ERP today; if they only exist as PDFs, the project starts with capturing them. An overview of our work on Shopware development and B2B portals is available on the respective pages.