Introduction to SIGN DE
Welcome to fiskaly’s developer documentation! This page guides you through the technical and legal necessities you need to be familiar with to be compliant with the KassenSichV.
What is SIGN DE?
Section titled “What is SIGN DE?”ERS/PoS vendors, operators and taxpayers are required to meet the KassenSichV regulations. This means that an electronic recording system (ERS) or Point-of-Sale (PoS) software must integrate a certain set of processes and reporting to ensure that cash and card transactions are correctly recorded and protected against manipulation.
Technical Security System (TSS)
Your ERS must contain a TSS which cryptographically signs all relevant business transactions and their VAT information.
Immutable Records
The ERS and TSS together record each transaction, maintaining all records in an immutable, tamper-proof and auditable state.
Cloud-TSS
The fiskaly Cloud-TSS is the first TSS of its kind to have achieved full certification until 2029.
The fiskaly Cloud-TSS is the first TSS of its kind to have achieved the full certification until 2029. Details may be found on the certification page.
In normal, day-to-day use, you, the integrator, and your customer, the end-user, should treat the system as a “black box”.
Before diving deeper into further topics, let’s highlight each party’s responsibilities.
Taxpayer’s responsibilities
Section titled “Taxpayer’s responsibilities”The end-user must:
- Have an ERS, including a TSS, attached to their account
- Be able to deliver TSS exports to the financial auditors within reasonable time frames (usually either live, within 24 hours, or up to some days)
- Be able to deliver DSFinV-K exports — a detailed report containing all transaction details and some master-data, generated in daily-closings / shift-end reports
- Ensure that fiscally relevant data is backed up accordingly — it is recommended to store at least two backups in different physical locations. In Germany, taxpayers need to store their data for between 10-30 years.
Regular backups should be stored both on-site and off-site. Usually the end-user already takes care of this with their respective tax-advisor.
PoS-Vendor’s responsibilities
Section titled “PoS-Vendor’s responsibilities”In order to operate in the German market, PoS vendors need to integrate a TSS in their ERS. In the long-term, this ensures that there will be no PoS systems without a TSS in place.
fiskaly’s responsibilities
Section titled “fiskaly’s responsibilities”Our foremost responsibility is the delivery and operation of the TSS for you and your customers.
Though not a direct legal requirement, it is a fiskaly quality commitment that we continuously improve our systems and deliver software updates. Software updates to the TSS are provided by fiskaly. The system integrator / PoS vendor will be informed about updates via changelogs or the developer newsletter.
All necessary software updates are provided free of charge.