Dissertation Abstract

Modern companies use a variety of components of information technology (IT) to allocate low resources which are required. Information management and the technologies lying behind it ensure in many ways the arrangement and provision of information in line with demand, with the aid of hardware and software and the business logics portrayed therein with language construct algorithms to convert information and appealing forms of presentation. In order to offer authorised persons the necessary rights of access to the available IT infrastructure according to the “Need-to-Know” principle – as little as possible, as much as necessary – diverse process are to be developed by the IT service providers (the company’s own IT department or a specialised IT service provider on the market in the course of an out-sourcing contract for IT services to be provided; hereinafter also referred to as IT trustees in order to make it clear that the responsibility for the underlying data and its processing in conformance with the law lies in the company’s specialist area). The legal principles of the state regulatory framework affect this organisation function, as well as the invoicing / accounting actually produced. Invoicing / accounting means that the IT systems deliver the base for commercial profit and loss accounts, for stock-taking, for accounts and for taxation.

Companies can fundamentally use any legally, correctly introduced hardware and software in a preferred scenario for use in order to control their processes. Legislation cannot and should not provide detailed regulations, since otherwise the businessperson’s freedom to organise processes and organisation is cut.
Within the framework of the statutory primary obligations as a businessman obligated to keep accounts (e.g. keeping trading books, balance sheet and schedule of profits and loss within the framework of the annual accounts, safe-keeping and publication obligations) in the sense of e.g. the “Handelsgesetzbuch” (German Commercial Code, HGB) and the “Abgabenordnung” (German Fiscal Code, AO) there are design-related secondary duties also for the use of software products (hardware will be ignored in the following, since this to a large extend defines the technical framework for the use of software and the current processes), if they serve to develop accounting and invoicing. So largely generically formulated demands are made on commercial software solutions through the HGB and AO in order to guarantee proper accounting and consequently the observation of the “Grundsätze ordnungsmäßiger Buchführung” (German Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, GoB) – in particular in §§ 239 (management of trade books), 257 HGB (Safekeeping of documents), § 146 AO (Procedural rules and guidelines for accounting and records) reference is made to the “GoB”. Not only the main system to illustrate accounting in the widest sense is considered by this, but rather also all secondary systems if with their data as pre-processor or supporting systems deliver the bases of invoicing / accounting and determining taxes. [...]