German campsite operators running an on-site shop, restaurant, café bar or equipment kiosk share a legal obligation with every other retailer in the country: every electronic cash register must be equipped with a certified Technische Sicherheitseinrichtung (a TSE). The rule has been enforceable for several years, but enforcement has been inconsistent enough that many sites still run non-compliant tills. That is changing. Here is what the law requires and what a tax audit will look for.
What KassenSichV actually says
The Kassensicherungsverordnung (KassenSichV for short) is the federal ordinance enacted under the German Tax Code (Abgabenordnung) that makes the TSE mandatory. In plain terms: every sale recorded by an electronic till must be cryptographically signed at the moment of sale by a certified security module. The signature is attached to the transaction and makes it tamper-evident. If anyone later tries to delete or alter a sale record, the signature chain breaks, and auditors can detect it.
The TSE can be a physical hardware module, a cloud-based service, or a combination, but it must be a certified device on the BSI-approved list. Your point-of-sale software must request the signature, attach the TSE data to the receipt, and retain the signed records in an exportable format for the full statutory retention period.
Which systems at your campsite are in scope
The rule covers any electronic system that records sales. At most campsites that includes:
- The camp shop: firewood, ice, food, merchandise
- Reception: pitch fees taken by card or cash at the desk
- Restaurant or café bar: food, drinks, coffee
- Kiosk or vending area: tickets, tokens, packaged goods
- Equipment hire desk: bikes, e-bikes, SUPs, kayaks
A paper till book or a simple invoice raised by hand falls outside the scope. But if you are using any software or device to ring up and settle a sale, you are inside it.
What has to appear on the receipt
Under KassenSichV, a valid receipt must show a number of TSE-specific fields: the transaction identifier, a sequence number, the start and end time of the transaction, and a QR code or data matrix containing the signed transaction data. A guest or auditor can scan that code to verify the receipt is genuine. If your current till produces receipts without these fields, it is not yet compliant.
What auditors look for
A tax audit of till records has two layers under KassenSichV. The first is the receipt check: does each receipt contain valid TSE data, and is the signature chain intact and unbroken across the period? The second is the export check: can you produce the full transaction log in the prescribed DSFinV-K format (the standard data export the authorities require) for any period the auditor names?
Alongside KassenSichV, the GoBD principles govern how those exported records are managed and retained: they must be complete, unalterable, and stored for the full ten-year retention period in a format auditors can access. The TSE produces the audit trail; GoBD governs how you keep it.
The practical gap most sites miss
The most common compliance gap at campsites is not missing the TSE entirely: it is having the TSE connected to the main reception terminal but using a separate, uncertified device for the shop or bar. Every electronic till on site has to be compliant, independently. A certified system at reception does not cover a separate tablet running a different app in the restaurant.
The second common gap is receipt printing. Some operators disable the TSE QR code on receipts to save paper or because it looks cluttered. The code is not optional: it is part of the compliance requirement.
What to check with your current provider
If you are unsure whether your current till setup is compliant, ask three questions:
- Is the TSE device on the BSI-approved list? Your vendor should be able to point you to the certification.
- Does every receipt include the TSE transaction number, timestamps and QR code? Print a test receipt and check.
- Can you export a DSFinV-K file for a specific date range? Request a sample export and confirm it opens in a standard tool.
If any answer is uncertain, treat it as a flag, not a reassurance.
How Grondia’s POS handles it
Grondia’s POS module is built for the KassenSichV regime: receipts carry the fields the regulation requires, records are retained to GoBD principles, and the transaction log exports in the DSFinV-K structure an auditor asks for. The TSE signature itself runs through our fiscalisation partner, and we set that connection up with you before go-live. Because the POS integrates with the property management system, every on-site sale (shop, bar, hire desk, kiosk) posts directly to the guest’s folio and to the compliant record in the same step. There is no bolt-on box to manage separately, and the offline-tolerant design means the till keeps working if the connection drops in a field, syncing and signing the records when it reconnects.
That is what TSE compliance should look like in practice: invisible to the guest, automatic for the operator, and auditable when the time comes.