Income-Expense Statement in Excel: Free Template for the Self-Employed in Austria

Most self-employed people and sole traders in Austria don’t need accounting software to record their income and expenses. A clean spreadsheet is enough - as long as it has the right columns and, at the end of the year, gives you what your tax advisor (Steuerberater) or you yourself need for form E1a.

That’s exactly what this template is built for: small businesses under the small-business exemption (Kleinunternehmerregelung) that don’t charge VAT. You enter every payment, pick a category, and the sheet calculates your result per E1a code and per month - and shows how close you are to the small-business limit.

What is the income-expense statement?

The income-expense statement (Einnahmen-Ausgaben-Rechnung, E/A-Rechnung, § 4 Abs. 3 EStG) is the simple way to work out your profit: income minus expenses. No balance sheet, no double-entry bookkeeping. It applies to everyone who isn’t required to keep books - as a sole trader as long as your revenue stays below the UGB threshold (currently 700,000 €), as a freelance professional (Freiberufler) regardless of revenue.

The key rule is the cash principle (Zufluss-Abfluss-Prinzip): income counts when the money reaches you, an expense when you pay. Not the invoice date. If you send an invoice in December and the client pays in January, that’s income in the new year.

What goes into the template

The “Transactions” sheet has one row per payment:

• Date - the day the money moved.
• Receipt no. - your invoice number or a running number for incoming receipts. That way you can find the receipt again if the tax office (Finanzamt) asks.
• Description - what it was and for whom.
• Category - from a list, e.g. Revenue, Software & subscriptions, SVS contributions, Car expenses. The E1a code is filled in automatically.
• Money in or Money out - the amount, always positive. Under the small-business exemption gross equals net, so you don’t need VAT columns.
• Account - Bank, Cash or PayPal. Helps when you compare with your bank statement.

The “Summary” sheet turns this into income, expenses and result, the totals per E1a code, a monthly table and where you stand against the small-business limit of 55,000 €.

How to use the template

1. Download the template and open it in Excel, Numbers or LibreOffice.
2. In the “Categories” sheet, check that the categories fit your business. You can rename or add them.
3. Enter every payment in the “Transactions” sheet - ideally right when it happens, not all at once at the end of the month.
4. Once a month, compare with your bank statement: is a row missing? Does the balance match?
5. At the end of the year, send the summary to your tax advisor - or copy the totals per code into form E1a yourself.

Five common mistakes

• Invoice date instead of payment date. In the income-expense statement, what counts is when the money moves. Unpaid invoices don’t belong in it yet.
• Including private expenses. What you use privately isn’t a business expense. For mixed use (phone, car) only the business share counts - check with your tax advisor how high it can be.
• Deducting bigger purchases right away. Equipment up to 1,000 € (low-value assets, geringwertige Wirtschaftsgüter) can be deducted as an expense right away. Above that, it’s depreciated over its useful life - that doesn’t simply go into one row.
• Forgetting cash. Cash payments - from a client or at the hardware store - belong in it just like bank transfers.
• Missing the turn of the year. Regular payments like rent or SVS contributions that move within 15 days around the turn of the year belong to the year they’re paid for.

Small-business exemption: what to watch out for

Under the small-business exemption you don’t charge VAT as long as your revenue stays below 55,000 € (gross) a year. Every invoice then carries a note on the tax exemption under § 6 Abs. 1 Z 27 UStG. The template’s summary shows what percentage of the limit you’ve already reached. If it gets close, talk to your tax advisor early - not in December.

Need a matching invoice? The free invoice generator adds the note for small businesses and leaves out the VAT column.

Where Excel hits its limits

I kept my own books in a spreadsheet for years. It works until you write more than a few invoices a month. Then you type every payment twice (once on the invoice, once in the sheet), lose track of who still owes you money, and an overwritten formula only shows up when the total is wrong.

That’s why EPUfix exists: quote, invoice, payment and income are linked, the income-expense statement by E1a code is one click, and your tax advisor gets a ready-made package. Your spreadsheet comes with you: save the “Transactions” sheet as CSV and import it - the template’s columns are recognized automatically.

Frequently asked questions

This article and the template help you keep records, they are not tax advice. Amounts and limits as of October 2026. The mapping of categories to E1a codes is a suggestion - have your tax advisor check it once.