Branches & Chains¶

If you operate several locations under one brand — as your own business premises or as a franchise network — DiKAS combines them into a chain. Each branch remains an independent tenant with its own POS, its own TSE and its own end-of-day closing; the chain adds a shared layer on top:

Central article master — maintain once, all branches inherit
Instant dashboard and monthly query — sales of all branches at a glance
Chain-wide customer file, vouchers and points — valid at every location
Clearing and franchise fee — claims between the businesses, with DATEV export

You manage everything in the customer account at konto.dikas.de in the Filialen (branches) area.

Language of the customer account

The customer account at konto.dikas.de is available in German and Spanish. This guide therefore gives its labels in the German original, followed by a translation in brackets.

Requirements¶

Each branch has its own DiKAS licence (cloud tenant or local machine with cloud connection).
You see all licences in your customer account — or you invite other licence holders (e.g. franchisees) by their online name.
Each branch continues to register its POS systems with the tax office itself (Kassenmeldung per business premises) — the chain changes nothing about that.

What the chain costs¶

The branch module is charged per participating branch and month and becomes cheaper as the chain grows:

Chain size	per branch / month
1 – 4 branches	€19
from 5 branches	€15
from 20 branches	€9
from 50 branches	€5

Flat tiers, no stepped calculation

Once the chain reaches a tier, the new price applies to all branches — with six branches, all six pay €15, not just the sixth. Only branches with an active link are counted; invited but not yet confirmed branches do not count. A chain without active members costs nothing.

On the Mitglieder (members) tab you, as the chain owner, see the current bill: number of active branches, price per branch, monthly total and the complete tier table. It also shows what one more branch would cost. There is no set-up fee; a price change takes effect from the next subscription invoice.

Creating a chain¶

Sign in to the customer account at konto.dikas.de.
In the sidebar click Filialen (branches).
Click Neue Kette (new chain) and give it a name (e.g. "Pizzeria Roma Group").

The chain is now created — by default only reporting is active at first. You control all further releases deliberately via the sync settings.

Linking branches¶

Adding your own licence¶

On the Mitglieder (members) tab, under Eigene Lizenz hinzufügen (add own licence), select one of your licences and set:

Field	Meaning
Rechtsform (legal form)	"Eigene Betriebsstätte" (own business premises; same legal entity) or "Franchise" (independent legal entity)
Teilnahme (participation)	"Nur Reporting" (reporting only; the branch only supplies key figures) or "Voll" (full; also takes part in vouchers, points, customer file and central article master)

The link is active immediately — your consent is already given for your own licences.

Ordering a new branch¶

If the new branch does not have a licence yet, click Filiale hinzufügen (neue Lizenz bestellen) (add branch — order new licence). The order wizard guides you through the order and at the end attaches the new licence automatically to this chain — you do not have to find and link it afterwards.

Inviting another business's branch (franchise/partner)¶

In the Fremde Filiale einladen (invite another business's branch) area, enter the online name of the other tenant.
The invited customer sees the invitation in their customer account under Filialen → Offene Einladungen (branches → open invitations) and can accept or reject it.
Only after their consent is the branch actively linked.

Finding the online name

The online name is shown in the customer account of the respective branch (section "Meine Lizenz", my licence) and corresponds to the tenant's subdomain.

Assigning a region¶

Each branch carries a freely nameable region field (e.g. federal state, area or operator). Dashboard and evaluation can be filtered by it. The region is purely a grouping: there is no regional manager level and no permissions tied to a region.

Removing a member¶

In the member list click Entfernen (remove). The branch loses access to the chain; its own data remains unchanged. A stored franchise rate is reset in the process. The action is recorded in the log.

Who sees which branches?

The chain owner sees all branches with all figures. A participating branch sees only its own locations in the member list, dashboard and monthly query — franchisees therefore see neither the sales nor the conditions of the others.

Sync settings (centrally control what is shared)¶

On the Sync-Einstellungen (sync settings) tab you, as the chain owner, decide which data applies chain-wide. Changes are versioned and logged.

Area	Settings
Customers	Off / On · de-duplication key (card, email, phone)
Vouchers	Off / own business premises only / chain-wide incl. franchise · default VAT mode per campaign
Points	Off / own business premises only / chain-wide · points per euro, value per point, expiry, cap per redemption
Articles	Off / Push / Push + Lock · choice of locked fields
Franchise fee	Calculation basis: net or gross sales (uniform across the chain)

VAT note on vouchers

Chain-wide vouchers are relevant for VAT: within one legal entity the single-purpose voucher usually applies (VAT on sale), between different legal entities (franchise) the multi-purpose voucher (VAT on redemption). Every change to these settings is logged with a time stamp. Agree the set-up with your tax adviser.

A newly created chain has everything switched off

Customer, voucher, points and article sync are off after creation; only reporting runs. This is intentional — you deliberately release what should be shared.

Central article master¶

On the Artikel (articles) tab you maintain the chain's article master: create, edit, delete, search by name, number, barcode or article group.

Initial filling: with Artikel aus eigener Filiale importieren (import articles from own branch) you take over the existing article master of one of your own active branches into the chain — you do not have to type anything.

Distributing: changes only take effect in the branches once they are distributed — automatically depending on the sync setting, or immediately via Jetzt pushen (push now).

The three modes at a glance:

Mode	Effect
Aus (off)	The master can be maintained but is not distributed.
Push	Branches receive the articles and may change all fields themselves.
Push + Lock	Like Push, but locked fields (you choose them; price, tax rate and name are common) are pulled back to the central value on every run.

Locked fields do not keep local changes

In "Push + Lock" mode a branch can change a locked price — but at the next synchronisation the change is gone again. The event appears in the push status as the conflict "Gesperrtes Feld — lokale Änderung zurückgesetzt" (locked field — local change reset), so nobody is left guessing.

Push status per branch (Push-Status je Filiale) shows the last success, number of applied articles, errors and, when expanded, the conflicts and local deviations of a branch.

Whom the push reaches

Only branches with participation "Voll" (full). Branches in "Nur Reporting" (reporting only) mode receive no articles — nor does a chain whose article sync is set to "Aus" (off). "Push ran, nothing arrived" almost always has one of these two causes.

Chain-wide customer file¶

On the Kunden (customers) tab you manage customer cards that are recognised in every branch of the chain:

Search by card number, name, email or phone
Create with card number (mandatory, unique across the chain)
Duplicate notices: with the same email or phone number you get a warning — the customer is created anyway (e.g. families sharing a number)
Account statement: expanding a row shows the points balance and all bookings with date, type, amount and receipt

Vouchers¶

On the Gutscheine (vouchers) tab you see all vouchers of the chain with number, mode, remaining amount, face value, status, issuing branch and date — filterable by status and searchable by number.

As the chain owner you create card batches (for pre-printed voucher cards) directly: name, quantity, optional printed value and optional validity. For each batch there is

a CSV export of the card numbers and
a PDF card sheet as a print template.

A batch that should no longer be issued is invalidated with Restliche entwerten (invalidate remaining) — cards already activated are not affected.

Loyalty points¶

Points apply throughout the chain: they are collected where the purchase is made and can be redeemed everywhere. You set centrally:

Points per euro of sales (default: 1)
Euro value per point (default: €0.01 — i.e. 1 % cashback)
Expiry after months (default: 36)
Cap per redemption (default: 5000 points = €50; 0 removes the cap)

What earns points

Points are earned on the invoice amount excluding tips and excluding the purchase of vouchers — otherwise they would be awarded twice: once when buying the voucher and again when paying with it.

Clearing & franchise fee¶

As soon as a voucher or credit is redeemed in another branch, a claim arises between two businesses. The Clearing tab records it.

For a selected month you see:

Balances per pair of legal entities with direction
Individual items with date, type, from, to and amount
CSV export of the overview

Additionally, as the chain owner:

DATEV export (EXTF) of the clearing items
Start fee run (Fee-Lauf … starten) for the selected month

Franchise fee¶

For each franchise branch you enter a percentage of sales on the Mitglieder (members) tab. The rate is shown to the branch as a proposal and only applies once it has confirmed it in its own portal — a fee nobody has agreed to does not arise. The monthly run then writes the fee automatically as a clearing item.

Nothing happens on the first of the month

The previous month only counts as closed from the 2nd. Anyone checking on the 1st correctly sees no run — this is not an error.

The rate only applies to branches with the legal form Franchise; own business premises have no fee.

DATEV configuration¶

On the same tab you enter the adviser and client number, chart of accounts (SKR03/SKR04), account length and the accounts per item type (voucher, points, credit, franchise fee). With SKR03-/SKR04-Vorschlag übernehmen (apply SKR03/SKR04 proposal) you pre-fill the fields — nothing is saved until you click, and every value remains freely editable.

Reporting¶

The Reporting tab has two parts.

Instant dashboard¶

The key figures are collected continuously in the background and are therefore available immediately. You see net, VAT and gross across the chain, open and redeemed vouchers, the points balance and, per branch:

gross sales, average per day and Z closings
7-day trend compared with the previous week and a small trend curve
a box traffic light: do the figures come directly from the machine on site or from the cloud?
the time of the last collection

Take \"meldet nicht\" (not reporting) seriously

If the collection cannot reach a branch, its last state remains — nothing is overwritten. The branch is then marked with ⚠ meldet nicht (not reporting) as soon as the last state is older than the configured alert window (default 24 hours). Figures without this mark are current; figures with it are not.

The region filter narrows the view to one region.

Exact monthly query¶

Here you choose a month; the figures are fetched live from the branches:

Totals across all branches (net, VAT, gross)
Breakdown per branch incl. the number of end-of-day closings
Outage notice if a branch is temporarily unreachable — it is then missing from the totals, the remaining figures stay fully visible

Log¶

The Protokoll (log) tab lists all security- and data-relevant events of the chain (newest first): links, invitations, removals, changes to the sync settings, customers created, fee events and reporting access — each with time, actor and affected branch.

What the chain does (not yet) do¶

No bundled fiscalisation. Each branch keeps its own TSE, its own end-of-day closing, its own Kassenmeldung and its own DSFinV-K export.
No transfer of goods between branches. The central article master distributes master data, not stock.
No chain-wide staff management. Staff continue to be created per branch.
No chain-wide credit account. Customer card and points apply everywhere, a top-up credit across all branches does not.
No chain hierarchy. Regions are a grouping, not a level with its own permissions or separate conditions.

Frequently asked questions¶

Does the chain change anything about the TSE, receipts or end-of-day closings? No. Each branch continues to work fiscally independently: its own receipt numbers, its own TSE registration, its own end-of-day closing, its own DSFinV-K export. The chain is only a shared view on top.

What happens if a branch is offline? The branch's POS keeps running locally. In the instant dashboard it keeps its last state and is marked "meldet nicht" (not reporting); in the exact monthly query it appears as "nicht erreichbar" (not reachable) and is missing from the totals. All other figures remain visible.

Can a branch take full part only later? Yes. First link the branch in "Nur Reporting" (reporting only) mode and switch to "Voll" (full) later. If another business's branch changes from "Nur Reporting" to "Voll", it has to confirm the change in its own portal.

Does a franchisee see the figures of the others? No. A participating branch sees only its own locations in the member list, dashboard and monthly query. Sales and conditions of the other branches are reserved for the chain owner.

Why does our chain cost less than last month? Because a branch has joined and the chain has thus reached a new tier — the lower price then applies to all branches, not just the new one.

We assigned a card number twice. Is that possible? No, the card number is unique across the chain; a second attempt with the same number is rejected. Upper and lower case make no difference.