amaiko Kanzlei vs LUIGI AI: DATEV Without a Copy, Right in Teams (2026)

Your client files: fetched on request, never mirrored

amaiko Kanzlei asks DATEV when someone on your team asks amaiko. It reads postings, balances (SuSa) and accounts from Rechnungswesen, payroll results and payroll reports from Lohn, or documents from the DMS, answers the question, and keeps no mirror of your data. Each person signs in with their own DATEV login, via SmartLogin, SmartCard or mIDentity. DATEV operations go to DATEV, DMS traffic passes through the Cloud Gateway for DATEVconnect by Riecken, the gateway DATEV itself names for cloud vendors, and the question goes to Haufe when you use Haufe.

LUIGI built the opposite. Its security page lists a sub-processor whose role is “DATEV-Mirror-ETL — Spiegelung der DATEV-Bestände in die LUIGI-Datenbanken”, the mirroring of your DATEV holdings into LUIGI’s databases. The onboarding step is called “DATEV-Daten laden”: “your client data is securely loaded and indexed”. The DATEV add-on in LUIGI’s price list adds “Laufender Sync & sichere Indexierung”, ongoing sync and indexing. LUIGI’s blog explains the choice itself: “LUIGI reads every document in advance”, and a plain live connection to your DATEV interface “cannot do that”.

That is LUIGI’s design choice. Your firm carries its cost: a continuously synchronised copy of your DATEV holdings sits outside your firm, in a vendor’s databases, filled by a further service provider. That vendor, LUIGI AI GmbH, has been on the commercial register since June 2026 (Amtsgericht Ulm, HRB 752091).

Getting started: a Teams chat, not a box in the post

amaiko Kanzlei needs no hardware and no data import. amaiko sets up a sealed tenant for your firm, your team installs amaiko in Microsoft Teams, each person connects their DATEV login, and the first question goes into the chat window that is already open. Nothing loads for days, because amaiko does not load your data.

LUIGI’s home page describes eight steps to go-live. Step four: “You receive your LUIGI Connect package by post — the hardware for securely connecting your firm’s systems.” Step five sets up the interfaces, step six loads the DATEV data, “usually a few days”, and step seven is training for your staff. For your firm that means an extra device to connect your systems, a project before the first answer, and a new tool your team has to learn.

Price: flat, not by archive size

amaiko Kanzlei costs €29.91 per user per month billed annually, €37.39 billed monthly. DATEV Rechnungswesen, Lohn and DMS are included, and so is Haufe, using your firm’s own Haufe access. No hardware, no activation fee, no per-file fee.

LUIGI’s price has three parts, all on the luigiai.de home page:

• A request pool for the firm: LUIGI S at €300, M at €600, XL at €1,000 a month, labelled “Richtwerte” (guide prices). The smallest package includes ”≈ 260–382 requests / month” for the whole firm.
• DATEV activation, one-off: “from €500” plus “€5 per 1,000 files”, so €3,000 at 500,000 DMS files.
• A monthly DATEV fee, “tiered by the size of your holdings”: €250 up to 500,000 files, €540 up to 1 million, €1,100 up to 2 million.

Two firms, calculated with LUIGI’s own price calculator at its default of 60 requests per person per month. That puts the request pool at €541 for 10 people and €1,074 for 25. The smaller firm holds 500,000 DMS files, the larger one 1 million, and the archive stays the same size for three years. All prices net, amaiko billed annually.

And that table assumes your archive stops growing. It won’t. At 2 million files LUIGI’s price list charges €1,100 a month for DATEV, and by LUIGI’s formula activating a stock that size costs €10,500. With amaiko Kanzlei a bigger archive changes nothing about the price. With LUIGI you pay for a copy of your archive to be kept, and the bigger your archive, the more that copy costs.

Where you work: Teams, not another window

amaiko Kanzlei runs in Microsoft Teams, in the same chat your firm already works in, and in the amaiko web app. It reads and drafts across the Microsoft 365 workday: email, calendar, files, Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, Teams chats, OneNote, To Do and SharePoint lists. In the sealed edition Microsoft 365 stays read-only: amaiko drafts, your team sends. And amaiko remembers how each person works; in the Kanzlei edition that knowledge stays personal.

LUIGI is a separate web application, and Microsoft Teams does not appear on LUIGI’s public pages. LUIGI’s price calculator lists Microsoft 365 as “Mails & Kalender als Datenquelle”, mail and calendar as a data source. For your team that means one more window next to DATEV, Outlook and Teams, and every question starts with switching to it.

Sealed, not just promised in a contract

amaiko Kanzlei is built for firms bound by § 203 StGB. Its data processing agreement carries the confidentiality clauses of § 203 StGB and § 62a StBerG. Beyond that, amaiko sets a Kanzlei seal when it provisions your workspace, in its infrastructure, not as an admin toggle, and your data protection officer can verify it. The seal enforces:

• Only allowlisted specialists: Microsoft 365 work, knowledge, data analysis, scheduler, DATEV and Haufe. Anything added to the platform later is sealed out automatically.
• Read-only Microsoft 365: amaiko reads and drafts; no write action reaches Microsoft 365.
• Personal knowledge only: nothing is shared across the firm.
• No background reading: no inbox triage, no onboarding scan, no contact enrichment. Briefings and reminders a person sets up still run.
• Content-free notifications: one fixed line per category; the content stays inside amaiko.
• Content-free telemetry: agent traces carry no content and no error text; logs never carry prompts, responses or file names.
• No web research, no image generation.
• EU-only AI: Azure OpenAI with processing in the EU only, hosted in Germany on amaiko’s own infrastructure, not in the Microsoft cloud.

LUIGI also covers § 203 StGB by contract: its security page lists a data processing agreement template, a confidentiality undertaking under § 203 StGB and a client consent template under § 62a StBerG. The same page says data is stored in Microsoft Azure (Germany West Central) and the AI runs in data centres in Germany and Ireland, via AWS Bedrock and Azure OpenAI. No contract changes the fact that the copy of your DATEV holdings sits in LUIGI’s databases.

Questions to ask LUIGI before you sign

Get the answers in writing. Ours is under each one.

1. Where exactly is the copy of our DATEV holdings stored, which providers run the mirror, and are all of them bound to confidentiality under § 62a StBerG? amaiko Kanzlei: There is no copy. DATEV operations go to DATEV, DMS traffic through Riecken, a question to Haufe when you use Haufe.
2. If we cancel, or take a client out: is the mirrored file deleted, by when, and do we get a deletion confirmation? amaiko Kanzlei: There is nothing of your DATEV data to delete at amaiko, because amaiko never mirrors it.
3. How current is the mirror? How old can the data behind an answer be? amaiko Kanzlei: amaiko asks DATEV at the moment of the question. There is no intermediate copy to go stale.
4. What do we pay in year one and year three at our archive size, with activation, the monthly DATEV fee and the request pool, and what changes as the archive grows? amaiko Kanzlei: Users × €29.91 × 12, every year, whatever the size of the archive.
5. What access does the LUIGI Connect hardware have in our network, who owns it, and who maintains and updates it? amaiko Kanzlei: There is no hardware.
6. Which models process our client data, with which provider, in which country? amaiko Kanzlei: Azure OpenAI, processing in the EU only, hosted in Germany on amaiko’s own infrastructure.
7. How many firms run LUIGI in production today, and can we speak to one our size? amaiko Kanzlei: Ask us the same in the demo. You will see amaiko Kanzlei answer your own questions, with no archive to load first.
8. What happens to our data and the service if LUIGI AI GmbH stops operating? amaiko Kanzlei: Your DATEV holdings stay in DATEV. There is no copy anyone would have to retrieve or delete.

See it for yourself

Book a demo and ask amaiko Kanzlei the questions your firm asks every day. How the seal works in detail is on the amaiko Kanzlei page. And if SOFI AI is on your list too: amaiko vs SOFI AI.