Below we explain how you can activate the benefit and how the lunch vouchers are paid out.

• Basics and interesting facts about the lunch voucher and the 15-day rule (as of 2026)
• Activation for employees & configuration of the budget
• Deactivation of the lunch voucher benefit
• Integration with payroll accounting / payment of the lunch voucher
• Treatment of part-time employees, trainees and other employees
• Document check in the employer portal
• Further opportunities for tax savings
• Legal basis (information for tax consultants)

Basics and interesting facts about the lunch voucher and the 15-day rule (as of 2026)

As a general rule, it is permitted to subsidize lunch for each employee on each working day of a month with a maximum of €7.67 (as of 2026, 2025: € 7.50) , even on more than 15 days. However, in this case, the law requires complete documentation of the days actually worked as well as sick days and vacation days. In order to keep the administrative burden low, the flat-rate 15-day rule was introduced, which also applies to Probonio. The legislator assumes that an average full-time employee, minus sick days and vacation days, works at least 15 days per month. If the lunch voucher is granted a maximum of 15 times a month, there is no obligation to provide proof and therefore no significant workload for HR management.

With a lunch voucher of €7.67 on 15 working days with flat-rate taxation by the employer, a maximum amount of €115.05 per month is available to each employee as a meal allowance.

Under the 15-day rule, part-time employees may be entitled to less. In the last chapter, we therefore present several examples of how to calculate the meal allowance correctly.

Activation for employees & configuration of the budget

To make the lunch voucher benefit available to an employee, you must first activate the benefit. To do this, first open the menu at the top left and then select the lunch voucher > Employees tab.

Can't select the lunch voucher tab? Get in touch with your personal contact directly. They will be happy to activate the section for you.

Now switch to the “Benefit inactive” column.

Now select all employees for whom you would like to configure the benefit and click on the Configure for employees now button.

Tip: To select all employees collectively, check the box to the left of “Employees”.

Enter your desired details in the new pop-up window and complete the configuration by clicking on Activate.

The current month is preset as the start date, as well as the amount of €7.67 for 15 meals. You have the option of specifying the start and end date, the monthly amount and all other settings individually. If you do not specify an end date, the employee automatically receives the specified meal budget every month on an ongoing basis. The treatment of part-time employees and other tax-saving options are explained separately at the end of this chapter.

Your employees are now automatically moved to the “Benefit active” column. Information on the amount and from when the benefit is active is automatically added to the overview:

As soon as the selected benefit can be used by an employee, this is indicated by a colored background on the main page.

Tip: Use the Probonio lunch voucher to give employees an incentive to come to the office more often.

If you only offer the lunch voucher in your company for meals in the office, this could convince your employees to work more in the office again. Increase the office work quota by only granting the lunch voucher for days on which employees work in the office. Very few people will want to miss out on a daily lunch voucher of €7.67, making working in the office all the more attractive!

Deactivation of the lunch voucher benefit

If an employee should no longer receive a benefit, you can deactivate it directly in your portal. To do this, click on “Employees” (under “Dashboard”) and then on the email of the employee for whom you want to deactivate the benefit. You are now in the employee's profile and can stop the benefit by clicking on the stop icon.

You can now choose whether you want to deactivate the benefit as soon as possible or plan to deactivate it.

Integration with payroll accounting / payment of the lunch voucher

For your payroll accounting, you receive a monthly statement of all your employees' redeemed meal vouchers as an interface-optimized import file. This allows payroll accountants or tax consultants to transfer the relevant data efficiently and securely to common payroll programs.

The lunch voucher is always posted with the payroll in the following month. You can download the import file for payroll accounting / tax offices from day 7. The tax office usually requires the export by the 20th of the following month. This means that receipts submitted in July are paid out with the wage transfer in August.

After the setup and the first download, you can activate the monthly, automatic dispatch to up to three email addresses. This ensures that the lunch vouchers are always paid on time.

Be sure to check the box “Automatically send me the wage data reports by e-mail every month”
You can see when you will receive the report under “lunch voucher” and then “Settings”

Your personal contact will be happy to help you set up the integration. On request, you will also receive step-by-step instructions for the one-off configuration of your payroll program.

If the accounting system has been changed, please contact Probonio Support and we will make the change for you. You can then enter all information on wage types and e-mail addresses etc. yourself in the respective benefit.

Most tax offices use DATEV. DATEV offers two programs for payroll accounting: LODAS and Lohn & Gehalt. In both cases, you must first request the consultant number and client number. You must store this data for the one-off configuration of the integration in the employer portal. To do this, click on lunch voucher and then on Wage data export. You can now add all the required information in the settings for the wage data export.

Probonio offers simple integration with DATEV LODAS, DATEV Lohn & Gehalt, SAP, Sage, Lexware, Agenda and many other payroll accounting systems. If you use a different payroll accounting system, please contact us! We will be happy to help you set it up.

Treatment of part-time employees, trainees and other employees

For part-time employees, the lunch vouchers must be reduced in line with the number of working days as part of the 15-day rule. It is less important how many hours are worked per week, but rather how many days of the week the working hours are spread over.

1. Example: If an employee works 8 hours on 3 days a week, they will receive the lunch voucher for 9 days of the month (15 : 5 x 3 = 9 days) in the amount you require.
2. Example: If an employee only works 6 hours on 5 days a week, they are still entitled to the lunch vouchers for the full 15 days. In the interests of equal treatment, it may make sense to reduce the reimbursement amount to €5.75 instead (€7.67 : 40 x 30 = €5.75).

Trainees can also receive the full amount of the lunch vouchers, as they usually work 5 days a week. As trainees hardly have to pay any taxes, the tax aspect has less impact here. However, you can, for example, create a bonus for trainees with low pay rates under the collective agreement, which will attract positive attention.

Document check in the employer portal

As part of your Probonio service, we take care of the receipt verification for your company. In addition, you have the option of checking receipts independently in your employer portal. This option allows you to process receipts yourself at any time, based on your individual decisions.

Please note: If the independent check is carried out by the employer, the check by our document verification team doesn't take place.

To check receipts, go to the “lunch voucher” tab in “Receipts”. Here you can select the current month and check the receipt using the receipt icon on the right.

The receipt now appears on the right-hand side. You can now decide whether you want to reject or accept this receipt.

Important: As soon as you check the receipts yourself, they will no longer be checked by Probonio.

Choose one of the two options.

Important: If you reject a voucher, a reason for rejection is required so that you can continue.

The document is now displayed with Document released / Document rejected. The document check is now complete.

If required, you can also accept/reject vouchers that have already been checked by Probonio.

To do this, select the voucher icon at the end of the line again. Here too, the receipt appears on the right-hand side and can be edited accordingly.

Important: If you reject a voucher, a reason for rejection is required for you to proceed.

As soon as you check the receipts yourself, they will no longer be checked by Probonio.

Further opportunities for tax savings

You will have noticed the checkbox Avoid flat-rate taxation completely when activating the benefit:

For reimbursement amounts between €7.67 and €12.24 (2025: 7,50€ und 11,90€), the employee receives a non-cash benefit which is taxable. If you activate this checkbox, the flat-rate taxation is switched off and the employee only receives a reduced allowance. The full allowance of €7.67 is only paid out from a total amount of €12.24 (2025: €11.90) per meal.

We therefore always recommend the option of maximum reimbursement in order to create real added value that also reaches your employees!

Legal basis (information for tax consultants)

From a legal perspective, the Probonio meal subsidy is a digital meal voucher. The legal basis for digital meal vouchers was created on 02.02.2016. As a result, many tax advisors are not yet familiar with the details of accounting and the tax law principles of meal vouchers. The relevant legal bases are therefore summarized below:

• § 8 Abs. 2 EStG
• § 40 Abs. 2 Satz 1 Nr. 1 EstG (Pauschale Lohnsteuer auf Zuschüsse zu Mahlzeiten)
• R 8.1 Abs. 7 Nr. 4 LStR (Infos zu den Anforderungen bei Essensmarken und Kantinen)
• BMF-Schreiben vom 18.01.2019 - IV C 5 - S 2334/08/10006-01 BStBl 2019 I S. 66 (digitale Essensmarken)
• BMF-Schreiben vom 20.12.2021 (Sachbezugswerten für 2022)

Translation Note: This article has been translated using automatic translation software to provide the reader with a basic understanding of the content. Despite reasonable efforts to provide an accurate translation, we cannot guarantee its accuracy.

If there are any questions regarding the accuracy of the information in the translated article, please refer to the German version of the article, which is the official version.