Maintain German HR values yourself or use an API
An open calculation: how often the values change, how much work each change takes and where mistakes get expensive. The number of changes comes from the data; the times and hourly rate are assumptions you can replace with your own.
How often the values change
Across the 15 tables with history, a value changed on average 38 times a year from 2021 to 2025. Calculators such as notice periods, vacation or maternity protection are not counted, and neither are public holidays.
| Year | Value changes |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 39 |
| 2022 | 40 |
| 2023 | 38 |
| 2024 | 38 |
| 2025 | 33 |
How much work one change takes
Assumptions per change
- Find and read the source: 20 minutes
- Enter, test and roll out: 30 minutes
- Document and approve: 10 minutes
On top of that comes monitoring: to not miss a promulgation, someone checks the Federal Law Gazette, the Federal Gazette and statutes every week, even when nothing changes. Assumed at 30 minutes a week.
Together that is around 64 hours a year. At €90 an hour for development or specialist maintenance, that comes to around €5,700 a year, before a single mistake happens.
Where mistakes get expensive
- An outdated contribution rate or ceiling leads to retroactive corrections and amended reports for every month affected.
- A missing regional public holiday shifts premiums, target hours and vacation days in the schedule.
- An old garnishment table after July 1 leads to wrong amounts for creditors or employees.
- An agent that quotes values from memory passes them on without a source, and nobody notices in time.
Side by side
| Maintain yourself | With Quellenkontor | |
|---|---|---|
| Source for each value | if someone writes it down | legal basis and official source in every response |
| Effective date and history | usually only the current value | any date since 2015, future values from promulgation |
| Advance notice | your own research | change emails, webhooks and early warning on announcement |
| Verification | when there is time | checked against primary sources, publicly visible |
| Formats | whatever your software supports | REST API, SDK, CLI, MCP server and CSV |
| Cost | working time and error risk | plans from €0 a month |
Maintaining values yourself makes sense if you need two or three values and check them by hand once a year. As soon as software or agents use the values automatically, a source with effective dates and evidence pays off.