lexware-office — the agent-ready Lexware Office CLI

A fast, scriptable Lexware Office CLI for contacts, invoices, quotations and the whole German sales-document zoo — and the first Lexware command-line tool designed to be driven by AI agents (Claude, Cursor, LLM tool-loops) as well as humans. Its headline trick: the receivables total and AR-aging the API refuses to compute for you.

Install: pipx install agent-tool-lexware-office-cli — then run lexware-office guide.

agent-tool-lexware-office-cli (the installed command is lexware-office) is a Python command-line interface for the Lexware Office (formerly lexoffice) public REST API. It covers the day-to-day billing workflow — contacts, invoices (create, finalise, record payments, download the PDF), quotations, order confirmations, credit notes, delivery notes, dunnings, articles, bookkeeping vouchers and webhooks — all with first-class JSON output so it slots straight into automation and AI agents.

Why this Lexware Office CLI?

• 💶 The number the API won't total. Lexware exposes vouchers one page at a time and never sums what is still owed. lexware-office receivables walks the open items, totals them, and buckets them into AR aging (current / 30 / 60 / 90+ days) — the single answer "who owes us money, and how late?" that the API makes you compute yourself.
• 🤖 Agent-ready — structured JSON on stdout, structured errors on stderr, stable exit codes, and a built-in lexware-office guide playbook so an agent can learn the tool from the tool. See AGENTS.md.
• ⏱️ Self-throttling under a rate limit with no headers. The Lexware API caps you at 2 requests/second and returns no rate-limit headers to pace against. The client throttles itself under the limit and retries the 429s that slip through — so a multi-page receivables scan just works instead of erroring halfway.
• 🖇️ Four output formats — json (default), table, markdown, csv; pick per command with -o, trim to exact --fields, or --stream NDJSON.
• 🧪 Safe by default — --dry-run previews any write at the transport layer, and lexware-office context gives sticky per-session defaults.
• 🔐 Safe credentials — API key in the OS keyring (Secret Service / macOS Keychain / Windows Credential Locker), with a 0600 file fallback.
• 🧰 Escape hatch — lexware-office raw calls any endpoint the typed commands don't wrap.

Keywords: Lexware Office CLI, lexoffice CLI, Lexware command line, Lexware API client, invoicing automation, accounting CLI, accounts receivable, AR aging, Rechnung, Angebot, Mahnung, AI agent tool, LLM tooling, Claude, DevOps automation.

The command surface

Everything is discoverable from the binary — lexware-office --help, then lexware-office guide for the playbook and lexware-office <group> --help for any group. The top level:

 Usage: lexware-office [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

 Agent-friendly CLI for Lexware Office: contacts, invoices, and the
 receivables/AR-aging the API refuses to total for you.

 Output is JSON on stdout by default (errors are JSON on stderr with a non-zero
 exit code); add `-o table` or trim with `--fields`. The client paces itself under
 the 2 req/s limit automatically.

 New here? Run `lexware-office guide`.  Start with `lexware-office receivables` to
 see who owes you money.

╭─ Commands ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ guide                 Built-in operating guide — how to use this CLI.            │
│ report                Report a bug / missing feature — repo + pre-filled issue l…│
│ receivables           Outstanding receivables + AR aging — the number the API   │
│                       won't total.                                              │
│ contact               Customers & vendors: list, get, create, update.           │
│ invoice               Invoices: list, get, create, finalize, payments, PDF.     │
│ quotation             Quotations (Angebote): list, get, create, PDF.            │
│ order-confirmation    Order confirmations (Auftragsbestätigungen).              │
│ credit-note           Credit notes (Gutschriften).                              │
│ delivery-note         Delivery notes (Lieferscheine).                           │
│ down-payment-invoice  Down-payment invoices (read-only).                        │
│ dunning               Dunnings (Mahnungen) — require a preceding invoice.       │
│ article               Articles: products & services catalogue.                  │
│ voucher               Bookkeeping vouchers (accounting entries).                │
│ webhook               Webhooks: subscribe to events, list, delete.              │
│ reference             Reference data: countries, categories, payment conditions.│
│ recurring             Recurring invoice templates (read-only).                  │
│ file                  Download stored files by id.                              │
│ auth                  Log in, log out, inspect credentials.                     │
│ profile               The connected organisation — and what your key can do.    │
│ raw                   Escape hatch: call any API path directly.                 │
│ settings              View & change CLI settings.                               │
│ context               Sticky session defaults, per profile.                     │
│ install               Integrate with other tools (e.g. `install claude`).       │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

Global options — -o/--output json|table|markdown|csv, --fields, --dry-run, --stream, --no-context — are stripped from argv before parsing, so they work anywhere on the line. Full reference: docs/COMMANDS.md.

Quick start

1. Install

pipx install agent-tool-lexware-office-cli      # isolated, puts lexware-office on PATH
# or: pip install agent-tool-lexware-office-cli
# or, from a clone: python3 -m venv .venv && . .venv/bin/activate && pip install -e .

2. Log in

lexware-office auth login       # asks for your API key, then verifies it
lexware-office profile          # the connected organisation + what your key can do

Create an API key in the Lexware Office web app under Einstellungen → Öffentliche API. login verifies the key before persisting anything, saves the connection profile, and stores the key in your keyring. For headless/CI use:

export LEXWAREOFFICE_TOKEN=xxxxxxxx
lexware-office receivables

3. Use with Claude Code

lexware-office install claude          # writes a Claude Code skill
lexware-office install claude --print  # preview it first

The skill points Claude at lexware-office guide, so it learns the tool from the tool.

Command highlights

Run lexware-office <group> --help for full options, or lexware-office guide <topic>.

lexware-office receivables                         # who owes money, totalled + aged
lexware-office receivables -o table --fields voucherNumber,openAmount,daysOverdue

lexware-office contact ls --query "Muster"         # find a customer
lexware-office invoice create --contact <id> ...   # draft an invoice
lexware-office invoice finalize <id>               # draft -> issued (irreversible)
lexware-office invoice pdf <id> --out invoice.pdf  # binary carve-out: writes a file
lexware-office invoice payment <id> --amount 119.00

lexware-office invoice create --contact <id> --dry-run   # preview the request, send nothing
lexware-office raw get contacts?page=0                    # escape hatch

Output for agents

• Default output is JSON on stdout. Errors are JSON on stderr with a non-zero exit code ({"error": "...", "status": 404}).
• Exception: PDF downloads (invoice pdf, voucher/file downloads) write binary to a file — they are not JSON, so don't json.loads them.
• Exit codes follow the family contract: 0 ok · 1 generic · 3 config · 4 auth · 5 not-found · 6 conflict · 7 validation · 8 rate-limited · 130 interrupted.
• The client self-throttles under Lexware's undocumented 2 req/s limit and retries 429s, so paged scans complete without special handling.

Full contract: AGENTS.md.

Contributing / Development

You do not need a Lexware account or an API key to contribute. Clone it and run:

pip install -e '.[test]'
pytest                    # hermetic tests are green on a clean checkout, no account

The integration tests boot the sibling lexware-office-api-mock as their backend — there is no local Lexware test instance, so the mock (built from verbatim API responses captured during research) is the substitute. Point the suite at the mock or a real sandbox with LEXWAREOFFICE_BASE_URL; without it, the integration tier skips itself. See BUILDING.md for the full build and release playbook.

Part of the family

Built on agent-tool-shared-cli — the chassis every tool in this family shares: JSON on stdout, JSON errors on stderr, a stable cross-tool exit-code contract, --dry-run, four output formats, and a built-in guide so an agent can learn each tool from the tool itself.

They compose over the shared contract: openproject time report --month 2026-07 && lexware-office invoice create ... turns tracked hours into an invoice.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.