Section 240 of the German Commercial Code requires every merchant to record everything the business owns and owes genau, exactly, with the value of each single item. The merchant does this when the business starts, and again at the end of every business year. In a shop this means the Inventur, the stocktaking. Every item in stock is counted and recorded. It usually means closing the shop for a day, classically on December 31. A section on the annual accounts, Section 246, opens with the heading Vollständigkeit, completeness.