Swiss accounting software — comparison

Every program in this table files VAT, produces QR invoices and reads bank statements. All 28 of them, without exception. These three points sit near the top of almost every vendor page, and they separate nothing: they are the price of entry to the Swiss market, not an argument for any particular program.

To choose, you have to look further down — where the answers diverge. Three questions do that reliably: do you have employees, do you work in several currencies, and should the program talk to other software?

13 of the 28 programs handle payroll in full. 6 do it in a limited way, which in practice means a payslip without the electronic filings. 9 cannot do it at all.

More hangs on this than a monthly payslip. OASI, unemployment insurance, occupational pensions, accident insurance, withholding tax and the salary certificate all have to be reported, and in Switzerland those reports run electronically over the Swissdec standard. Without that link, «payroll» on a spec sheet often means only that a payslip can be printed — the filings stay manual work.

The reverse holds too: with no employees, drop the criterion, and the 9 programs that would otherwise have failed it are open to you again. Among them are some of the leanest in the set — but also large systems that deliberately leave payroll to a specialist program.

12 vendors publish an entry price. It runs from CHF 0.– to CHF 65.– a month, with the middle at CHF 25.–. 7 programs have a permanently free tier, as a rule capped by document count, clients or users.

For the other 16 there is no figure, and the reasons say more than the gap: 9 sell exclusively through resellers who set the price themselves. 3 name it only on request. 2 have their own calculator whose result depends on so many inputs that a «from» price beside it would mislead. 1 sells a licence rather than a subscription, 1 keeps only a foreign price list.

That is not a shortcoming of this table but a finding about the trade — with a practical consequence: for 16 of 28 programs, the price starts with a phone call. Budget that time before you draw up a shortlist.

21 programs run in the browser, 16 can be installed on your own machine, and for 6 the vendor will host it on request. The sum exceeds 28 because many offer both routes: exactly 12 are pure cloud products with no local variant.

The question underneath is rarely technical; it is about access. 16 work without a connection. 22 offer an interface for other programs — which matters as soon as a point of sale, an online shop or a time tracker has to deliver figures that someone would otherwise retype.

21 handle several currencies, 7 do not. Anyone buying or invoicing in euros has a markedly shorter list before any price comparison begins.

Included is what is sold and supported in Switzerland; 24 of the 28 vendors are based here. What you will not find is a ranking. There is no best program in this category, because a sole proprietorship with fifteen documents a month and a corporation with stock, payroll and three currencies have nothing in common but the word accounting.

One option is missing from every software table: operating no software at all. Whoever hands the books over pays a monthly price instead of a licence and saves the learning curve — the providers and their prices for the same sample businesses are on the outsourced accounting page.