Is there a CHEAP accounting firm that can handle accounting for a Switzerland company?

[EliasIT]

I need a small accounting firm that can handle a single payslip per month and about 50 vouchers per month.

And every year, they need to prepare the annual accounts for the company.

What we have is really not complicated and is straightforward to bookkeep. Our accounting firm wants 1600 CHF per quarter and 75 CHF per payslip for it - It's daylight robbery and not something we intend to continue paying.

 

[JackAlabama]

I need a small accounting firm that can handle a single payslip per month and about 50 vouchers per month.

And every year, they need to prepare the annual accounts for the company.

What we have is really not complicated and is straightforward to bookkeep. Our accounting firm wants 1600 CHF per quarter and 75 CHF per payslip for it - It's daylight robbery and not something we intend to continue paying.

is one voucher equaling 1 transaction?
So that would be 612 transactions per year.

Nothing is cheap in switzerland except the air (as of now).

 

[EliasIT]

is one voucher equaling 1 transaction?

yes, bad translation. it is 1 invoice in/out

 

[JackAlabama]

yes, bad translation. it is 1 invoice in/out

well these are quite a lot of translations then.

Given that 24 transactions in total, 12x salary plus 12x client invoices and preparing the yearly statements for this, it can already be 2400 chf, id say your accountant is just charging swiss rates as they usually charge by the transactions volume.

If you can somehow bundle down (quarterly or yearly charges) the transaction count, it will be cheaper.

 

[EliasIT]

Given that 24 transactions in total, 12x salary plus 12x client invoices and preparing the yearly statements for this, it can already be 2400 chf,

Yes, 2400 CHF per year - they charge 1680 / 3 = 560 CHF per month = 6720 CHF per year for this service!!

And then annual accounts need to be prepared at some point!! This has nothing, absolutely NOTHING to do with Swiss prices; this is, as I have experienced elsewhere, normal business practice, trying to cheat as long as it works and is accepted.

A more affordable service must be found for these tasks. Surely, no normal company in Switzerland pays three times the normal price and accepts doing so just because it's Switzerland - they aren't foolish in the land of the Alps!

 

[JackAlabama]

Yes, 2400 CHF per year - they charge 1680 / 3 = 560 CHF per month = 6720 CHF per year for this service!!

And then annual accounts need to be prepared at some point!! This has nothing, absolutely NOTHING to do with Swiss prices; this is, as I have experienced elsewhere, normal business practice, trying to cheat as long as it works and is accepted.

A more affordable service must be found for these tasks. Surely, no normal company in Switzerland pays three times the normal price and accepts doing so just because it's Switzerland - they aren't foolish in the land of the Alps!

but apparently you have like 101 transactions per month? Thats like 1200 transactions per year, quite a bit more work than just 24 transactions per year.

your salary, 1 in and 1 out for the vouchers times 50.

 

[EliasIT]

hmmm, I don't know how you get it to 101 transactions ! It is 50 plus a salary slip i.e. 51 in total sometimes it is even only 25 bills and 1 salary slip PER MONTH!

Even with 1200 bills a year I would get it half the price in Denmark where I come from... it is and continues to be a Rip-Off !

 

[JohnLocke]

I don't have a concrete suggestion on who might be cheaper or who could do it for less, but if you're up for it yourself or find yourself a PA, the link below might be a solution.
https://www.klara.ch/buchhaltung
So I made a quick search and found these
https://www.local.ch/en/d/cham/6330/municipal-government/buchhaltung-QcNZEwk7fo_Ud-yig45yEg
Hope it can help you in the right direction.

 

[Marzio]

Anoter DIY option Business Software für KMU in der Schweiz | bexio

Wow apparently what i suggested sucks big time!

https://ch.trustpilot.com/review/bexio.com?sort=recency

 

[daniels27]

Why not do it yourself? Or hire somebody in Pakistan? It is really easy to do it yourself and you can do it in English. PM me, if you need more details.

Anoter DIY option Business Software für KMU in der Schweiz | bexio

Wow apparently what i suggested sucks big time!

https://ch.trustpilot.com/review/bexio.com?sort=recency

Bexio is the market leader in Switzerland for online accounting. Trustpilot is the market leader for people complaining. I think Lufthansa has only 1 stars. You can ignore it, it is like blackmail: you organically only get complaints unless you pay them for spamming your customers to leave a review.

 

[EliasIT]

Why not do it yourself? Or hire somebody in Pakistan? It is really easy to do it yourself and you can do it in English. PM me, if you need more details.

This sounds like a good idea. But someone in Pakistan to do the accounting for a Swiss company, can this work ?

 

[daniels27]

Technically yes, there is no audit etc requirement and you can do it yourself too. I think the main question is how much overhead the company generates in terms of

• VAT
• AHV/IV
• 2nd pillar
• Accident insurance
• Liability insurance
• Radio and TV fees

What are vouchers? Are you selling to Swiss customers? If you can change the employee to self employed, you can save a lot of troubles (AHV/IV he will do himself, 2nd pillar and insurance is no longer required).

I have some contacts. I used them once for my first year, then did it myself.

 

[Sols]

Switzerland is expensive. I don't think the quote mentioned is particularly unreasonable.

Here are some Swiss accountants I've come across over the years.

https://di-de.ch/https://www.colfina.ch/https://www.nexova.ch/https://mst-consulting.ch/https://www.bmc-zurich.ch/
Not vouching for any specific, do your own due diligence.

 

[JackAlabama]

hmmm, I don't know how you get it to 101 transactions ! It is 50 plus a salary slip i.e. 51 in total sometimes it is even only 25 bills and 1 salary slip PER MONTH!

As I wrote already above and im using capital letters this time now for you too, bc you dont write clearly and mention things like vouchers and in/out whatever even tho I asked TWICE the amount of transactions which is the metric firms use to price accordingly.

But now you finally stated it such that anyone can understand it clearly. So we can state, you have about are 600 transactions yearly.

I repeat myself and state: with ONLY 24 transactions A YEAR, it can already be 2400 chf. I see this in a venture im a shareholder and advisor in.

So they seem to be charging you SOMEWHAT NORMAL swiss prices.

Even with 1200 bills a year I would get it half the price in Denmark where I come from... it is and continues to be a Rip-Off !

well the issue here is you are NOT in denmark. No wonder its much much cheaper there as literally no one would think about incorporating unless there are very specific circumstances. I have never found someone on this forum to incorporate in Denmark because he wanna save on tax.

But if you make much, paying way less than 10k / y to get this all done (6720) is still quite cheap and you can deduct that cost from tax as well.
Id even say your quote is pretty fair.

This sounds like a good idea. But someone in Pakistan to do the accounting for a Swiss company, can this work ?

Nope it doesn't work. You go there as foreigner and you should play by the local rules, which is generally advisable.
You will be liable in case they make errors and you have 0 quality control over the process, and employing a 5usd fiver guy for that for sure will lead to trouble.
Better than that is you do the books yourself, than at least you know where you fd it up and have no one else to blame but yourself.

I really don't get it, if you make good dough like you say you do why are 6.7k such a big deal? Its not like they charge you 20-50k annualy for doing your books or something.
Even a Dubai company is around that similar ballpark all in all.

 

[jayM]

Doing accounting for

I repeat myself and state: with ONLY 24 transactions A YEAR, it can already be 2400 chf. I see this in a venture im a shareholder and advisor in.

I don't understand, you say 100 CHF for each line they enter into an accounting software is normal? WoW not bad if a firm in Switzerland has say 10.000 lines it would be 10.000 x 100 CHF = 1 Milliom CHF to get accounting in Switzerland - must be good to be accounting firm there.

 

[daniels27]

Hey Jack. He is a nice guy here in the forum. It is not for him but he is trying to help a friend. Don't be angry with him.

Switzerland is a nice place with more local companies than there are from you guys. There are thousands of GmbH from local artisans. Many of them do it themselves others have small companies doing it for them. He is doing online sales with different payment methods and different currencies, it will be more complicated. Still I personally would do it myself.

1200 sales per year, yes the chatted he mentions are reasonable. You would pay double in Hong Kong for the same. At the same time, he is also right that you can get it done for a fraction of it.

I sent him some of my recommendations from me friends, let's see what the quote. It really depends on the amount of work and we don't know how much that is as we do not know what the customers are from neither do the employee is and his proposed salary.

Doing accounting for

I don't understand, you say 100 CHF for each line they enter into an accounting software is normal? WoW not bad if a firm in Switzerland has say 10.000 lines it would be 10.000 x 100 CHF = 1 Milliom CHF to get accounting in Switzerland - must be good to be accounting firm there.

I think in Hong Kong, they will charge you 2000 for an audit for a company with less than 100 transactions. If you have 3 sales per year, it is even 666 let line.

 

[JackAlabama]

Doing accounting for

I don't understand, you say 100 CHF for each line they enter into an accounting software is normal?

No not written "each line".

WoW not bad if a firm in Switzerland has say 10.000 lines it would be 10.000 x 100 CHF = 1 Milliom CHF to get accounting in Switzerland - must be good to be accounting firm there.

hourly based.

You have also several flaws in your logic since its including preparing closing statements which are overly proportional compared to low tx count.

Hey Jack. He is a nice guy here in the forum. It is not for him but he is trying to help a friend. Don't be angry with him.

Hey daniels, what angry?. Just stating facts and wrote the same even repeatedly its normal pricing. Look at post 4.

Switzerland is a nice place with more local companies than there are from you guys. There are thousands of GmbH from local artisans. Many of them do it themselves others have small companies doing it for them. He is doing online sales with different payment methods and different currencies, it will be more complicated. Still I personally would do it myself.

1200 sales per year, yes the chatted he mentions are reasonable. You would pay double in Hong Kong for the same. At the same time, he is also right that you can get it done for a fraction of it.

I sent him some of my recommendations from me friends, let's see what the quote. It really depends on the amount of work and we don't know how much that is as we do not know what the customers are from neither do the employee is and his proposed salary.


I think in Hong Kong, they will charge you 2000 for an audit for a company with less than 100 transactions. If you have 3 sales per year, it is even 666 let line.

 

[EliasIT]

I repeat myself and state: with ONLY 24 transactions A YEAR, it can already be 2400 chf. I see this in a venture im a shareholder and advisor in.

So they seem to be charging you SOMEWHAT NORMAL swiss prices.

I know it's more expensive in Switzerland, and I also understand that the attitude here is largely to just pay without questioning whether the price is right or not! I went to a Porsche dealership to look at a Porsche Macan - it was about 40,000 EURO more expensive here compared to Germany - At first, I thought, fair enough, you just have to pay. But after talking to other Danes here in Zug, I found out that they just jack up the prices, completely unjustified and just because they can. You could just drive to Germany and save 40,000 euros - Call me petty, but I'd rather pay 40K into my children's savings than to a Porsche dealer.

The same applies to branded clothing, everything is artificially marked up, and if you challenge them, they sometimes are willing to drop the price by up to 40%!!!

And it's the same with accounting, it's WAY too expensive, and I don't care if that's the norm, it's as if the Swiss have their hands deep in your pockets just taking what they want. So, I may come to accept this phenomenon, and so be it.

Therefore, my question and this thread are still valid, is there a firm that offers cheaper accounting services at fair prices and doesn't just take the money from your bank account?

Yeah okay, we can have a long discussion about my "vouchers" which in fact are INVOICES (some we send and some we receive) - specifically, it's about exactly 50 invoices that we send to a company, they pay, and they need to be booked, plus a payslip.

Sometimes we have expense invoices - that's a maximum of 5 per month, which would be on top, but at the same time, there are months when we only have 30 invoices for customers.

So let's settle on a concrete number, 675 invoices both expenses and revenue per year - that should cost 6720 CHF or about 100 CHF per line (as someone else wrote) that goes into the accounting system. And then you mean to say we should just close our eyes and pay because we earn enough money to afford a Porsche.

I'm sure many wealthy people don't let themselves be robbed like that, but maybe they just don't care here in Switzerland, I don't know And I'm not angry with anyone here or trying to be rude, just bringing it up for a polite discussion.

 

[daniels27]

Not many here grew up in Switzerland. Not many in Switzerland either. Prices are high but habits are different. Many old Swiss that saw both world wars never ate in restaurants. This place was a poor place in a landlocked country. Then the wars came and with that the wealthy immigrants. Good news is that they keep coming and they are used to restaurants, expensive cars and golden horses. Swiss are not. That's why they charge a lot. It simple does not matter how much you charge. The Swiss bring their trash out themselves and cook themselves. Same for accounting.

I have you two of my contacts. Please let me know if their quote are good. If not, you email me and I can find some more. Trust me, the wall painters don't pay 6k for accounting either.

 

[sebastian]

You should pack your things and leave Switzerland before it's too late. @Martin Everson and @JohnnyDoe among others have already said Switzerland is dead. Reading all this reminds me of the Seychelles and Belize, where service companies desperately scrape money together by raising prices on customers forced to pay. This is because they are struggling and can't keep their businesses afloat.

Switzerland is DEAD for ordinary people without millions and millions in their accounts. The remaining consultancy firms are hungrier than ever and know they can take their clients hostage in this game! Pay or DIE is the agenda.