Accounting for your GmbH

Why a GmbH keeps double-entry books

The Code of Obligations requires every legal entity to keep books and prepare accounts. A GmbH is one of them, whatever its turnover.

Simplified bookkeeping, covering only income, expenditure and assets, is enough only for sole proprietorships and partnerships with less than CHF 500’000 in revenue in the last financial year. The same goes for associations and foundations that do not have to register in the commercial register. Your GmbH therefore keeps double-entry books, with a balance sheet and an income statement.

Double entry means every entry moves at least two accounts, once as a debit and once as a credit, for the same amount. In Bilanzi, an entry can only be saved when both sides match.

Sources: Code of Obligations, Art. 957 (fedlex.admin.ch)

What proper bookkeeping means

The law sets out the principles of proper bookkeeping. Transactions are recorded completely, truthfully and systematically. Every entry is backed by a voucher. The books are clear, fit for the business and verifiable by an expert.

This is how Bilanzi puts it into practice:

• You photograph or upload the receipt, and it stays linked to its entry.
• A posted line is never overwritten. You correct it with a reversal that visibly refers to the original.
• Every action is in the audit trail. The records are chained together, so a later change can be proven.
• You lock a period with a reason. After that, nothing more can be posted to it.

Sources: Code of Obligations, Art. 957a (fedlex.admin.ch)

Setting up a GmbH

During setup you choose GmbH as the legal form, your financial year and your industry. Bilanzi creates a chart of accounts based on the Swiss SME chart, with accounts for your industry. For a GmbH, the capital account is called nominal capital from the start.

The first entry of a new GmbH is usually the payment of its nominal capital. Bilanzi prepares a draft entry for it. It is only posted once you have checked it in the journal.

Then come your invoice address, bank account and VAT. You can change everything later, and rename or add accounts as you need.

The running year

During the year you capture receipts, send invoices with a QR payment part and approve supplier invoices. You import the bank statement as a file and match the payments. You can see the balance sheet and income statement at any time.

Your GmbH is exempt from VAT only while its turnover from taxable supplies stays below CHF 100’000 a year, in Switzerland and abroad combined. From the Starter plan, Bilanzi works out the VAT return from your entries, by the effective method or at a net tax rate. You file it yourself in the ESTV ePortal.

If the GmbH pays you a salary as managing director, it is a salary like any other, with AHV contributions. In Bilanzi, payroll belongs to the paid plans, from Starter.

Sources: Federal Act on Value Added Tax, Art. 10 (fedlex.admin.ch), Federal Act on Old-Age and Survivors’ Insurance, Art. 5 (fedlex.admin.ch)

Annual accounts and retention

At the end of the financial year your GmbH prepares annual accounts made up of the balance sheet, the income statement and the notes. Bilanzi produces the balance sheet and income statement under CO 959a and 959b and guides you through the close with a checklist. The details are on the page about year-end closing.

Books, accounting vouchers and the annual report must be kept for ten years. Books and vouchers may be stored electronically if they can be made readable again at any time. The annual report is kept in writing and signed.

Bilanzi tracks the retention period per financial year and refuses to remove a receipt from the books within it. As with VAT rates, an owner approves the period once against the official source. You can take your books out at any time as CSV files, with a checksum for each file. Bilanzi is not a certified archive, so you store the files yourself.

Sources: Code of Obligations, Art. 958 and 958f (fedlex.admin.ch), Ordinance on Commercial Accounting, GeBüV (fedlex.admin.ch)

Audit and fiduciary

An auditor checks the annual accounts, not the software. Small and medium-sized GmbHs are subject to a limited audit. An ordinary audit applies mainly when two of three thresholds are exceeded in two consecutive years. They are total assets of CHF 20 million, revenue of CHF 40 million and 250 full-time positions on annual average.

With the consent of all shareholders, a GmbH with no more than ten full-time positions on annual average can opt out of the limited audit.

Your fiduciary works in your books through a mandate, not on a copy. Everyone has a role, and the role decides what they see and can do.

Sources: Code of Obligations, Art. 727, 727a and 818 (fedlex.admin.ch)

What does not work yet

Bilanzi does not produce the notes to the annual accounts, a cash flow statement or a management report. Your GmbH always needs the notes, so you write them yourself or with your fiduciary.

The GmbH’s tax return and withholding tax on dividends are handled outside Bilanzi. Bilanzi does not send the VAT return to the ESTV. There is no direct bank connection: statements and payment orders travel as files.

Bilanzi does not check whether your GmbH has a capital loss or is overindebted. You keep an eye on that yourself. There is no import of entries from another program. Payroll has no Swissdec certification.

Frequently asked questions

Related topics

• Year-end closing for your GmbH

  Every Swiss GmbH ends its financial year with annual accounts. Bilanzi builds the balance sheet and income statement from your entries and walks you through the close in five steps. The notes you write yourself or with your fiduciary.

• Payroll in Bilanzi

  Bilanzi calculates your employees’ wages, produces the payslips and prepares the entry for your books. Payroll comes with the paid plans and has no Swissdec certification. This page tells you what it does today and what it lacks.