Lohnabrechnung — Payroll Guide

What it does

Payroll handles the complete monthly salary process for your Swiss workforce. The system calculates gross-to-net pay including all mandatory Swiss social insurance deductions (AHV/IV/EO, ALV, BVG, UVG, KTG), generates PDF payslips, and emails them to employees.

Because this is a Swiss-specific payroll engine, it knows about canton rules, age-based pension contributions, and source tax for foreign workers. You set up each employee's contract and insurance once, then generate payroll every month with a few clicks.

How to set up

1. Complete employee contracts — each employee needs an active contract with their salary, work percentage, and start date configured under their profile.
2. Configure insurance solutions — set up each employee's insurance details (AHV, ALV, BVG, UVG, KTG) under their profile. Every insurance must be assigned before payroll can be generated.
3. Set up your organisation's payroll defaults — go to Organization settings and confirm your company's BVG provider, UVG rates, and KTG plan.
4. Review wage types — the system comes with 185 standard Swiss wage types. You can customise labels and accounting codes under Payroll settings if needed.
5. Generate your first payroll — go to Payroll, pick the month, select employees, and click Generate. Preview the calculations before finalising.

Daily use

Monthly payroll run

1. Go to Payroll > Create and select the pay period (month/year).
2. Choose which employees to include — either one at a time or all at once.
3. Click Preview to see the full breakdown: gross salary, each deduction line, expenses, and net pay. Nothing is saved yet.
4. If the numbers look right, click Generate. The system creates payroll records, locks the associated time entries, and queues PDF generation.
5. Review each payslip on the detail page. You can add manual lines (bonuses, deductions) to any payroll before finalising.
6. Click Finalise to lock the payroll. Once finalised, it cannot be edited.
7. Use Send All Emails to deliver payslips to all employees for the month, or send them individually.

Reviewing a payslip

Open any payroll record to see five grouped sections: regular income (base salary, 13th month), extraordinary income (bonuses, allowances), employee deductions (all insurance contributions), expense reimbursements, and employer contributions. Download or re-send the PDF at any time.

Exporting payroll data

Go to Payroll > Export, pick a date range, and download as CSV, Excel, or PDF. Use this for your accountant or for uploading to external bookkeeping software.

Works together with

• Time Tracking — tracked hours feed into payroll for hourly employees. Time entries are locked once included in a payroll.
• Expenses — approved expenses are transferred into the payroll as reimbursement lines.
• Contracts — the employee's contract determines base salary, work percentage, and employment type.
• Invoicing — payroll costs can inform project profitability when compared against billed revenue.

Tips

• Preview before you generate. The preview shows the exact same calculations as the real payroll but saves nothing. Use it to catch errors early.
• All insurances must be configured before generating payroll for an employee. The system will reject the calculation if anything is missing.
• Finalised payrolls cannot be undone. If you spot an error, you need to reset the draft (if not yet finalised) or create a correction in the next month.
• Payslip PDFs are generated in the employee's language — the system respects each employee's language preference for their payslip.
• Employer contributions are calculated automatically alongside employee deductions. You can see the total cost to your company on every payslip.