Setting up Swiss payroll

Before calculating a first month, Swiss payroll needs to know each employer — its identity, its workplaces, its funds and insurers — and your wage type catalogue. All of this is set in Settings › Swiss payroll, which also holds the payslip templates, the accounting export formats, the SFTP deposit, the consistency checks and the collective agreement contributions. This article goes through these settings in the order you complete them. It is intended for payroll managers and administrators.

Before you start #

• The Swiss payroll module must be activated in your workspace, and at least one sub-company assigned to the Illizeo calculation engine — see Getting started with Swiss payroll.
• Each settings tile follows its own right and only appears with it: Fill in the employer, its workplaces and its affiliations, Maintain the wage type catalogue, Payslip template of each employer, Accounting export formats, Payroll consistency checks, Choose the payroll engine of each sub-company.
• At Access level a setting can be read; changing it requires Execute level. The Administrator and Payroll Manager roles hold all these rights.

The Swiss payroll settings #

Open Settings › Swiss payroll. The page shows one tile per setting:

• Payroll engines: who calculates the payroll of each sub-company;
• Legal parameters: the federal rates and caps of the year, read-only;
• Employer and affiliations: the employer of each sub-company, as Swissdec declares it;
• Wage types: your catalogue;
• Withholding tax scales: the published scales, read-only;
• Payslip, Accounting export, SFTP deposit: the payroll outputs;
• Consistency checks and Collective agreement contributions: what the calculation checks and adds.

Completing an employer #

Open Settings › Swiss payroll › Employer and affiliations. The page lists one line per sub-company, with what its employer still lacks, or Complete. A sub-company that is not calculated by Illizeo shows Not calculated by Illizeo: you can still prepare it, but its missing items are not counted.

Click a sub-company to open its page. It has four parts, in the order you complete them. For a sub-company that is not calculated by Illizeo, the page says so at the top (“Not calculated by Illizeo: this information will only be used once the Illizeo engine is chosen for this scope.”) and the To complete part does not appear.

To complete #

At the top, the list of what is still missing. The text says it plainly: the payroll of this scope can be neither calculated nor declared while these items are missing.

Employer identity #

1. Fill in the Legal name, the UID number (format CHE-123.456.789, checked when saving), the address (Street and number, P.O. box, Postcode, Locality, Canton) and the payroll contact (name, e-mail, phone).
2. If needed, set salary payment: Salary payment — payday (moved back to the previous business day when it falls on a weekend or public holiday) and Salary payment — debited account.
3. Choose the accounting voucher’s level of detail (Accounting voucher — default level of detail), the behaviour for French cross-border workers — telework above 40 % (Declare and alert or Block the declaration) and, for hourly wages, the 13th salary, the public holiday allowance and the holiday allowance by age.
4. Click Save. The message “Employer saved.” confirms.
5. For hourly wages, the Hourly wage — holiday allowance by age card sets the allowance rate by age: Add a bracket, then Save the scale. Without a scale, the person’s holiday days apply.

Workplaces #

The Workplaces section lists the sites attached to the scope, with their Canton, FSO municipality and BUR number. The canton of each workplace determines the family allowance fund the employer must join.

Affiliations #

The Affiliations section brings together the employer’s funds and insurers: OASI, family allowances (FAK), accident insurance (UVG), supplementary accident insurance (UVGZ), daily sickness allowance (KTG) and occupational pensions (BVG).

1. Click Add in the relevant domain.
2. In Institution, choose the fund or insurer from the Swissdec list.
3. Enter the period: Valid from and Valid until, or tick No end date.
4. Add the affiliation’s Insurance solutions with Add a solution: each contract will then pick its code from them.
5. Click Save the affiliation. The message “Affiliation saved.” confirms.

Only one affiliation per domain applies at a time: periods do not overlap. To change fund, click New period on the current affiliation.

Maintaining the wage type catalogue #

A wage type describes a payroll line (monthly salary, 13th salary, bonus, allowance, deduction…): its nature and its allocations — OASI/UI, UVG, UVGZ, KTG, BVG, withholding tax, salary certificate, FAK, statistics. Open Settings › Swiss payroll › Wage types.

The page has three tabs: Catalogue, Mappings and Log.

• The catalogue starts as a copy of the reference list published by Illizeo, then belongs to you: everything can be changed, number included. The Catalogue tab shows which version was copied, counts the Wage types, the Active ones, those With differences and the Proposals, then shows a table with each wage type’s number, label, nature, accounts and allocations. The filters above the table isolate, for example, wage types with differences, inactive ones, your own or those to translate. Add a wage type creates a new one.
• A new publication of the reference list rewrites nothing: its new wage types are offered to you under Proposals from the reference list. Click Accept to add one, or Set aside; if its number is already used, choose another one.
• A wage type whose nature, sign or an allocation differs from the reference list is counted With differences. This never blocks anything, and Align with the reference list removes the difference in one action; number, label and accounts are yours and do not count as a difference.
• The Mappings tab links each item of the employee records’ Salary tab (salary, recurring payments, attendance) to a wage type in your catalogue, or excludes it from calculation. Apply the suggestions offers the obvious links automatically.
• The Log tab keeps every action on the catalogue.

The other settings #

Legal parameters and withholding tax scales #

Legal parameters give the year’s federal rates and caps: OASI/DI/IC, unemployment insurance, accident insurance, pensioners’ allowance, minimal salary. Withholding tax scales give the tax administration’s scales, canton by canton: choose the year, the canton, the scale and a monthly salary to see the applicable bracket. Both are published by Illizeo: you consult them, you do not change them. A year without a published version is not calculated.

Payslip #

Each employer’s payslip template: texts, formatting, blocks and languages. The company’s template is used by default, Illizeo’s otherwise. The payslip is issued in the employee’s language, and its amounts always come from the closed payroll. The preview composes a PDF on sample data, without saving anything.

Accounting export and SFTP deposit #

Accounting export describes the accounting voucher file formats for your other accounting software (columns, separator, decimal mark, date format, header, encoding); CSV, Excel, Abacus and PDF always remain available. SFTP deposit places the payroll outputs (accounting voucher, payslips, payment file, certificates, statements) on the company’s SFTP server, each in its own folder. Deposited files carry the personnel number, never the name.

Consistency checks #

Here you set the level of the calculation warnings and write your own payroll check rules. A setting applies to the whole workspace; each employer can override it. Gaps that would make an amount wrong always stay blocking. A blocking check prevents closing the month.

Collective agreement contributions #

The contributions that a collective agreement adds to social insurance, at the rate of each contract’s staff category: basis, any annual ceiling, deduction and charge wage types, employer and employee rates per category, in dated versions. The version in force on the first of the month applies.

Good to know #

• Each tile only appears with its right.
• An employer’s missing items are only counted for a sub-company calculated by Illizeo.
• The wage type catalogue must exist before the mappings: the Salary tab items are linked to its wage types.
• Legal parameters and withholding tax scales are maintained by Illizeo.

Frequently asked questions #

The UID number is refused. Why? #

It is checked when saving: enter it in the format CHE-123.456.789, with a valid number.

I cannot find my fund in the list of institutions. #

The list follows the Swissdec list, maintained by Illizeo. If no active institution covers the domain, the screen says so: contact support.

Can I change an OASI rate? #

No. Legal parameters are published by Illizeo and apply to everyone; you inherit them without being able to override them.