The Swiss market for accounting software has become hard to survey: cloud versus desktop, free versions versus ERP bundles, payroll included versus payroll per employee. This article puts ten providers side by side with their published prices and features – verifiably sourced, with references, and with clearly marked gaps where nothing public could be found.
Disclosure on our own behalf. Accounty is our own product. We included it in this comparison because it would otherwise be incomplete – but under the same rules as everyone else, including the points Accounty does not not offer. We earn nothing from any of the other providers; this article contains no affiliate links.
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Contents
- How this comparison was made
- All providers at a glance
- What the base plans cost
- The most expensive item: payroll
- The providers in detail
- Ten criteria that really matter when choosing
- What is the best accounting software in Switzerland?
- Switching: what you need to take with you
- Frequently asked questions
- Sources
How this comparison was made
Software comparisons on the web are often rankings whose order depends on who pays commission. So we defined up front what may go into this article and what may not:
- Only published information. Every figure comes from the respective provider's website, retrieved on 5 August 2026. What is not there is not here either.
- Gaps are named. Where a price is only available on request or a pricing page loads the amounts in the browser, we write “not publicly stated” instead of guessing.
- VAT is carried along. Providers state their prices differently – some excluding, some including VAT, some not at all. We note what applies in each case. A comparison that omits this shifts the ranking by up to eight percent.
- No scoring as a ranking. The providers are ordered alphabetically, not by our opinion. Which solution fits depends on the business – the criteria list further down is more useful for that than any score.
- Features only if documented. We claim no features, for others' software or our own, that we could not verify in the documentation.
Prices and feature sets change. Before deciding, check the provider's current pricing page – the links are at the end of this article.
Important market change. Sage Switzerland no longer exists as an independent offering. The address sage.com/de-ch redirects to infoniqa.com: Sage Start is now called Infoniqa ONE Start, Sage 50 is called Infoniqa ONE 50. Anyone still searching for “Sage accounting Switzerland” is effectively searching for Infoniqa.
All providers at a glance
The table shows each provider's cheapest paid plan that contains a full accounting. Figures in CHF per month with annual payment, where the provider states both variants.
| Provider | Model | Paid entry tier | Payroll | Server location | Trial period |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abacus (AbaWeb) | Cloud, via fiduciary | from 22.– general ledger | from 10.–/month extra | Switzerland | 30 days |
| AbaNinja / Swiss21 | Cloud | 21.– (Basic), Starter free | included, statements quota-limited | Switzerland | Free tier |
| Accounty | Cloud | 24.15 (annual plan) | included, no employee limit | Germany (EU) | 14 days |
| Banana Accounting | Desktop (+ web app) | 89.–/year (Professional) | not available | local, on the user's machine | Free version |
| bexio | Cloud | 35.– (Basic) | from Advanced, +7.– to +25.– | Switzerland | 30 days |
| CashCtrl | Cloud | PRO: not publicly readable | included from PRO | Switzerland | 30 days |
| Infoniqa ONE Start | Cloud (ONE 50: desktop) | 42.– (Ready) | included, up to 5 employees | Switzerland | 30 days |
| KLARA | Cloud | 55.– (Business Basic, annual plan) | +4.90/employee, 3.90 with bundle | Switzerland | 30 days |
| MILKEE | Cloud | 24.90 (Basic) | Business +9.–/employee, Team incl. 5 employees | Switzerland and EU | 14 days |
| Run my Accounts | Cloud + outsourced bookkeeping | 25.– (SME), Startup free | separate payroll package | Bern | Free tier |
VAT: bexio, AbaNinja, KLARA, MILKEE and Run my Accounts state prices excluding VAT, CashCtrl including, Accounty including. For Abacus and Infoniqa the VAT status is not stated on the pricing pages. “MA” stands for employees.
What the base plans cost
The following comparison normalises all figures to francs per month with annual payment. For Banana that is an arithmetic figure: the licence costs CHF 89 per year, equivalent to roughly CHF 7.40 per month, but it is a desktop product without cloud and without payroll and therefore only partly comparable.
Source: the providers' pricing pages, retrieved 5 August 2026. * Banana Professional is a desktop licence at CHF 89 per year, converted to a month here; it contains no payroll and no cloud data storage. Accounty CHF 290/year including VAT; bexio, AbaNinja, MILKEE, KLARA and Run my Accounts excluding VAT; for Abacus and Infoniqa the VAT status is not stated. Where a provider states no annual discount (AbaNinja, Abacus, CashCtrl, Run my Accounts), the monthly price applies. Permanently free tiers (AbaNinja Starter, CashCtrl FREE, Run my Accounts Startup, Banana up to 70 journal lines) are not shown.The base price says little as long as it is unclear how many users, how many client files and how much payroll are included. That is exactly where the offers diverge most.
The most expensive item: payroll
As soon as employees join, the ranking shifts markedly. Several providers charge payroll per employee and month, others tie it to a higher plan, one provider has no payroll at all. The following example calculates a business with five employees and monthly payroll.
Worked example based on published list prices, retrieved 5 August 2026: base plan plus payroll surcharge for five employees. bexio Advanced 42.– plus 25.– for five employees; KLARA Business Basic 55.– plus 5 × 3.90; at MILKEE the Team plan at 69.90 with five employees included is cheaper than Business 34.90 plus 5 × 9.– (= 79.90), so the Team plan is shown; Infoniqa ONE Start Ready includes payroll for up to five employees; Abacus AbaWeb as the sum of the two “from” prices, the actual price may be higher; Accounty with no employee limit. ** AbaNinja Pro includes 21 payslips, further ones cost CHF 3.50 – at 60 payslips a year that adds roughly 11.40 per month; this allocation is our calculation, not the provider's price statement. Banana offers no payroll, CashCtrl does not state the PRO price publicly, Run my Accounts settles payroll as a service – all three are therefore missing from this chart. VAT as in the chart above: Accounty including, bexio, KLARA, MILKEE and AbaNinja excluding, Abacus and Infoniqa not stated.Two things stand out when doing the maths. First: a business with five employees pays two to three times the base price with several providers. Second: the pure price difference says nothing about the quality of the payroll function. If you need a Swissdec-certified annual declaration, look exactly there – that is a knockout criterion, not a comfort feature (more in the criteria list).
The providers in detail
In alphabetical order. The pros and cons refer to a typical SME with up to ten employees – for a corporation or a sole proprietorship without staff the assessment differs.
Abacus – AbaWeb
Abacus Research AG, Wittenbach SG · founded 1985 · over 65,000 customers · cloud and on-premise
The Swiss heavyweight in the ERP segment. AbaWeb is the cloud offering typically obtained through a fiduciary: the fiduciary runs the installation, the business does its own entries in it. General ledger starts at around CHF 22 per month, payroll at around CHF 10; prices for the larger ERP modules are not public but go through the partner.
Technically, Abacus is the most mature offering in the field. Its electronic banking supports EBICS in versions 2.5 and 3.0 as well as camt.052, camt.053, camt.054 and pain.001/002. The point that decides it for many: Abacus transmits the VAT return electronically straight to the FTA – not as a file to upload, but as an integrated submission.
In favour
- Largest feature set in the comparison, scales up to corporate level
- EBICS and direct FTA submission
- Very widely used among Swiss fiduciaries
- Data centres in Switzerland
Against
- Prices only partly public, ERP modules exclusively via partners
- Onboarding and support usually paid, via a partner
- Operation requires accounting knowledge
- Clearly oversized for a business with five documents a week
AbaNinja – via Swiss21
Swiss21.org AG, St. Gallen / DeepCloud AG, Wittenbach · cloud · free tier available
AbaNinja comes from the Abacus environment and is distributed via the Swiss21 platform, which positions itself as a free software bundle for small Swiss businesses. The plans: Starter free, Basic CHF 21, Pro CHF 49 per month excluding VAT, with one, three and five users respectively; additional users cost CHF 5. Payroll is included but quota-limited: one, seven and 21 payslips respectively, each further one CHF 3.50. ELM 5.0 and over 80 banks are supported; hosting is in Switzerland.
In favour
- A free entry point micro-businesses can take seriously
- Payroll included in principle, ELM 5.0
- Swiss hosting, broad bank support
- Transition into the Abacus world possible
Against
- The payslip quota gets expensive quickly with several employees
- User count in the Basic plan is tight
- Swiss21's platform logic makes it initially unclear which service belongs where
Accounty — our own product
SEBONA Treuhand Böhner, Kloten ZH · cloud · all modules in one price
Accounty grew out of the practice of a Swiss fiduciary firm. The pricing model is deliberately simple: CHF 29 per month or CHF 290 per year, VAT included, with all modules, unlimited users and payroll with no employee limit. 80 AI document analyses per month are included; a further 100 cost CHF 9.90. You try it for 14 days without a credit card and can cancel monthly. Fiduciaries get their own tier from CHF 9 per mandate and month.
Documented features include QR-bills with QRR and SCOR references, import of camt.053 and camt.054, payment orders as pain.001.001.09, VAT export per eCH-0217, the salary certificate per Form 11, and import filters for bexio, Banana and Infoniqa.
Three features usually found in higher price brackets are included in the same plan. First, a cost-centre accounting: cost centres can be assigned to journal lines as well as customer and supplier invoices, and analysed as an income statement in the account × cost centre matrix with prior-year comparison. Second, a foreign-currency management with the official rates of the Federal Customs Administration, automatically booked realised exchange differences on payment, and a valuation at the reporting date that can be posted at the press of a button. Third, a guided year-end closing: 26 steps in nine phases, each step with an automatic plausibility check against the real account balances, notes and documents on the step, calculators for the inventory reserve, stock valuation and depreciation, then lock and opening of the next year. That these three things are built this way has a simple reason: Accounty is developed by a fiduciary team that closes books with it every day.
What Accounty explicitly cannot do, and what belongs here in a fair comparison: no EBICS connection, no direct electronic filing with the FTA (the eCH-0217 export is uploaded to SuisseTax by hand), no Swissdec certification of the salary declaration, no camt.052 import – and the servers are not in Switzerland but in Germany and thus in the GDPR area.
In favour
- One price for all modules, no per-employee surcharges
- Unlimited users, payroll with no employee limit
- Cost-centre accounting and foreign currency with automatic exchange differences included
- Guided year-end closing with plausibility checks against the real balances
- Fiduciary portal with client, team and task management
- Developed by a fiduciary team out of daily practice
Against
- Servers in Germany, not Switzerland
- No Swissdec certification of the salary declaration (yet)
- No EBICS, no direct FTA submission
- No camt.052 import
Banana Accounting
Banana.ch SA, Viganello TI · founded 1989 · over 400,000 licences sold · desktop
Banana is the special case in the field: desktop software that handles like a spreadsheet, complemented by a web app without cloud data storage. You pay per year, not per month: Free up to 70 journal lines, Professional CHF 89 per year, Advanced CHF 179 per year. The number of accounting files per licence is unlimited – an argument for anyone running several legal entities or a club on the side.
Included are camt import (052, 053, 054), QR-bills and the VAT return with XML export. Not included is a Payroll; the maker says so unmistakably on its website.
In favour
- By far the lowest price, unlimited accounting files
- Data stays local – no cloud trust issue
- Very fast entry for practised users
- Long market presence, well documented
Against
- No payroll
- No real multi-user work in real time
- Backup and data security are the user's responsibility
- No automatic bank reconciliation in the sense of a cloud connection
bexio
bexio AG, Rapperswil SG · founded 2013 as easySYS · over 100,000 companies · cloud
The best-known Swiss cloud provider, with a correspondingly large ecosystem of integrations, fiduciaries and add-ons. Four plans on the annual subscription, excluding VAT: Basic 35, Advanced 42, Optima 69, Ultimate 119 francs per month; monthly payment adds CHF 10 each. One, two, five and 25 users respectively are included, further ones cost between CHF 4.76 and CHF 21 depending on the plan.
Payroll is in the Basic plan not available. From Advanced it costs CHF 7 for one employee and CHF 25 for five; the Ultimate plan includes 25 employees. Over 60 bank interfaces, pain.001 and camt.052/053/054 are documented; bexio does not state an EBICS connection or direct FTA submission on its public pages.
In favour
- Largest integration and partner network in the Swiss cloud segment
- Over 60 bank connections
- Mature usability, lots of documentation
- Swiss data centre, 30-day trial
Against
- Payroll not available at all in the entry plan
- Users are billed individually – drives up the price in small teams (though the fiduciary login does not count)
- The combination of plan jump and payroll surcharge makes the final price hard to plan
- Monthly payment costs a flat CHF 10 extra
CashCtrl
CashCtrl AG, Münchenstein BL · since 2012/2013 · small team · cloud
A lean, technically idiosyncratic provider with a remarkable free offering: CashCtrl FREE is permanently free for one user and one client file – no trial period, no entry limit. It is followed by PRO with three users and two client files, and FL4T at CHF 3,900 per year. All prices are stated including VAT, which makes CashCtrl cheaper in a direct comparison than the number looks at first glance.
With the PRO plan we hit a limit of this comparison: the pricing page only loads the amounts in the browser and returned just the placeholder “CHF N/A.—/year” on retrieval. So we enter no figure. Documented are the import of camt.052/053/054 and MT940, payroll included in the PRO plan, and operation exclusively on Swiss servers.
In favour
- Permanently free full access for single users
- Prices including VAT, operation only on Swiss servers
- Broad bank-file import including MT940
- Very flexibly configurable
Against
- The PRO price could not be read publicly – a gap in price transparency
- Small team, correspondingly limited support capacity
- Fewer fiduciaries know the software
- The operating concept takes getting used to
Infoniqa ONE Start (formerly Sage Start)
Infoniqa Schweiz AG, Root D4 LU · group since 1988, Wels (AT) · 40,000 customers group-wide · cloud and on-premise
Infoniqa took over the Swiss Sage business; anyone searching for Sage Start or Sage 50 ends up here today. The cloud line ONE Start has four packages: Ready 42, Service 59, Trade 59 and All in One 92 francs per month, with one, three, three and ten client files respectively. The VAT status is not stated on the pricing page. The payroll is included, with a cap of five, 25, 25 and 100 employees respectively – one of the clearest rules in the field. The feature pages mention an electronic VAT return, QR payment parts and bank reconciliation; for ONE 50 additionally an EBICS connection and a SuisseTax export are mentioned. Prices for ONE 50 are not public.
In favour
- Payroll included at no extra cost, with a transparent employee cap
- Several client files already in the mid package
- Cloud and on-premise variants from one source
- Swiss data centre, 30-day trial
Against
- Higher entry price than most cloud competitors
- VAT status of prices not stated
- ONE 50 opaque on pricing
- The brand switch from Sage still causes confusion in search and documentation
KLARA
ePost Service AG, Lucerne · KLARA founded 2016, majority-owned by Swiss Post since 2020 · over 50,000 SMEs · cloud
KLARA is less an accounting package than a business platform in which accounting is one module among several. The plans: Business Basic, Plus and Premium at 69, 99 and 159 francs monthly, on the annual plan 55, 79 and 127 francs, each excluding VAT. Basic allows at most three administrators, Plus and Premium unlimited users. Payroll costs CHF 4.90 per employee and month, CHF 3.90 with a Business package. There is bank reconciliation with over 50 institutions, camt.053 and a dedicated fiduciary login; the data resides in Switzerland and operations are ISO 27001 certified.
In favour
- Unlimited users from the Plus package
- Very broad feature spectrum beyond accounting
- Backing of Swiss Post, ISO 27001, data in Switzerland
- Established fiduciary login
Against
- Highest entry price in the comparison
- Payroll is billed per head and adds up quickly
- Basic limited to three administrators
- The platform scope is a lot for pure accounting needs
MILKEE
MILKEE GmbH, Winterthur ZH · “780+” customers · Swiss Made Software · cloud
The smallest commercial provider in the field, but with a technically remarkable detail: MILKEE offers an EBICS connection – nobody else does in this price class. On the terms, however, the provider's site contradicts itself: it says the connection is “included free in all our current plans”, yet also that users can use EBICS “provided they have booked the corresponding add-on”. We reproduce both as stated and recommend asking before signing up. The plans with annual payment: Basic 24.90, Business 34.90, Team 69.90 francs per month excluding VAT, with monthly payment 29.90, 39.90 and 79.90 respectively, with two, three and five users. Payroll is missing in the Basic plan, costs CHF 9 per employee and month in Business, and is included for five employees in Team, each further person costing CHF 9 there too – and it is Swissdec-certified. If you run payroll for five staff, the Team plan at 69.90 works out cheaper than Business plus five surcharges. Multi-client capability and fiduciary access are included in all plans. According to the provider, the data resides “primarily in Switzerland and the EU”.
In favour
- EBICS connection – not otherwise found in this price class
- Swissdec-certified payroll
- Multi-client capability and fiduciary access included throughout
- Low entry price
Against
- The CHF 9 per-head payroll surcharge is the highest in the comparison – from five employees the Team plan pays off
- Very small provider – assess the dependency risk
- 14-day trial shorter than most
- Data not held exclusively in Switzerland
Run my Accounts
Run my Accounts AG, Stäfa ZH · founded 2008 · part of Infoniqa since December 2021 · software plus service
Run my Accounts primarily sells not software but outsourced bookkeeping: documents are submitted and booked by a team. The software alone is available as Startup free and as SME at CHF 25 per month plus CHF 10 per user available. Bookkeeping as a service costs, depending on the package, a base fee of 0, 35 or 290 francs plus 1.80, 1.40 or 0.95 francs per entry; payroll adds a base fee of 15, 30 or 150 francs plus 25, 22 or 16 francs per employee. All figures excluding VAT. The data centre is in Bern and the company is ISO 9001 certified; the privacy policy, however, also names the EU/EEA area, which we have to leave standing as a contradiction.
In favour
- The only offering that takes the work off your hands entirely instead of just supplying tools
- Free tier for startups
- Scales with entry volume – predictable with fluctuating activity
- Data centre in Bern, ISO 9001
Against
- Price structure with base fee and per-entry price hard to compare
- Payroll as a service clearly dearer than any software module
- Less control over ongoing data entry
- Statements on data location not free of contradiction
Ten criteria that really matter when choosing
If you pick software by the feature list, you almost always pick too big. It is more useful to answer the following ten questions for your own business – most decisions then make themselves.
1. How many employees do you have?
That is the biggest cost driver of all. Four models are found in the market, and at ten employees they differ by more than double:
Classification based on the published product and pricing pages, retrieved 5 August 2026.2. How many people work in the accounts?
At bexio every additional user costs money, at KLARA only up to the Plus package, at Accounty users are unlimited, and the free tiers of AbaNinja and CashCtrl come with a fixed user count. The fiduciary does not count everywhere: At bexio they are invited to the client file via a dedicated fiduciary account and do not occupy a paid user licence – if you do not know that, you overestimate the price. How the other providers handle it is not consistently stated on the pricing pages; ask specifically before signing. So count the people who work with the software in the business itself – the boss and the clerk are two logins, and the third comes faster than you think.
3. Should your fiduciary work with you in it?
Almost all providers now offer fiduciary access, but conditions differ: KLARA and MILKEE have it throughout, Abacus via AbaWeb is even designed around it, and most fiduciary firms work with only two or three systems anyway.
Fiduciary access, however, is not the same as an environment in which a fiduciary firm can organise its work. Accounty has a dedicated Fiduciary portal: mandates are created there, set up with chart of accounts and licence and invited by email, staff get mandates assigned, and to-dos run on a kanban board with deadline, priority, category and assignee. Add a traffic-light overview of accounting, documents, bank, VAT and payroll, a work status per mandate and year across quarters, payroll and year-end closing, and automatically calculated VAT and tax deadlines.
4. How many client files do you need?
Anyone running an operating company and a property company, or looking after a club on the side, needs several sets of books. Banana allows that without limit, Infoniqa from three client files in the mid package, CashCtrl two from PRO, MILKEE is multi-client in all plans. With the others, a second client file usually means a second subscription.
5. Cloud or desktop?
The cloud wins on collaboration, backup and updates. The desktop wins on cost and control over your own data. Banana is the only pure desktop product in this overview, Infoniqa offers an on-premise variant with ONE 50 – all others are cloud-only.
6. How does the bank data get into the books?
Three routes are common, and each provider covers them differently: the file route with camt.053 or camt.054 for import and pain.001 for payment orders works with practically all of them. The direct bank connection via interfaces of the individual institutions is broadest at bexio with over 60 banks. EBICS finally is the automated route for higher volumes; it is documented at Abacus, at Infoniqa ONE 50 and – unusually for the price class – at MILKEE, where it remains unclear whether the connection is included in the plan or belongs to an add-on. Accounty has no EBICS.
7. How do you file your VAT?
Here too there are gradations. Direct electronic submission to the FTA from within the software is offered in this comparison by Abacus; Infoniqa speaks of an electronic VAT return. The more common route is the XML export per eCH-0217 and the manual upload to SuisseTax – that is how Banana and Accounty, among others, solve it. The difference costs five minutes four times a year; you decide whether that matters.
8. Where does your data reside?
The Swiss Data Protection Act does not require a Swiss server location – adequate protection is recognised for EEA states. A Swiss data centre is still a trust argument for many, and it is a real differentiator: bexio, Abacus, AbaNinja, CashCtrl, KLARA and Infoniqa host in Switzerland, Run my Accounts in Bern, MILKEE primarily in Switzerland and the EU, Accounty in Germany. With Banana the data stays with the user.
9. How do you get out again?
The least popular question before signing and the most important one at the next switch. Check whether chart of accounts, journal, addresses and open items can be exported in a readable format, and how long the notice period is. A provider that only outputs PDF is holding on to you without saying so.
10. What happens after the trial month?
Most providers give 30 days, MILKEE and Accounty 14. That is enough for a first impression, not for a year-end closing. Use the time deliberately: re-book a real month, prepare a VAT return, calculate one payroll, import a bank statement. If those four things run cleanly, the rest usually does too.
The most common mistake is not the wrong software but the oversized one. A tool that never shows three quarters of its features costs attention every day – and money every month.
What is the best accounting software in Switzerland?
We get this question almost daily, and the honest answer is unsatisfying: The one best accounting software in Switzerland does not exist. Anyone claiming it is selling either a product or a commission. What does exist are clear favourites depending on your starting point – and they can be derived from the figures above without anyone inventing a ranking.
| If your starting point looks like this … | … look at this first | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Sole proprietorship, no staff, small budget | AbaNinja Starter, CashCtrl FREE, Banana | Permanently free or very cheap entry versions that suffice for invoicing, bank reconciliation and VAT. |
| Up to five employees, payroll should be included | AbaNinja, Infoniqa ONE Start, Accounty | With these three, payroll is included in the base price instead of billed per employee. |
| More than five employees on payroll | Accounty, Abacus | Infoniqa ONE Start capped at five employees; at bexio and KLARA the price rises per head. |
| Swissdec-certified salary declaration mandatory | Abacus, bexio, Infoniqa | Accounty does not have this certification. If it is required, the choice is thereby decided. |
| Swiss server location is an internal requirement | bexio, Abacus, CashCtrl, KLARA, Infoniqa | Accounty runs its servers in Germany. Legally permissible, but it does not meet a hard internal requirement. |
| Larger SME with production or warehousing | Abacus, Infoniqa ONE 50 | ERP depth that none of the pure cloud accounting tools covers – at correspondingly higher cost. |
| The fiduciary keeps the books | Whatever your fiduciary already uses | A closing in familiar software is almost always cheaper than the effort of training an office on a new system. |
It is striking that the providers most often appearing in search results and comparison portals as the “best Swiss accounting software” are usually those with the biggest marketing budget – not those with the best value for a specific business. Fame is a poor selection filter, because it says nothing about whether payroll for your eight employees is included in the price.
The question only becomes practically useful when you turn it around: not “which is the best” but “which three things must the software do for it to work for us”. For most SMEs that is payroll for the actual headcount, a VAT return under the chosen method, and bank reconciliation that runs without manual rework. Test those three things concretely during the trial – that answers the question for your business more reliably than any ranking.
The best accounting software is the one whose trial you survive with real documents – not the one that appears in the most advertising.
Switching: what you need to take with you
A software switch rarely fails because of the new software, but almost always because of incomplete data from the old one. This order has proven itself in practice:
- Time it for the year change. Switching mid-year means two systems, two sets of reports and a prior-year comparison that does not work.
- Check the export at the old provider before cancelling. What can be pulled as CSV or XML – chart of accounts, journal, addresses, open receivables and payables? Only cancel afterwards.
- Tidy up the chart of accounts. Delete accounts with no movement in the last two years and a zero balance. A switch is the only moment when that takes no effort. How a clean chart of accounts is structured is covered in the article Chart of accounts for Swiss SMEs.
- Check the VAT mapping. After the import, the accounts often show the right balances but the wrong tax codes. That only shows up at the first VAT return – and then it is expensive.
- Take over the opening balance and prior-year figures, not just the balances. Otherwise the comparison column is missing at the first closing.
- Run them in parallel. Keep both systems for one month and reconcile the balances. That costs half a day and, in doubt, saves re-booking a whole year.
Accounty ships with import filters for bexio, Banana and Infoniqa; details are in the comparison with bexio and in the comparison with Infoniqa. For fiduciary firms with several mandates there is a dedicated tier.
Frequently asked questions
What does accounting software cost in Switzerland?
The range is wide. Permanently free entry versions exist at AbaNinja (Starter), CashCtrl (FREE) and Banana (up to 70 journal lines). Paid cloud plans for a small business start at roughly CHF 21 to 35 per month and reach CHF 119 and beyond. What matters is less the base price than what is included: number of users, number of client files and above all payroll, which several providers charge extra for per employee.
Which accounting software suits sole proprietorships?
For a sole proprietorship without staff, a simple package with quotes, QR-bill invoicing, bank reconciliation and VAT returns is usually enough. Free variants like CashCtrl FREE or AbaNinja Starter often suffice, as does the desktop solution Banana. As soon as employees join, payroll becomes the biggest cost driver and the maths changes.
Does accounting software have to run on a Swiss server?
No. The Swiss Data Protection Act allows processing personal data abroad if adequate protection exists there; for EEA states this is recognised by the Federal Council. A Swiss server location is therefore a comfort and trust argument, not a legal duty. Providers with Swiss data centres include bexio, Abacus, CashCtrl, KLARA and Infoniqa.
What does Swissdec certification mean for payroll?
Swissdec is the Swiss standard for the uniform salary declaration process (ELM). Certified software can transmit the annual declarations to AHV, accident and daily sickness insurers, tax administrations and the Federal Statistical Office electronically from one source. Without certification, these declarations must be entered via the individual agencies' portals or uploaded as files.
How do I switch accounting software without losing data?
Cleanest at a year change, so prior-year comparisons stay intact. You should take over the chart of accounts with VAT mapping, addresses, open receivables and payables, the opening balance and ideally the current year's journal. Before cancelling, check which format your current provider exports; a CSV or XML export of the journal is the most important point.
Do I need EBICS for the bank connection?
Not necessarily. EBICS is a standard for automated, direct data exchange with the bank. Most SMEs manage with the file route: export payment orders as pain.001 and upload them in e-banking, import statements as camt.053 or camt.054. EBICS pays off mainly with high payment volumes or when several people have to approve payments.
Does Sage Switzerland still exist?
Not as an independent brand. The Swiss Sage website redirects to Infoniqa. Sage Start is now called Infoniqa ONE Start, Sage 50 is Infoniqa ONE 50. Existing installations continue under the new brand.
Sources
All price and feature information comes from the respective providers' public product and pricing pages, retrieved on 5 August 2026. We link the home pages, as individual subpages move regularly:
- abacus.ch – AbaWeb subscriptions, electronic banking, VAT submission
- abaninja.ch and swiss21.org – plans, payslip quotas, ELM
- banana.ch – licences, feature scope, note on the missing payroll
- bexio.com/de-CH/preise – plans, user and payroll surcharges; bexio.com/de-CH/treuhand – fiduciary access
- cashctrl.com – FREE/PRO/FL4T plans, bank-file import, server location
- infoniqa.com – ONE Start and ONE 50, redirect from sage.com/de-ch
- klara.ch – Business packages, payroll price per employee, ISO 27001
- milkee.ch/preise – Basic/Business/Team plans, payroll per employee; milkee.ch/integrationen/ebics – EBICS, Swissdec certification
- runmyaccounts.ch – software and service prices, data centre
- Information on Accounty from our own product and pricing page (accounty.ch)
Not verifiable and therefore not quantified here: CashCtrl's PRO price (the pricing page loads the amounts in the browser), the prices for Abacus ERP modules and Infoniqa ONE 50 (partner only), KLARA's price configurator, and the VAT status of the price statements of Abacus and Infoniqa.
Read next: Chart of accounts for Swiss SMEs · VAT return step by step · Year-end closing checklist · All software comparisons
All information on third-party providers is based on publicly available information as of 5 August 2026 and comes without guarantee of completeness or currency. Prices, plan tiers and feature scopes can change at any time; the provider's current publication is always authoritative. Accounty is a product of SEBONA Treuhand Böhner – we are a party in this comparison and disclosed that above. This article serves general orientation and does not replace individual advice. Spot an error? Write to us at info@accounty.ch, and we will correct it.
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Read article →Swiss VAT return: step-by-step guide
From accruals to filing in the FTA portal.
Read article →Year-end closing for Swiss SMEs: 12-step checklist
From reconciling accounts and accruals through to the tax return.
Read article →All articles on the blog → · Software comparisons → · Accounting by industry →
All modules, one price, no per-employee surcharge
Accounty costs CHF 29 per month including VAT – with accounting, invoicing, VAT and payroll with no employee limit. Try it for 14 days, no credit card.
Try free for 14 days Cancel monthly · switching discount until 31.08.2026 · questions? info@accounty.ch