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Starting a new business is exciting, but also a significant challenge. There are several areas where attention must be paid. Below are the most important ones, both before establishing the company, as well as its day-to-day management.
Before establishing the company
- Market analysis. Before diving into the business, it's wise to conduct a thorough analysis of the market you're entering. Are you targeting a local or a broader market? A niche or a large-scale one? What competitors are there on the market? How do you differentiate yourself? Can you be competitive compared to them?
- Business plan. The business plan (especially the financial plan) is crucial, whether you need to present it to potential investors or just to clarify your annual objectives. A detailed business plan will help you understand, in the first few months, if things are progressing as expected and will allow you to adjust course if you encounter small obstacles. Many companies prepare a financial plan in the early years but then stop, forgetting that this, along with budgeting, is also vital to forecasting cash flows and ensuring you never run out of liquidity—one of the main challenges for startups.
- Initial bureaucratic aspects. Easily handled by a good fiduciary, these still involve strategic choices to start on the right foot: the legal form, the company name, the corporate purpose, registration in the commercial register, and the protection of intellectual property.
- VAT liability. If your business expects a turnover above 100,000 CHF, you must register it with the Federal Tax Administration to get a VAT number. If you run a business, you can also voluntarily register as a VAT taxpayer. You'll also need to choose the VAT calculation method, either based on actual turnover (paying VAT on each sale and deducting it on each purchase) or using the flat-rate method (paying a more favorable flat rate on sales but not deducting VAT on purchases).
- Affiliation as an employer and employee declaration. If you plan to have employees, you must first register as an employer with your canton's social insurance office, then declare each employee. For those earning above a certain salary threshold, you'll also need to make a contract with a second-pillar pension institution (LPP) and obtain the necessary insurances, especially LAINF (accident insurance). If you're opening a sole proprietorship, the requirements differ slightly, but you still need to register.
- Insurance. Besides mandatory insurance for employees, there are other important ones: liability insurance for businesses, property insurance, machinery insurance, etc.
Managing day-to-day operations effectively
Once the big step of starting the business is taken, the instinct is to dive headfirst into operations, satisfying clients, conquering the market, etc. However, it's worth taking a moment to consider what tools to use and how to get organized enough to manage the business day-to-day. Starting off on the right foot makes this task much easier.
- Document management. Very quickly, you'll find yourself overwhelmed by mountains of papers, contracts, and receipts. Whether you decide to keep them in physical or digital form, it's ideal to divide them into:
- Basic documents, which usually have long-term validity (lease agreements, bank account openings, insurance policies...)
- Employee documents (declarations, identification, contracts…)
Regular documents, such as receipts. We recommend not categorizing these by type (e.g., phone bills, rent, invoices) but simply in chronological order of arrival. With accounting software like Banana Accounting Plus, for example, these can be kept digitally and linked to the accounting transactions. This is convenient as they can be found instantly and opened with a single click in PDF format.
- Personal bookkeeping or outsourcing? There are pros and cons to both. A fiduciary ensures everything is correct and lightens your workload, but the costs can be significant. Moreover, not doing your own accounting deprives you of a valuable tool for understanding your business’s daily performance. On the other hand, doing everything yourself might be intimidating, especially without accounting experience. We recommend a middle path: using accounting software that allows you to manage your business and download bank transactions while delegating oversight and strategic tax planning to a fiduciary.
- Choosing accounting software. If you want to manage your own accounting, a software is essential. While some still use Excel, it's proven that there are multiple formula errors and that they occurr often, and a considerable amount of time is lost. Today, there are various options available, but they can often be expensive both in terms of costs and the time required for training. We suggest an easy-to-use, cost-effective software like Banana Accounting Plus (Advanced plan). As your business grows, you can learn to use more advanced features. And if you ever want to switch software, your accounting data will always be available, and the skills learned on Banana will be helpful for any other program.
- Cash-based or accrual accounting? These are the two methods for recording transactions. The cash method records transactions only when money enters or leaves your company: at the end of the year, open positions are recorded in special accounts (active or passive transitions). The accrual method involves double entry: when the invoice is first issued (e.g., upon receiving an order from a customer), and when the invoice is paid. This method is mainly used by larger businesses, usually with a turnover of more than 500,000 CHF. With the rise of instant payment methods (Twint, PayPal, CC, etc.), cash accounting is becoming more common.
- VAT Report. If your business is subject to VAT, depending on the method you’ve chosen, you'll need to file VAT Reports every 3 or 6 months. The Federal Tax Administration encourages users to upload data directly to the AFC portal (mandatory from 2025), replacing the old paper format. Banana Accounting Plus (Advanced plan) generates VAT Report in seconds.
- Tax return and auditing. It's a dreaded moment for many companies, mainly because it forces you to gather all the year's documents and take them to your fiduciary or tax advisor. However, with good software, this task becomes much less burdensome as the accounting is up to date, and all the data is already available. Even if your trusted expert doesn't use Banana, you can export the entire accounting (including receipts) in a single PDF file. Gone are the days of manually carrying binders. If your expert uses Banana, you can simply share the Dropbox folder (or your preferred cloud) where you’ve saved your accounting file and receipts.
- Time optimization. Especially in the beginning, time management for running a business is often overlooked, but it's an important factor to monitor, as time spent on management is time taken away from business development. A crucial element in reducing the time spent on accounting is importing transactions from bank, postal, or credit card statements instead of manual entry. Banana Accounting Plus (Advanced plan) maximizes the speed of importing transactions from bank statements, searching for and modifying existing entries, and instantly displaying key accounting data, including account balances, detailed breakdowns, budget/real comparison, balance sheet, income statement, and much more.
Starting a new business in Switzerland thus requires planning, research, and attention to detail. With a well-defined strategy, accurate bookkeeping using professional yet easy-to-use software, and support from qualified professionals, you can build a solid foundation for your business's success.
Purchase the Advanced plan of Banana Accounting Plus now
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