Record-Keeping for Swiss Businesses: What the OR Requires
Swiss businesses follow the Obligationenrecht (OR) for their record-keeping obligations. Here's what that means for freelancers and small business owners in practice.
German businesses follow GoBD. Austrian businesses follow the BAO. Swiss businesses follow the Obligationenrecht (OR), Switzerland’s Code of Obligations, for their record-keeping requirements. The OR is part of Swiss civil law and applies regardless of business type or size.
The Ten-Year Rule
The OR requires that accounting records be kept for ten years. This includes all books of account, balance sheets, income statements, vouchers, business correspondence, and any other records on which the accounting entries are based.
The ten-year period begins at the end of the financial year in which the record was created.
Who Must Keep Formal Accounts
Under the OR, the accounting obligations depend on your business structure and size. Sole traders (Einzelunternehmen) and partnerships with annual turnover under CHF 500,000 are not required to maintain full double-entry books. A simple income-and-expense record (Einnahmen- und Ausgabenrechnung) with an inventory list is sufficient.
Sole traders and partnerships with annual turnover exceeding CHF 500,000 must maintain full double-entry bookkeeping with annual financial statements. All registered companies (GmbH, AG) must maintain full double-entry bookkeeping regardless of size.
Digital Records Under Swiss Law
The OR does not prescribe specific technical standards for digital record-keeping in the same detail as Germany’s GoBD, but the Directorate General of Customs and the ESTV have issued guidance that digital records must be authentic (not subsequently modified), complete (no gaps in the record sequence), and retrievable throughout the full retention period.
Scanning paper documents and retaining the digital copies is permitted, provided the scan is a faithful reproduction. The paper originals may then be destroyed, with the exception of documents that carry legal significance in their original physical form (notarized documents, wet-ink signed contracts).
Swiss Chart of Accounts: Kontenrahmen KMU
Switzerland uses its own standard chart of accounts called Kontenrahmen KMU (accounts framework for SMEs), which is different from Germany’s SKR03 or SKR04. The KMU framework uses a four-digit account number structure but with different account groupings and numbering from the German standard.
Your Treuhänder (fiduciary) will typically work within the KMU framework or a firm-specific variant. When exporting records from KontoMatch, provide a structured CSV export that your Treuhänder can map into their system.
How KontoMatch Helps
KontoMatch stores all uploaded documents in their original format with timestamps, retains records for ten years (meeting the OR requirement), and prevents post-upload modification. The structured CSV export gives your Treuhänder a clean, organized record set that they can import into their accounting system regardless of which Swiss accounting software they use.