Year-End Closing Checklist for Swiss SMEs

Year-end closing turns a year of transactions into clean financial statements. Working through a checklist ensures nothing is forgotten.

The essentials

Reconcile your bank accounts, confirm all invoices are recorded, review outstanding receivables and payables, and verify your inventory or work-in-progress if you have any.

Reconciliation comes first: every bank line must be matched and any difference explained. This is the foundation the rest of the closing rests on.

Confirm that every invoice you issued is in the books, including the last days of December. Invoices sent but not yet booked distort your revenue.

Review your receivables and payables so you know exactly what is owed in both directions at year-end. These figures feed directly into the balance sheet.

• Reconcile bank accounts.
• Confirm all invoices are recorded.
• Review receivables and payables.
• Verify inventory and work-in-progress.

Adjustments and accruals

Account for depreciation on equipment, which spreads the cost of assets over their useful life. This is a standard year-end adjustment.

Accrue any unpaid expenses, so costs incurred this year are recorded this year even if the bill arrives later. This keeps the matching principle intact.

Write off any receivables you know are uncollectable. Leaving them on the books overstates your assets and profit.

Confirm your cash balance and reconcile any petty cash or small accounts. Every account should tie out before you close.

• Depreciate equipment.
• Accrue unpaid expenses.
• Write off bad receivables.
• Tie out every account.

VAT and tax figures

If you are VAT-registered, make sure your VAT is reconciled and filed. The figures in your books must match what you report on the VAT return.

Check that your input VAT is fully claimed and your output VAT is fully recorded. Errors here mean money left on the table or a correction later.

Confirm your tax-relevant figures are complete, including salary, social insurance and any private use of business assets.

Prepare a summary of the key numbers for your fiduciary or tax advisor. Clean inputs make their job faster and cheaper.

• Reconcile and file VAT.
• Claim all input VAT.
• Confirm salary and insurance figures.
• Prepare a summary for your fiduciary.

Closing it out

Once the figures are final, close the books so they cannot be changed. Closing freezes the period and protects the integrity of your statements.

Archive the year’s records in a way that survives for the ten-year retention period. Digital archives with backups are ideal.

Hand the figures to your fiduciary or tax advisor early, before deadlines approach. Early handover leaves time to fix anything they flag.