"We're outsourcing payroll" is a half-sentence we often hear in Swiss SME conversations. What's usually missing: a concrete picture of which part transfers and which must stay in your own remit. Clarifying this up front avoids the most common friction.
A clean split
Payroll can be cut into three spheres of responsibility:
- Operational payroll processing — fully delegated to the platform
- People management & decisions — must remain with you
- Substantive compliance & edge cases — shared between HR and the client lead
Each sphere has clear duties and clear hand-offs. Platform responsibility doesn't only end at payout; it begins at the inbound approval of your changes.
What the platform takes on
What you no longer have to do yourself from the moment of onboarding:
Monthly or weekly Swissdec-compliant pay runs, with correct social-security deductions, BVG thresholds, OASI special rates and cantonal withholding tax.
OASI/DI/EO, unemployment insurance, BVG, accident insurance (UVG), sick-pay insurance (KTG), family allowances (FamZ), cantonal withholding tax — all filings go via certified channels, with an audit trail.
Automated wage statements per employee, OASI annual reconciliation, cantonal withholding-tax annual reconciliation and banking/statistical filings.
Illness, accident and DI cases with the relevant insurers, including continued-pay logic and reimbursement tracking.
What stays with your HR
You should never outsource these topics — they define your company culture:
- Hiring and termination decisions — who comes, who goes, on what terms.
- Pay policy — pay levels, bonus models, pay rises, pay equity.
- Reviews and one-to-ones — performance management, career planning.
- People development — further training, learning, internal mobility.
- Employment-law conflicts — disciplinary action, dismissals, mediation.
Whoever wants to outsource HR decisions too is buying distance from their own employees. This usually backfires — and the payroll-outsourcing contract doesn't cover it anyway.
What is shared between both
The grey zone where clean communication matters most:
- Substantive pay-element choice in edge cases — the platform proposes, HR validates.
- Withholding-tax classification for cross-border workers — residence status comes from HR, rate logic from the system.
- Implementing pay rises — HR decides, the platform back-calculates.
- Audit and review support — data comes from the platform, HR drafts the responses.
The role of the client lead
At payrollnow, the operational client lead is your direct contact — a person with deep Swiss payroll expertise who carries overall responsibility for your engagements. This is not a call centre and not a ticket system. In practice that means:
- One dedicated point of contact for payroll-related questions — you flag it, the client lead verifies and resolves.
- Structured hand-overs when there are engagement changes or personnel changes on your side.
- Proactive notifications about regulatory changes that affect your payroll.
- Four-eyes principle on critical postings and payouts.
Before you outsource, write it down on one page: who does what? Who decides what? Who is the contact for which question? If that's clear on one page, the outsourcing relationship is relaxed later. If not, it starts with misunderstandings. Talk to us →