About Monica Maurer:

Monica Maurer is a certified trustee and Swiss Certified Fiduciary at ACT Audit & Tax. In her role, she helps startups and SMEs with their accounting questions. Based on her many years of experience, here are some of her recommendations for founders who are just getting started with their accounting:

• It’s not rocket science. Monica recommends getting some help for the set up of your accounting systems and then running with it yourself for the first couple of years. This saves you money and also keeps you closer to the vital signs of your company, i.e. the cash flow.
• If you have investors, find out about their reporting requirements and make sure your accounting is set up in a way that allows you to easily produce the numbers that your investors want to look at on a regular basis. This will save you a lot of time and frustration.
• Starting Jan 1, 2021, if you have employees without a Swiss passport or residence permit C, you are responsible for their withholding tax. Monica recommends updating your employment contracts to make it mandatory for your employees to inform you about any tax relevant changes in their lives (e.g. marriage, child birth or similar) so you can adequately reflect that in your withholding tax declaration.

Memorable Quotes:

“Was man nicht vergessen darf, ist die kontinuierliche Kontrolle. Auch wenn alles elektronisch ist und man nur noch den Knopf drücken muss, sollte man sicherstellen das alles stimmt.”

If you would like to listen to more episodes on accounting, check out our first and second conversation with Renato Stalder.