Numbers are everywhere in a business. Most SMEs in Switzerland have more data than they know what to do with: accounting exports, a CRM pipeline, project trackers, payroll reports. The question is never whether the numbers exist. The question is whether anyone is reading the right ones at the right time, and whether the connections […]
A SaaS business can show strong revenue on paper and still be weeks from running out of cash. Subscription billing, deferred revenue and customer acquisition costs each pull the income statement and the bank balance in opposite directions. For a Swiss SME building software, the metrics that matter are not the ones in a standard […]
One in five Swiss B2B invoices is now paid late. That single figure tells you almost everything you need to know about where working capital goes in a Swiss SME. The gap between the payment date agreed on an invoice and the date money actually lands has stretched to roughly 20 days across Western Europe […]
Swiss corporate insolvencies rose 76 percent in January and February 2026 compared with the same two months a year earlier. That figure comes directly from PwC Switzerland's restructuring tracker. It is the sharpest year-on-year increase in recent memory, and for Swiss SME owners, it carries a practical message: insolvency almost never arrives without warning. The […]
A Swiss mechanical engineering firm paid CHF 4.2 million for a competitor. Eleven months later the buyer was staring at CHF 680'000 in unpaid VAT liabilities and a BVG pension shortfall of CHF 320'000. Neither figure had appeared anywhere in the seller's balance sheet. The company had skipped a Financial Due Diligence. The gap between […]
If you own a Swiss SME, the window in front of you right now is one of the most favourable for sellers in more than a decade. Deloitte Switzerland's annual M&A Activity of Swiss SME report shows 208 completed transactions in 2025 – a 16% jump from 2024. Foreign buyers closed a record 104 inbound […]
Swiss SMEs have long treated their cantonal bank as the beginning and end of their financing story. For decades, that worked. Credit was available, relationships were stable, and a phone call to your relationship manager could unlock a facility within a week. That world is gone. The collapse of Credit Suisse in March 2023 removed […]
Research shows 82% of SMEs fail because of poor cash flow management – specifically because of inadequate revenue and expense planning. For Swiss SMEs, the challenge runs deeper still. A set of mandatory financial obligations sits on top of the everyday cash pressures: OR-compliant accounts, quarterly MWST filings, AHV declarations, and social insurance reconciliations. Each […]
When the finance director of a Geneva-based medical device distributor looked at the real cost of their in-house bookkeeper, the figure was far larger than the salary line. A gross salary of CHF 72'000 was just the start. Add employer AHV contributions (CHF 3'816), BVG (CHF 6'500), accident insurance (CHF 720), family allowances, sick-day cover, […]
A Zurich-based precision manufacturer with CHF 8'000'000 in annual revenue had a problem that looked nothing like a crisis from the outside. The order book was full. Quality was strong. But the bottom line was bleeding quietly, hidden under the weight of a full-time CFO whose total employment cost – base salary, AHV/IV/EO contributions, second-pillar […]