The Swiss Chart of Accounts (Kontenrahmen KMU) in 2026: How SMEs Structure Their Books

Ask two Swiss SMEs how they organise their books and, if both are doing it properly, you will see the same nine numbered classes. That is the Kontenrahmen KMU at work. It takes every transaction a business makes, from a client payment to the year-end result, and files it into a fixed structure that your fiduciary, your software, and your auditor all already understand.

No law forces you to use it. The Swiss Code of Obligations asks for orderly bookkeeping and a true and fair annual account, and then stops short of naming any specific accounts. That gap is what the Kontenrahmen KMU fills. It is maintained by veb.ch, the Swiss association of accounting professionals, and it was brought into line with the accounting law reform that took effect on 1 January 2023. The payoff for using it is quietly enormous: a clean chart is the difference between an annual report that comes together in a few days and a set of books that take weeks to untangle before an audit or a sale.

What the Kontenrahmen KMU is and who maintains it

Short version: it is a recommended, not mandatory, account framework, kept up to date by veb.ch and aligned with the Code of Obligations.

Why does everyone use something optional? Because the whole Swiss accounting ecosystem is built around it. Bexio, Abacus, Banana, Run my Accounts, the fiduciary down the street, the auditor signing off your accounts – all of them expect the KMU chart. When your books speak that shared language, they can move from a founder to an outsourced team to an auditor without anyone having to translate. Invent your own numbering and you lose that for no real gain. For the setup and monthly running of these books, see our accounting and payments service.

The nine account classes

The chart runs from class 1 to class 9. Classes 1 and 2 build your balance sheet; classes 3 through 8 build the income statement; class 9 closes the year.

Class	Content	Statement
1	Assets: cash, receivables, inventory, fixed assets	Balance sheet
2	Liabilities and equity	Balance sheet
3	Operating revenue from goods and services	Income statement
4	Cost of materials, goods, and third-party services	Income statement
5	Personnel expense	Income statement
6	Other operating expense, depreciation, financial result	Income statement
7	Result from ancillary operations	Income statement
8	Extraordinary, non-operating, and prior-period items; direct taxes	Income statement
9	Year-end closing: profit or loss for the year	Closing

How the numbering hierarchy works

Read any account number left to right and it tells you where you are: first digit the class, second the main group, third the group, fourth the individual account.

So 1000 is cash. 1020 is the bank, 1100 trade receivables, 2000 trade payables, 2800 equity. On the income side, 3000 is sales, 4000 cost of materials, 5000 wages, 6000 premises, 6800 depreciation, 6900 financial expense, and 8900 direct taxes. Need more detail? Add your own four-digit accounts inside a three-digit group that already exists. What you never do is touch the class logic. Leave that alone and your balance sheet and income statement keep the shape every Swiss fiduciary and auditor reads on sight.

When your SME must use double-entry accounting

The trigger is turnover of CHF 500'000 for sole proprietorships and partnerships. For an AG or a GmbH there is no threshold at all: double-entry books from day one.

This sits in Art. 957 of the Code of Obligations (valid 2026). Stay under CHF 500'000 as a sole proprietorship or partnership and you may keep a simplified record of income, expenditure, and asset position instead of a full ledger. Legal entities get no such break. An AG or GmbH keeps double-entry books from incorporation, full stop. Two neighbouring articles matter here too: Art. 957a sets the principles of orderly bookkeeping (complete, truthful, systematic, backed by vouchers), and Art. 958f says the books and vouchers stay on file for 10 years. The moment you cross into double-entry, the Kontenrahmen KMU is what you build on. And those class 8 tax accounts feed straight into your corporate tax and VAT compliance work.

Setting up your chart of accounts: a practical sequence

Begin from the standard chart, switch on only the accounts you actually use, and add any detail inside existing groups. That is the whole discipline.

• Select the standard Kontenrahmen KMU as the base chart in your accounting software.
• Keep the nine-class structure intact. Do not renumber classes because a layout feels tidier to you.
• Map each revenue stream into its own class 3 subgroup, so you can read turnover by line of business.
• Split personnel cost (class 5) from other operating cost (class 6), which keeps gross margin and operating margin visible at a glance.
• If you are VAT registered, set the VAT accounts in the class 2 liability range correctly from the very first entry.
• Park direct taxes and one-off items in class 8, well clear of the operating result.

You can review the full accounting cluster in our accounting and payments guides.

Common chart-of-accounts mistakes Swiss SMEs make

Most of the trouble comes from three habits: over-customising the class logic, letting private and business transactions mix, and hiding tax or one-off items inside the operating result.

• Renumbering or collapsing classes. It breaks comparability and it puzzles the auditor.
• Booking owner drawings or private costs into operating expense accounts instead of the equity or shareholder accounts.
• Posting corporate income and capital tax somewhere in classes 3 to 7, which quietly distorts the operating margin.
• Opening a fresh account for every single supplier rather than running a payables ledger under one control account.
• Leaving VAT postings loose, so each quarterly return becomes a manual reconstruction rather than a read-off.

Kontenrahmen versus Kontenplan: the difference that trips founders up

One is the master framework of every account you could use; the other is the shorter list your company actually opens. The Kontenrahmen is the catalogue. The Kontenplan is your subset of it.

People swap the two words around constantly, and that is where the confusion starts. The Kontenrahmen KMU holds every class, group, and account a Swiss business might ever need. Your Kontenplan is only what you activate. A software company with no stock never opens the class 1 inventory accounts or the class 4 goods accounts; a retailer leans on both all day. The discipline is simple to state and easy to skip: draw your Kontenplan out of the standard Kontenrahmen instead of building one from scratch. Do that and account 3000 still means sales revenue to a new accountant, fiduciary, or auditor on their first morning, without anyone having to explain it.

A worked example: mapping a small GmbH to the classes

Nothing makes the chart click faster than posting a single month and watching each entry drop into its class.

Picture a small Zurich software GmbH. A client settles an invoice, so the bank (1020) goes up and trade receivables (1100) come down. Payday arrives: wages (5000) rise, the bank (1020) falls. Office rent lands in premises cost (6000). The monthly write-down on the laptops posts to depreciation (6800) while the asset in class 1 shrinks. At quarter end the VAT return clears the class 2 VAT payable account against the bank. And at year end the company estimates its corporate income tax, so direct taxes (8900) rise in class 8 – deliberately kept out of the operating result, so the operating margin still reads true. Every one of those entries lives in a standard account. That is precisely why the resulting balance sheet and income statement need no reshaping before they reach the auditor or go into the annual report. It is the same structure our team runs for clients in accounting and payments.

VAT, Swiss GAAP FER, and where the chart connects to the rest of your finance stack

Think of the chart as the base layer. VAT logic, your closing standard, and your management reporting all sit on top of it, and every one of them depends on that base being clean.

If you are VAT registered, set the input and output VAT accounts in the class 2 range so each quarterly return reads straight off the ledger, not rebuilt by hand every three months. Most SMEs report under the Code of Obligations and leave it there. Larger or externally financed companies sometimes prepare a second set of figures under Swiss GAAP FER for lenders or investors, and here is the useful part: that reporting layer still draws on the same underlying chart. A disciplined Kontenplan pays off twice. When the base is clean, month-end close, VAT filing, and management reporting all speed up together – which is exactly why you want the structure right before the transaction volume climbs.

Is the Kontenrahmen KMU required by Swiss law?

No. The Code of Obligations requires orderly bookkeeping and a true and fair annual account (Art. 957 and 957a CO) but never prescribes a chart of accounts. The Kontenrahmen KMU is the recommended standard, maintained by veb.ch and expected by fiduciaries, accounting software, and auditors.

What turnover triggers double-entry accounting in Switzerland?

CHF 500'000. A sole proprietorship or partnership that reaches this turnover in the prior financial year must keep double-entry books. An AG or GmbH keeps them from incorporation regardless of turnover (Art. 957 CO, valid 2026).

Which account classes make up the balance sheet and which the income statement?

Classes 1 (assets) and 2 (liabilities and equity) form the balance sheet. Classes 3 to 8 form the income statement, and class 9 holds the year-end closing that produces the profit or loss for the year.

Where do direct taxes go in the KMU chart of accounts?

In class 8, typically account 8900, outside the operating result. Keeping corporate income and capital tax out of classes 3 to 7 lets you read the operating margin before tax.

Can I add my own accounts to the Swiss chart of accounts?

Yes. Extend within the existing groups by adding four-digit accounts under the relevant three-digit group. Keep the class logic (1 to 9) unchanged so your statements stay comparable and your fiduciary and auditor can follow them.