Four different trades present themselves under the name payroll company. What to check before you sign: licensing, cantons, data, exit terms.
Reading time: 18 min
A finance director in Lausanne asks three providers to quote for running his salaries. The first is a software publisher, the second a fiduciary, the third a company offering to employ his staff itself. All three are answering the same request. None of them is selling the same thing.
Under the name "payroll company", you will come across four trades: a payroll services provider, a fiduciary, a personnel leasing company and an employer of record. They do not sign the same contract, and they do not leave the status of employer in the same place.
Price settles nothing until the scope is fixed. So it is the scope, and then the checks you can carry out yourself, that take up most of what follows.
In brief
- Start with the question that separates four trades sold under one name: who remains the employer of your staff, you or the provider?
- Check the operating license before the first meeting if the provider is putting personnel at your disposal: the register of licensed companies is available online, free of charge.
- Insist on a written answer about the return of your salary history when you sign, not when you leave.
- Compare proposals on equal scope: two offers that do not cover the same services cannot be settled on price.
Four different trades present themselves as a "payroll company"
A single question separates these four trades, and it belongs in the first meeting: who remains the employer of your staff? The answer determines the contract you sign, which party pays the salary, and which one answers in the event of an inspection.
The wording in the third column describes the object of the agreement, not its legal classification, which depends on its actual content.
The payroll services provider
They calculate the salaries, produce the payroll records, prepare the filings and keep the calendar, while you remain the employer. Your staff sign their contract with your company, which keeps its affiliations with its compensation fund and its insurers.
What changes is the administrative load, not the employment relationship. An SME of twenty people in Yverdon that hands over its monthly payroll records is in this position.
The fiduciary
A fiduciary keeps accounts first. Payroll often features there as one service among others, with a real advantage: reconciling staff costs with the accounts happens at the same place.
The point to check is volume. Ask how many payroll files the firm handles each month, in which cantons, and what experience it has of situations close to yours.
The Federal Social Insurance Office confirms the position for this trade: where an offer is limited to taking on administrative tasks, as a fiduciary, for self-employed or employer clients, it has "no effect on their status in terms of social security".
Source: Federal Social Insurance Office, information note "Portage salarial", March 2024, consulted 13 August 2026.
The personnel leasing company
Here the employment relationship changes hands. The Federal Social Insurance Office describes this arrangement under the name payrolling: one company wants to draw on the working capacity of an employed person without hiring them itself, another hires them and puts them at its disposal. The first gives the instructions, the second pays the salary, accounts for and pays the social insurance contributions, and registers foreign workers with the tax and migration authorities. Such an arrangement has to be treated as personnel leasing, the first being the hiring company, the second the leasing company.
Source: Federal Social Insurance Office, information note "Portage salarial", March 2024, consulted 13 August 2026.
This trade is regulated, and the regulation can be checked. The LSE requires a license from the cantonal employment office for any employer whose business is to hire out the services of its workers to third parties.
Source: Swiss Confederation, Federal Act on Employment Services and the Hiring of Services (LSE), RS 823.11, art. 12 para. 1, as at 1 January 2026, verified 13 August 2026.
A second rule covers cross-border situations, and it concerns foreign companies wanting to employ in Switzerland directly. Hiring out the services of workers abroad requires a license from SECO on top of the cantonal one. The reverse direction is closed: "the hiring out in Switzerland of the services of personnel recruited abroad is not permitted". A French consultancy recruiting an engineer to place with a client in Basel runs straight into that limit.
Source: Swiss Confederation, Federal Act on Employment Services and the Hiring of Services (LSE), RS 823.11, art. 12 para. 2, as at 1 January 2026, verified 13 August 2026.
The formal requirements can be checked too. As a rule, the leasing company has to conclude a written contract with the worker, covering seven mandatory points: the type of work to be performed, the place of work and the start of the engagement, the duration of the engagement or the notice period, the working hours, the salary together with any expenses, any allowances and the social insurance deductions, the benefits due in the event of overtime, illness, maternity, accident, military service and vacation, and finally the payment dates for salary, allowances and other benefits.
Source: Swiss Confederation, Federal Act on Employment Services and the Hiring of Services (LSE), RS 823.11, art. 19, as at 1 January 2026, verified 13 August 2026.
This is also where the most widespread confusion clears up. Portage salarial has no legal definition in Switzerland. That model, imported from France, is often used to report as employees, for social insurance purposes, people who are in fact self-employed, and the Federal Social Insurance Office considers the practice inconsistent with Swiss social insurance law: the people concerned risk being refused certain benefits even though they have paid contributions.
Source: Federal Social Insurance Office, information note "Portage salarial", March 2024, consulted 13 August 2026.
Our article on portage salarial and personnel leasing in Switzerland sets out that framework in full.
The employer of record
The employer of record hires the person under its own contract, affiliates them to the social insurance schemes and pays their salary, while you keep the direction of their work. A German company wanting to employ an engineer in Zurich without setting up a Swiss entity turns to this trade.
Two acronyms circulate in the sector's proposals: PEO for professional employer organization, EOR for employer of record. They cover neighboring arrangements in which a third party carries the employment contract. In French, the term you will read in Switzerland is employeur de référence.
What the service has to cover, item by item
A proposal is read item by item, not on a global total. Here is the grid for reading the services you are buying; for your own compliance obligations, our checklist of employer obligations lists them deadline by deadline. This grid covers what the provider undertakes to produce; the split of tasks between them and you, function by function, is dealt with in our article on what can be delegated and what stays with you.
Payroll calculation and documents
The core is always announced, rarely detailed. Have the whole process described: what the monthly payslip contains, how variable elements come through each month, what the transmission deadline is, and by what channel documents reach your staff.
Filings with the social insurance schemes and the tax administration
This is where proposals differ most. Ask for the named list of bodies the provider files with on your behalf: compensation fund, pension institution, accident insurer, daily sickness benefits insurer, cantonal tax administration for withholding tax, family allowances. A filing sent with nobody to follow up the responses leaves the file open at your end.
Arrivals, departures and special cases
The real cost of a service is decided by movements: a hotel business in Valais taking on forty seasonal staff in December generates more payroll work than an office of thirty salaried employees. Have it written down what is included, from opening the file to the pro rata calculations on arrival and departure, through to the vacation balance and the documents handed over on leaving.
Absences, illness and accidents
An absence passes through several hands: your team leader records it, the provider carries it into the payroll record, the insurer pays a daily allowance, and somebody reconciles the two. Ask which of these steps is included, and have it written down.
The salary certificate and the year-end close
The salary certificate closes the year for each of your employees, and the year-end close closes it for your company. Ask by what date the certificates are available, who corrects a dispute, and who produces the annual summary for your accounts.
The criteria you can check before signing
A useful criterion takes the form of a question to ask, not a quality to hope for. The six that follow can be checked before any signature, by a written answer or an online search. The choice of tool itself is dealt with in our comparison between payroll software and outsourcing.
Is the software Swissdec certified?
The Swissdec association publishes the list of software certified for payroll accounting. That list carries two distinct labels, "swissdec certified basic" and "swissdec certified plus", and shows for each product the standards and versions covered together with a certificate number.
We are not giving a definition of those two labels here, because Swissdec publishes none. The verifiable step lies elsewhere: ask for the name of the system used and its certificate number, then compare the standards covered, the versions and the label carried on the public list.
Source: Swissdec association, list of certified ERP developers, consulted 13 August 2026.
It is a verifiable criterion, not a guarantee. It covers the tool and the versions listed, not the way your provider uses it nor your own payroll records, and our comparison between software and outsourcing, cited above, sets out what the certification covers and what it does not. Take it for what it is: an objective starting point for comparing two proposals.
Actual cantonal coverage
This is the most underestimated criterion. Withholding tax scales and family allowance schemes are not identical from one canton to the next. Daily experience of files in Vaud says nothing about practice in the canton of Zug.
The check comes down to one concrete question: in which cantons do you produce payroll records today, and for how many people in each? An SME headquartered in Nyon opening a sales outlet in Fribourg needs a figure, not an announced national coverage.
The operating license, where the provider puts personnel at your disposal
Here is the most concrete criterion on this list, and the one almost nobody mentions. As soon as the provider does more than calculate salaries and actually puts personnel at your disposal, the cantonal license mentioned above becomes the first thing to check.
It can be checked without asking anyone. SECO and the cantons keep an electronic register of companies duly licensed to carry on private employment placement or personnel leasing, and more than 7,400 companies appeared there on the date we consulted the page.
Source: State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), Private employment placement and personnel leasing, consulted 13 August 2026. The number of companies is published without a date by the source; it is valid as at the date of consultation.
Good to know
The register lists companies, and a group can bring several of them together under a single trading name. Ask for the exact legal name and registered office of the company that will sign, then look for that legal name in the register. If the name on the proposal matches nothing there, the question deserves a written answer before any commitment. Check the scope of that license too: it covers the placement of employees and personnel leasing, but it excludes self-employed workers. A company listed in the register is therefore not licensed for any arrangement whatsoever.
Source: Federal Social Insurance Office, information note "Portage salarial", March 2024, consulted 13 August 2026.
Where your data is hosted and who has access to it
This criterion is not settled by a general clause in the contract but by three written answers: in which country is your staff data hosted, which subcontractors work on that data, and which individuals have named access to your payroll files.
Add the departure of an administrator: how are their access rights withdrawn? A verbal answer cannot be checked, a written annex can be read again.
Languages and your contact
A payslip is read by the person who receives it. Ask in which languages documents are produced and in which languages support answers, which is not always the same thing. A team spread between Lugano, Basel and Geneva asks three questions at once.
Then ask for the name of your contact, not the name of the salesperson: the person who will handle your payroll every month can be identified before signature.
Continuity when your contact is away
Payroll falls on the same day whether your administrator is there or not. Ask who takes over during their vacation, an illness or a departure, and whether that stand-in already knows your file or will discover it on the day. There is a free test: send your question to the generic address rather than to your usual contact, and see who answers and how fast.
Exit terms: what happens if you leave
Ask the question about leaving while you are negotiating the entry. A provider who agrees to write down what they will return to you, in what format and within what deadline, can be checked against the document; one who puts the question off has already answered it.
Your salary history is the central subject. Ask what is returned to you and in what form: workable files rather than fixed documents, individual cumulative totals by salary component, the calculation parameters applied and the documents already given to your staff. Have the deadline specified, and whether that extraction is charged for. An SME in Geneva that changes provider in March and receives only fixed documents rebuilds the January and February totals by hand.
Then ask how long the provider keeps the payroll records and salary certificates of past financial years after the contract ends, and what becomes of your data afterwards. Picking a file back up three years later, for an inspection, turns on that answer.
The calendar counts as much as the content. A change goes least badly at the turn of the financial year, because a transfer mid-year makes the handover heavier: the totals already built up have to be recovered, and someone has to be designated to produce the salary certificates for the year under way. That last question is settled in writing, before you announce your decision.
The mistakes to avoid
A change that goes badly always follows the same sequence: you terminate, then you ask for the files. Everything making up your history is asked for while the contract is still running, never after it ends.
One practice settles the question at the root: ask for a full export once a year, during the contract, and check that you know how to read it. A file you cannot open without the provider is not a handover.
Price: what to compare, and where to read it
Price comes last, and it is compared on equal scope. Two proposals showing an amount per payslip almost never cover the same services: go back to the table in the second section and tick what appears in the core and what appears as an option.
Four items make a proposal vary by a factor of two: the number of cantons, the share of people subject to withholding tax, the volume of arrivals and departures, and the recovery of your history. Have them priced before comparing totals.
Our article on the cost of managed payroll in Switzerland explains how to read a proposal and what each billing model covers.
The questions to ask in a meeting
Here is the list you can take with you. Each question refers back to a section of this article and calls for a written answer.
- Who remains the employer of my staff in the arrangement you are proposing?
- Do you put personnel at clients' disposal, and under what legal name was the cantonal license issued?
- What system do you use to produce payroll records, and what certificate number does it carry on the public list?
- In which cantons do you produce payroll records today, and for how many people?
- Which bodies do you file with on my behalf, and who answers when one of them raises a question?
- Who draws up the salary certificates, by what date are they available, and who corrects a dispute?
- Who is my named contact, in which languages do they work, and who covers for them when they are away?
- Where is my staff data hosted, and which individuals have named access to it?
- If I leave, what do you return to me, in what format, within what deadline and at what price?
These nine questions apply to any provider, ourselves included. Our payroll management solutions fall under the first of the four trades described above: you remain the employer of your staff, and our team takes on the monthly processing, the filings and the deadlines. The team is multilingual and based in Switzerland, with dedicated payroll and HR administrators, support reachable through several channels and over 50 years of combined experience.
The two other situations belong to a different arrangement, and therefore to a different offer: personnel leasing where staff are put at your disposal, employer of record solutions where the employment contract is carried by a third party. Question 1 therefore applies to Numeriq Payroll as it does to everyone else, and the answer depends on the offer.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a payroll company and a fiduciary?
The starting trade differs. A fiduciary starts from accounting and often adds payroll to its mandate, which makes reconciliation with the accounts easier. A payroll services provider starts from the payroll cycle: monthly payroll records, filings, salary certificates, year-end close. In both cases the employment relationship stays with you. From a fiduciary, ask for the volume of files handled and the cantons covered.
Which are the best portage salarial companies in Switzerland?
We publish no ranking, and the question is worth putting differently. No Swiss law defines portage salarial, and the Federal Social Insurance Office considers the practice of reporting as employees people who are in fact self-employed to be inconsistent with social insurance law. The cantonal personnel leasing license does not cover that case: its scope stops at the placement of employees.
Source: Federal Social Insurance Office, information note "Portage salarial", March 2024, consulted 13 August 2026.
Does a payroll company become my employer?
It depends on the trade it carries on. A payroll services provider and a fiduciary take on administrative tasks: the employment contract stays with you. A personnel leasing company and an employer of record, by contrast, carry it themselves. This question determines what you sign and which license to check.
Can you change provider mid-year?
Yes, and it takes preparation. The transfer means recovering the totals already built up and designating who will produce the salary certificates for the year under way. Ask for the extraction of your history while the contract is still running. The turn of the financial year remains the moment when the operation calls for the least rework.
Can a payroll provider handle several cantons?
Yes, and it does not follow automatically. Withholding tax scales and family allowance schemes differ from one canton to the next, as do the administrative contacts. Have the provider give you in writing the list of cantons where it already produces payroll records, with the headcount handled in each. A figure says more than a speech about national coverage.
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