Preparing receipts for your accountant: the checklist

In short: Your accountant needs complete receipts in chronological order with a list to go with them, plus bank statements, open invoices and details of private use. The best format is PDFs named by date, merchant and amount, and a CSV list with categories. Every hour you spend preparing saves hours your accountant would otherwise bill for sorting and asking questions.

Accountants bill by the hour. Time spent sorting, deciphering and chasing missing documents is charged at the same rate as the actual bookkeeping. A bag full of receipts is therefore not just impolite, it is expensive. The reverse is also true: prepare your documents properly and you get your accounts closed faster and cheaper.

This checklist shows you what your accountant really needs, in what form, and in what order to put it together. It is written for sole proprietors, small GmbHs and freelancers in Switzerland, where the accountant is usually a Treuhänder (the Swiss term for a trustee or accountant), but it works much the same everywhere.

What does my accountant need from me?

Everything that proves a flow of money, and everything that explains why that flow was business-related. In practice, that is six groups of documents:

1. Expense receipts: receipts, till slips, supplier invoices, expense claims, subscription bills. Each with date, amount, merchant and, where available, VAT details.
2. Income documents: every invoice you issued, including those not yet paid (receivables at year end).
3. Bank and card statements: business account, credit card, Twint, PayPal, each complete for the whole year with the balance at 31 December.
4. Open items: invoices you have not yet paid (payables) and invoices your clients still owe you.
5. Private use and special cases: car, phone, home office, goods taken for private use, vehicle mileage.
6. Contracts and new purchases: leasing, rental contract, insurance, purchases of equipment above roughly CHF 1,000 (for depreciation).

What you do not need: knowledge of how it gets booked. That is your accountant's job. Your job is completeness and order.

In what form does the accountant want the receipts?

In the form they can load directly into their software. Ask once, then stick to it. Most accounting firms in Switzerland work with bexio, Banana, CashCtrl, Abacus or Sage. All of them accept PDFs as supporting documents and a CSV or Excel list as the basis for bookings.

For a small business with 300 receipts, the difference between the last row and the first is easily several hours a year. A descriptive file name means date, merchant, amount, for example 2026-03-14_Digitec_1249.00.pdf. How to set up an archive like that is described in filing receipts digitally.

With Belego this form comes about by itself: receipts are saved as PDFs when scanned, amount, date and merchant are read automatically, and when you export a year or quarter you get a ZIP with all PDFs named that way, plus a CSV list with category and note. That ZIP is exactly what you send to your accountant. What they actually do with digital receipts and what they do not need is covered in sending receipts digitally to your accountant.

The checklist: documents for your accountant

Go through this list before you hand over. Everything you can tick off is something your accountant will not have to ask about.

• All expense receipts for the year scanned and available as PDFs
• Every receipt with date, merchant and amount, no empty fields
• Receipts with no business purpose removed or marked with the private share
• Receipts above CHF 100 with a note on the purpose (client name, project, occasion)
• All client invoices, numbered without gaps
• Bank statements for all business accounts for the whole year, including the year-end balance
• Credit card and Twint statements
• List of unpaid client invoices at 31 December
• List of unpaid supplier invoices at 31 December
• Cash book, if you take cash, with the cash balance at year end
• Stock at year end, roughly estimated, if you sell goods
• New equipment, vehicles, software above roughly CHF 1,000 with invoice
• Leasing, rental and insurance contracts that are new or have changed
• Payslips and AHV (social security) statements, if you have employees
• Details of private use: car, phone, home office, private withdrawals
• Logbook or mileage list, if you use a private car for business

What applies in detail to expenses and private use for sole proprietors and GmbHs is described in expense claims for Swiss sole proprietors and GmbHs.

How far ahead of the deadline should I start?

Four weeks before the agreed date if you have done nothing all year. Two hours if you have captured receipts as you went. That is the real difference between stress and routine.

A realistic schedule for a year with around 300 receipts, if you have to capture everything after the fact: week 1, collect and scan receipts (two to three evenings). Week 2, download bank statements and match them against the receipts, chase missing ones. Week 3, compile open items and private use. Week 4, export, check, hand over. How to work through a big pile in one hour is shown in a shoebox full of receipts.

If instead you invest five minutes a week, you only have steps 3 and 4 left at year end. The receipts are captured, the list exists, the ZIP is one tap away. The three year-end steps describe what that looks like.

The most common mistakes that cost your accountant time

The most expensive mistake is the missing receipt. Every payment on the bank statement without a receipt triggers a query, and queries cost time on both sides. Right behind it come these mistakes:

• Receipts without a purpose: a CHF 180 restaurant bill with no note cannot be booked. "Client lunch Meier, website project" turns it into an expense.
• Private and business receipts mixed: your accountant cannot know whether the laptop was for the business or for your daughter.
• Photos instead of PDFs: a JPG from WhatsApp is blurry, cut off or upside down. What a usable scan looks like is explained in how to photograph receipts.
• Missing year-end balances: without the balance at 31 December, the balance sheet will not reconcile.
• Faded till receipts: thermal paper is often unreadable after a year. Scanning on the day of purchase solves that.
• Receipts from two years in one pile: a December invoice paid in January belongs in the old year's accounts. Your accountant needs to be able to see that.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to give my accountant the original paper receipts?

Usually not, a readable scan as a PDF is enough for the bookkeeping. You keep the originals yourself, because the 10-year retention duty under Art. 958f OR lies with you as the business, not with your accountant. Check whether they still want to see the original for certain documents, such as larger purchases or contracts.

How do I hand over receipts to my accountant securely?

Best as a ZIP file via the channel the firm specifies, usually a client portal or a shared folder. Email works for small quantities but becomes unwieldy with several hundred PDFs. Avoid messengers like WhatsApp, because images get compressed there and receipts with amounts and names do not belong in a chat history.

Which receipts does my accountant need for VAT?

For input tax deduction, receipts must show the supplier's name and address, VAT number, date, description of the goods or service, amount, and VAT rate or VAT amount (Art. 26 of the Swiss VAT Act, MWSTG). Simplifications apply for small amounts. If you are not VAT-registered, a receipt with date, merchant, amount and a recognisable purpose is enough. Ask your accountant whether you are subject to VAT.

How much does an accountant charge for a small sole proprietorship?

That depends on the hourly rate, the number of receipts and how well prepared they are, so there is no general figure. What is certain: the price rises with every hour spent sorting and chasing. Ask for a flat fee for the annual close and what it assumes. Usually the preparation described here is exactly the condition for the lower price.