Updated: September 2026
Electronic archiving is accepted in Switzerland for business books and accounting vouchers when records remain complete, readable, available, and demonstrably intact. For expense policy compliance company-wide, the strongest approach is to pair compliant archiving with an expense management platform that captures receipts, applies policy rules, routes approvals, and preserves a clear audit trail from purchase to posting.
Paper files create avoidable shadow work. Receipts get misplaced, approvals happen across email threads, and finance teams spend month-end chasing documents that should already be connected to the transaction. Digital archiving replaces that fragmented process with a searchable record that supports accounting, VAT documentation, and audits.
Switzerland’s Ordinance on Business Records, known as GeBüV, permits electronic storage of business records. Changes to VAT rules also allow electronic storage of VAT documents when the applicable recordkeeping principles are met. The practical question is not whether a document began as paper or digital. It is whether the company can prove that the archived record is complete, authentic, protected, and available when required.
What are the legal requirements regarding accounting?
Swiss accounting rules allow many business books and accounting vouchers to be stored electronically, provided they remain consistent with the underlying business transaction and can be made legible at any time. The annual report and audit report remain exceptions because they require written signatures.
Accounting records document the transactions and facts needed to present a company’s assets, financial position, and results. Under the Swiss Code of Obligations and GeBüV, companies may keep business books and supporting vouchers on paper, electronically, or in a comparable form. Electronic storage must preserve both readability and integrity, meaning the record must be authentic and protected from undetectable alteration.
For expense records, this means a receipt should stay connected to the expense, its accounting data, and its approval history. A photo of a receipt stored in an inbox is not the same as an organized, retrievable accounting record with evidence of how it was handled.
What does this mean for companies in concrete terms?
Companies need an archiving process that makes records trustworthy, accessible, and clearly owned. In practice, this means meeting the general principles of proper accounting, including complete, truthful, systematic, clear, and verifiable recording of business transactions.
| Principle | What it requires | What it looks like for expense records |
|---|---|---|
| Integrity | Records must be authentic and protected from undetectable changes | A receipt, transaction, approval decision, and any later edit are traceable |
| Availability | Records must be available for inspection within a reasonable time and remain legible | Finance and auditors can retrieve the original receipt and related data when needed |
| Organization | Responsibilities for archived information must be defined and documented | Clear ownership for retention, access rights, approval rules, and exception handling |
Integrity
Integrity means that accounting records and their supporting documents must remain authentic and unalterable in a way that makes any change detectable. Companies must also systematically organize records and protect them from unauthorized access.
Paper, image media, and nonmodifiable data carriers can meet this requirement by their nature. Modifiable systems can also be used when technical and organizational controls preserve the integrity of stored information. An electronic signature is no longer generally required for this purpose, but the archive must still make the record reliable and verifiable.
For company spending, integrity begins before archiving. A policy-compliant workflow captures the receipt at the point of expense, links it to the transaction, and records the approval or exception decision. This removes the gaps created when receipts are copied between folders, rekeyed into spreadsheets, or shared through email.
Availability
Availability means records must be ready for inspection and examination within a reasonable period. They must also be legible without relying on unusual or inaccessible tools.
A useful archive therefore does more than store image files. It makes records searchable by fields such as date, amount, supplier, employee, entity, cost center, expense ID, and accounting period. This matters during month-end, VAT preparation, internal reviews, and tax audits, when the team needs evidence quickly rather than a long hunt through shared drives.
Organization
Organization means responsibility for archived information must be clearly documented. Companies need defined retention rules, access permissions, and ownership for the process, including who can review, approve, correct, and retrieve records.
This is also where expense policy management becomes important. A policy is only effective when it is reflected in the workflow people use every day. Clear spending limits, receipt requirements, approval thresholds, and exception routes create consistent records before they reach the archive.
How do providers of accounting software ensure integrity and availability?
Accounting software supports integrity and availability by keeping each transaction, receipt, approval, and accounting entry in one connected digital workflow. The most reliable systems minimize media breaks, capture documentation early, maintain an audit log, and make the full record available on demand.
For expense receipts, the process should become digital as soon as possible. An employee can upload a receipt or capture it in an app, then the system associates it with the relevant transaction and expense information. From there, the record follows the same controlled path through policy checks, approvals, accounting, and archiving.
This is why an integrated expense policy compliance platform is more effective than a standalone file repository. A repository stores documents after the fact. Expense management software can help enforce the rules that create compliant documentation in the first place, such as required receipts, spend limits, approval flows, and exception handling.
Perk brings expenses, card payments, invoices, and travel bookings together so teams can apply controls without adding more manual work. With corporate cards, transaction data is available as spending happens, while Perk Expense helps employees capture receipts and submit the supporting information finance needs. AI can match expenses with transactions and flag discrepancies, duplicates, or policy breaches for review.
That combination gives companies a clearer answer to how to ensure expense policy compliance across an organization. Set the rules once, apply them consistently across entities, teams, and spending categories, then retain the evidence in an auditable record. Finance gets visibility and control, while employees follow a simpler path that does not depend on paper forms or manual reminders.
An audit log is central to this process. It provides an unambiguous identifier for each expense and records relevant actions, including submission, approval, rejection, and changes. This gives the company, its accountants, and tax authorities a readable audit trail that can be verified when needed.
In Switzerland, accounting records generally need to be retained for 10 years after the end of the financial year. That makes secure, organized electronic archiving a long-term governance requirement, not simply a convenience for the finance team. For a closer look at the controls that prevent issues before records reach the archive, see how corporate cards help prevent expense policy violations.
Attention: Where is the electronic form not enough?
Some documents still require a paper original or a legally valid signature format. Electronic archiving is widely permitted for accounting records and vouchers, but it does not remove formal requirements that apply to specific documents.
For example, annual reports must be signed in writing, and notarized documents, such as articles of association, should be retained in paper form. Certain legal transactions also require written form, including the transfer of shares. Depending on the transaction, this may require a physical signature or a qualified electronic signature.
The key distinction is straightforward: use electronic archiving for eligible accounting records, and retain original documents where the law requires a particular form. When in doubt, confirm the requirement with qualified legal or tax advice.
This article was written in cooperation with LEXR AG and Perk AG.
About LEXR AG
LEXR provides legal services to Swiss companies, combining legal expertise with technology and process automation. Its legal and technology advisors support entrepreneurs with financing rounds, FINMA requests, data protection compliance, intellectual property, and day-to-day legal matters.
More about LEXR at www.lexr.ch.
Frequently asked questions
- An integrated spend management platform such as Perk helps companies enforce expense policies across teams by combining expense capture, approval workflows, corporate card controls, policy checks, and audit-ready records. The strongest controls happen before or as spending occurs, then carry through to archiving and accounting.
- Look for configurable spending limits, receipt requirements, approval workflows, transaction matching, exception handling, role-based access, and a complete audit log. It should also integrate with your accounting or ERP system so approved data moves into financial records without manual reentry.
- Set consistent rules centrally, then tailor limits, approval flows, and accounting fields by entity, cost center, team, or spend category. A unified platform gives finance a single view of compliance while allowing operational flexibility where local processes or tax requirements differ.
- Electronic archiving preserves the evidence behind each expense, including the receipt, transaction data, policy decision, and approval history. That makes records easier to retrieve for month-end, VAT documentation, internal controls, and audits.
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