After raising close to 1 M CHF, Earny launches automated payroll app for SMEs & Startups in Switzerland

The 1M CHF investment is backed by Polytech Ventures, ACE & Company, and Fusion Partners and was used to accelerate the launch of Earny’s public SaaS beta that went live November 2021.

« In Switzerland, SMEs can choose to run payroll themselves or work with an accountant however either process is broken », déclare le co-fondateur Bassil Eid. « SMEs who work with accountants spend on average 2 hours a month collecting payroll data. SMEs who do it themselves need help every time there is a payroll change as Swiss payroll software does not guide the user. »

Earny’s platform enables anyone in the SME to run payroll without previous payroll knowledge. If the SME is working with an accountant, they invite her to the platform to share data securely and seamlessly saving on avg 150 CHF on accounting costs.

"We were inspired by a U.S payroll startup called Gusto, which raised $175 million in August 2021 for a valuation of $10 billion claiming 200,000 SME customers” states Guillaume Dubray, CEO of Polytech Ventures. “In Switzerland, we have close to 600,000 SMEs which employ 3 Million Swiss residents. In addition, there are 45,000 newly created SMEs each year. Today alone there are 137 newly created SMEs" he adds.

SMEs typically pay on average 25-50 CHF per employee per month to run payroll with an accountant. That cost is usually baked into a larger set of accounting services charged yearly. “For our accounting firm, payroll is quite administrative and we are spending a lot of time chasing data via email or shared excel and retyping that data into our software. With Earny, we can save time and no longer wait idle for data to come in.” says Sven Roost, Managing Partner at the accounting firm Infeas.

Earny was founded in May 2021 and has already secured a Swissdec Lohnstandard-CH (ELM) 4.0 certified payroll app by purchasing the Mega Salaries product, to which Eid replied, "It usually takes two years to launch a payroll app in Switzerland and get a Swissdec ELM certification. We bought an existing Swissdec ELM certified app, Mega Salaires, and are using that as the backend so we can focus on redesigning the front end. The entire Earny solution is not yet fully ELM certified. We are aiming for certification to the Lohnstandard-CH (ELM) 5.0 and have an excellent starting point thanks to the acquisition of Mega Salaires" Swissdec ensures that payroll software can accurately calculate payroll in all employee scenarios. It is the silver stamp for payroll software.

In November 2021, Earny opened access to its solution to all customers in an effort to collect feedback and improve the product. In Q1 2022, Earny’s will have incorporated all this feedback and re-introduce a more refined product which aims to simplify and automate many of the mundane payroll tasks done today.