Earny closes its seed capital round with the aim of automating payroll in Switzerland.

The funding round is backed by Polytech Ventures, ACE & Company and Fusion Partners and will be used to accelerate the launch of the SaaS-based public beta version ofEarnyEarny aims to simplify and automate the payroll process by improving coordination between accountants, SMEs and employees.

"Believe it or not, accountants, SMEs and employees still send each other emails and Excel files containing sensitive payroll data. This data is then re-entered into payroll software, be it Abacus or Cresus," says co-founder Bassil Eid.

" Earny 's platform enables the accountant, SME and employee to enter data securely into a central platform that is automatically integrated with payroll," he adds. "Our solution goes a step further by automating the payroll run on the 25th of each month if there are no changes from the previous month." Earny does away with e-mails and offers online integration for company and employee onboarding, tracking of payroll changes such as hours worked and vacations, and a dashboard for accountants to manage all their clients.

"We were inspired by an American payroll start-up called Gusto, which raised $175 million in August 2021 for a valuation of $10 billion and claiming 200,000 SME customers," says Guillaume Dubray, CEO of Polytech Ventures. "In Switzerland, we have nearly 600,000 SMEs employing 3 million Swiss people. What's more, 45,000 new SMEs are created every year. Today alone, 137 new SMEs have been created."

On average, SMEs pay between CHF 25 and 50 per employee per month to manage payroll with an accountant. This cost is generally included in a larger package of accounting services invoiced annually. Accountants hope to make payroll management profitable and earn their margins on value-added services. "For our accounting firm, payroll is fairly administrative. We collect data, enter it into software and send it back. All this is done manually, with e-mails, Excel files, PDFs and re-entry into our payroll tool. With Earny, we can save time and no longer wait idly for the data to arrive", says Sven Roost, Managing Partner of the accounting firm Infeas.

The landscape of SME applications in Switzerland is changing. "We're seeing a strong verticalization in Switzerland with companies like Ledgy, Yokoy and others showing similarities to the US market," says Eid, who worked as an interim CFO in the Bay Area using US applications for his customers.

Earny was founded in May 2021 and has already obtained Swissdec Lohnstandard-CH (ELM) 4.0 certification for its payroll application by purchasing the Mega Salaires product. In response, Eid said: "It usually takes two years to launch a payroll application in Switzerland and obtain Swissdec ELM certification. We purchased an existing Swissdec ELM-certified application, Mega Salaires, and are using this as our database so that we can concentrate on redesigning the user interface. The entire Earny solution is not yet fully ELM certified. We are aiming for Lohnstandard-CH (ELM) 5.0 certification, and we have an excellent starting point thanks to the acquisition of Mega Salaires". Swissdec guarantees that payroll software can accurately calculate payroll in all employee situations. It's a guarantee of quality for payroll software.

Earny is currently running a private beta with a group of innovative startups and SMEs. The waiting list forEarny continues to grow in anticipation of its public beta release scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2021. This waiting list is a good sign that the Swiss market is yearning for an excellent payroll solution.

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