Fees & process
How engagements work — fees, scope, and the proposal process.
Most services have a published fixed fee on the relevant service page. For multi-step engagements (M&A, FINMA licensing, restructuring, large bookkeeping recoveries) we scope on a free 30-minute call and confirm in a written proposal. Three engagement models, six pricing drivers, and the inputs we ask for upfront.
Our posture
Published fixed fees, plus custom proposals where complexity warrants.
The opening question on every fiduciary-services page, answered plainly.
Most of our services have a published fixed fee. GmbH formation CHF 990, AG formation CHF 1,490, registered office CHF 1,200/year, monthly payroll from CHF 120, trademark registration CHF 690, debt collection CHF 190, contract review CHF 490, contract drafting CHF 990, EOR CHF 490 per employee per month — see the relevant service page for the published rate. Most peer Swiss fiduciaries hide commercial terms behind a contact form; we publish them upfront because price transparency is a differentiator, not a vulnerability.
For multi-step engagements where the work scales with target complexity — M&A advisory, FINMA licensing, full bookkeeping reconstruction, complex restructuring under the Federal Merger Act, patent prosecution — we scope on a free 30-minute call and confirm in a written proposal. The proposal always names a fee band and the milestone events that move it. No surprise invoicing.
The three engagement models, the drivers that shape complex scopes, the proposal timeline and the inputs we ask for upfront are all below. Where you want the menu of what we do rather than the commercial shape, start at our services.
Engagement models
Three ways we scope a Swiss engagement.
The first decision in every proposal is which model fits your work. Most engagements use one; some combine two. The distinction is in the engagement letter, not in the invoice.
Fixed-fee
Defined-scope tasks
Scope is known in advance, fee is agreed upfront, no surprises. Suits a single GmbH or AG formation, a clean liquidation of a dormant entity, domiciliation setup, or a FINMA application where the scope has already been specified by client-side pre-work. Does not cover regulatory unknowns or open-ended advisory hours.
Retainer
Ongoing, predictable-cadence work
Monthly or quarterly, steady scope. Suits monthly accounting, quarterly VAT filings, ongoing domiciliation, annual AHV and cantonal tax-return coordination, and ongoing nominee director relationships. Retainer engagements usually start after an initial fixed-fee formation engagement has completed and steady-state operations have begun.
Time-based
Advisory and ad-hoc
For complex structuring, regulatory responses where scope is unknown, group restructuring, FINMA interactions beyond a standard application, cross-border tax structuring, and M&A-adjacent work. Tracked against an engagement-letter budget cap with progress updates, so the meter is never running without your visibility.
Scoping drivers
What drives the fee — six variables, named in every proposal.
The variables below determine whether an engagement is fixed, retainer or time-based, and how much work sits inside it. The driver pattern is the first thing we summarise on the scoping call.
Entity type
AG, GmbH, branch, holding or FINMA licensee. Formation timelines diverge — AG 3–6 weeks versus GmbH 2–4 weeks — and documentation loads differ materially.
Canton of incorporation
Cantonal Handelsregister and notary fees vary, headline corporate tax runs from roughly 11.85% in Zug to 20.54% in Bern, and cantonal procedural quirks differ for filings and bank onboarding.
Regulatory layer
FINMA, SRO membership, or none. A FINMA application typically runs 6–18 months to decision depending on licence category and is always scoped time-based rather than fixed-fee.
Banking and UBO complexity
Single UBO versus multiple, cross-border structures, and complex source-of-funds histories scale KYC depth and bank-onboarding dialogue. This is often the largest scoping variable for foreign founders.
Nominee-service involvement
Adds an ongoing compliance layer and a separate engagement letter for the nominee relationship, on top of formation and operating scope.
Operational complexity
Audit thresholds (CHF 20m balance sheet, CHF 40m turnover, 250 FTE per OR art. 727), cross-border VAT, and multi-entity group structures add scope that a single-entity formation does not carry.
The driver that moves the commercial shape most often is the second one: canton choice. Headline corporate tax runs from roughly 11.85% in Zug to 20.54% in Bern, cantonal notary practice differs on fees and turnaround, and bank onboarding patterns track the canton's industry base. We walk the trade-offs in the scoping call; for a first look at the landscape, start with cantons we work in and use our capital requirements calculator to self-qualify the minimum paid-in capital for AG, GmbH or FINMA-regulated entities before the call.
What's included
What's always included in every engagement.
Four commitments that do not appear as line items in the proposal because they are never optional.
Scoping call
A 30–45-minute call, video or phone, at no charge. We listen, ask our standard questions, and identify the driver pattern for your engagement before anything is written down.
Engagement letter before any billable work
Signed before we start. Covers scope, deliverables, fee model, timeline, confidentiality and standard professional-services engagement-termination terms. No billable work begins until the letter is signed.
Single English-speaking point of contact
Throughout the engagement. Not a rotating roster, not a ticketing queue. The person who scoped the work is the person you speak to when it is in flight.
English correspondence end-to-end
All engagement correspondence, draft documents, board packs and management reports are in English. Where a cantonal filing must legally be submitted in an official Swiss language, we handle that translation layer transparently.
Inputs
What you send us before we scope.
Five items. The more of them you have ready at the scoping call, the faster we can commit numbers in the written proposal and the tighter the scope bounds.
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1. KYC for each individual party
Passport or national ID, plus proof of address not older than three months, for every individual who will appear as a shareholder, director, officer or UBO.
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2. UBO map for any entity involved
Who ultimately owns or controls each corporate party, with ownership percentages and chain of control up to the ultimate beneficial owner.
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3. Source-of-funds declaration
A short statement of where the paid-in capital and operating funds originate. Bank-grade detail is not required at scoping stage; honesty and completeness are.
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4. Business outline
A one-pager on what the Swiss entity will actually do: sector, customers, revenue estimate, staffing plan, and which markets you serve.
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5. Jurisdiction intent
Why Switzerland, and which canton if you already have a preference. If canton is open, we narrow the shortlist in the proposal.
If you are early in the thinking stage and do not yet have the UBO map or the business outline drafted, our starting a business in Switzerland guide walks the pre-scoping preparation end-to-end so you arrive at the scoping call with most of the inputs already in shape.
Proposal process
From first call to engagement letter — six steps.
The chain from initial conversation to a signed engagement letter. Every step has a named owner, a named deliverable, and a typical duration.
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1. First call — a 30–45-minute call.
Video or phone. We listen, ask our standard scoping questions, and identify the driver pattern for your engagement. No pre-work required on your side beyond a rough outline of what you want to build.
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2. Internal scope review — 1–2 business days.
We confirm the engagement model, shortlist canton options where relevant, and flag any regulatory layer that changes the fee structure. This is the step that most peer firms skip; we do not.
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3. Draft proposal — typically 3–5 business days.
Delivered in writing. Contains scope, deliverables, fee model, timeline, and named dependencies on client-side inputs. Fixed, retainer and time-based lines are separated so the commercial logic is visible.
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4. Revisions round — asynchronous, a few business days.
We expect revisions. Swap scope, add or remove lines, shift canton, adjust timeline. The proposal is a working document until it is signed.
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5. Engagement letter signed — once terms are aligned.
The engagement letter encodes the agreed proposal, confidentiality, the governing-law clause, and standard professional-services termination terms. Billable work begins only from signature.
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6. Kickoff and onboarding pack — within one business day of signature.
We send the onboarding pack, schedule the kickoff, and confirm the first client-side actions. From this point the operational cadence in the engagement letter takes over.
3 – 6 wks
AG end-to-end
2 – 4 wks
GmbH end-to-end
6 – 18 mo
FINMA licence decision
The AG and GmbH windows above measure end-to-end formation time from signed engagement letter to Handelsregister entry, covering name check on zefix.ch, drafting the articles, bank consignment account, the notarial deed and the cantonal Handelsregister filing. Where all documents are ready on day one, both can land at the lower end of the band. FINMA applications sit on their own timeline (6–18 months to regulator decision depending on licence category), which is why that work is always scoped time-based rather than fixed-fee.
Confidentiality and continuity
Confidentiality, termination, and what happens after incorporation.
Three operational questions that tend to come up in the second half of the scoping call. Written out here so the scoping time can be spent on your scope, not on ours.
Confidentiality
All engagement correspondence is covered by a confidentiality clause in the engagement letter. We are a Swiss fiduciary, not a bar-admitted law firm, and we are explicit about the distinction rather than trading on ambiguity. That does not make the confidentiality posture weaker in practice: we do not publish client lists, we do not name engagements in marketing, and we decline the kind of "case study" content peer firms sometimes publish with identifying detail. Where you want the full credentialling context, see about our firm.
Termination
Either party may terminate with standard professional-services notice, on the terms set out in the engagement letter. Where work is in flight at termination, we hand over a clean file (books, draft filings, working papers) so your incoming provider or in-house team is not starting from zero. This is part of the engagement discipline, not an add-on.
What happens after incorporation
Most foreign-owner engagements transition from a fixed-fee formation into a retainer for the operating phase: monthly accounting, quarterly VAT filings, annual accounts, and cantonal tax return. If nominee director cover is part of the structure, it runs under its own retainer. Transition between phases is handled inside the original engagement letter where both phases are scoped up front; if the retainer phase is scoped later, we issue a supplementary letter. The monthly accounting and nominee director services pages walk each of those retainers in detail.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions.
Thirteen answers to the questions we hear on scoping calls and in written enquiries. Schema emitted in the page head matches every answer byte-for-byte.
Why don't you publish prices on the site?
Every Swiss engagement is custom because canton choice, entity type, regulatory layer, banking complexity and group structure change the work materially. A flat published rate would misprice the simple and the complex ends of the spectrum. This is standard Swiss fiduciary practice, and it is the discipline we prefer over a headline number that would need caveats on every line.
How do you calculate a fixed fee?
We map scope against drivers that are fixable at proposal time: entity type, canton, and client-side document readiness. If a driver carries unknowns we cannot bound in a scoping call, we move that line item to time-based so you are not charged for work that does not materialise. The boundary between fixed and time-based is named in the proposal, not hidden in small print.
Can I get a ballpark before I share details?
Usually yes, after a 30–45-minute scoping call. Before we have heard canton preference, UBO count and regulator status, a ballpark would be guess-work. After the call we can typically give a range and commit to a number in the written proposal, which follows within a few business days.
Do you charge for the initial scoping call?
This first conversation is at no charge. Billing starts only when the engagement letter is signed. If the call slides into paid-advisory territory such as complex regulatory structuring or FINMA strategy, we flag it live, pause, and continue only if you agree to move to a time-based engagement from that point.
What's typical turnaround for a proposal?
Typically 3–5 business days after the scoping call for standard AG or GmbH formation in a mainstream canton. FINMA-adjacent or multi-jurisdiction work can take longer because the regulatory layer needs deeper scoping before we can commit numbers. We confirm the turnaround window on the scoping call so your own decision process can plan around it.
Are VAT and cantonal fees included in your quote?
No. Cantonal notary fees, Handelsregister filing fees and any Swiss VAT on our own services are third-party or statutory costs. The proposal separates our fee from pass-through costs line-by-line, so the distinction between our advisory work and public-fee pass-through is explicit before you sign.
Can you bundle multiple services at a discount?
We do not discount. We do scope multi-service engagements, for example formation plus accounting plus nominee, as one engagement letter with lower coordination overhead, which can reduce the total relative to separate engagements. The driver is efficiency, not discount.
Do you invoice in CHF, EUR, or USD?
We invoice in CHF and can accept EUR or USD on request at the rate used on the invoice date. CHF is the Swiss statutory currency and aligns with our own cost base. Bank details and currency conventions are set out in the engagement letter.
What happens if scope expands mid-engagement?
We pause before any scope-expansion work begins, issue a scope-change note, update the engagement letter if you approve, and then resume. Fixed-fee engagements convert the changed line item to time-based while the rest of the engagement stays fixed. Nothing is billed outside the scope you have already signed off.
How do you handle confidentiality?
All engagement correspondence is covered by a confidentiality clause in the engagement letter. We are a Swiss fiduciary, not a bar-admitted law firm, and we are explicit about that distinction rather than overstating the legal posture. We do not publish client lists and we do not comment publicly on any engagement.
Will you sign an NDA before the scoping call?
Yes, on request. Our standard engagement letter already contains a confidentiality clause that binds us once signed, but if you prefer a one-page NDA ahead of the scoping call we are happy to sign one. Send us your template or ask us for ours.
Do you accept engagements from US persons?
Yes, subject to KYC, source-of-funds review and banking-partner acceptance. FATCA and bank-onboarding expectations add scoping time for US-taxpayer cases, which we factor into the proposal upfront rather than discovering mid-engagement.
What if I'm not sure which canton to pick?
Canton choice is part of the scoping conversation, not a decision you need to bring to the call. We walk the trade-offs between headline tax, registry cadence, notary practice and banking relationships for your sector, and we narrow to a shortlist in the proposal. Our capital requirements calculator and the cantons hub are useful pre-reading.
Next step
Ready to scope your engagement?
Tell us the entity you want, the canton you prefer (if any), and the open questions on your mind. We come back with a scoped proposal typically within 3–5 business days of the scoping call. No obligation. No price gates before scope.