Close the financial year

Year-end closing ends a financial year: To Bill calculates the result, carries it to your equity, locks the financial year and carries your balances forward to the next one. Before that, you post the year-end entries To Bill cannot guess.

Before you start

• You need the right to manage the books. Overriding a blocking point or reopening a financial year is reserved for an administrator or your fiduciary.
• The financial year must be over. An early closing, for example in a liquidation, needs a reason.
• Plan to do it with your fiduciary: they check the accounts before they are approved.

Experimental feature

Accounting is still in development. Have your accounts checked by your fiduciary before you close.

The year-end list

Before you close, go through:

1. All your documents are booked: invoices, credit notes, expenses, payments received.
2. The bank is reconciled up to the last day of the financial year.
3. Depreciation of your fixed assets is booked up to the closing date. See Manage your fixed assets.
4. Accruals: the financial year’s accrued expenses and accrued income, and prepaid expenses. See Recurring entries and accruals.
5. Provisions and stock: enter them in the journal, with your fiduciary.
6. Foreign currencies: your items in foreign currencies are revalued at the closing rate.
7. VAT: the financial year’s returns are filed; the last one can be filed after the closing. Prepare the annual reconciliation. See Prepare and file the VAT return.
8. The notes are complete: the closing freezes them. See The notes to the annual accounts.

The Year-end closing page

Open Accounting › Year-end closing. To Bill opens the financial year to close, marked To close. The other financial years are in the row of buttons; a closed financial year has a padlock.

The strip of months shows the state of each month: Complete, To fix (a document not posted or a bank line to reconcile), In progress, Not started or Closed.

Step 1: what has to be in order

Each check has a badge:

• Blocking: closing is impossible until this point is settled.
• To check: closing remains possible, but review this point.
• In order: nothing to do.

Click Fix to go to the source of the problem. Book everything posts in one go the documents that are not posted yet; Revalue posts the revaluation of your foreign currency items at the closing rate.

Check	What it verifies
Invoices, expenses, payments received	Everything is posted. Blocking.
Bank lines	All are reconciled. Blocking.
Vouchers	Each entry has its voucher. To check.
VAT returns	The financial year’s returns are filed. To check.
Closing rates	The foreign currency items are valued at the closing rate. To check.
Balanced journal, no entry altered	Total debits equal total credits, and the fingerprint chain is intact. Blocking, with no exception possible.
Notes	The notes are complete, or optional for your legal form. To check.
Your year-end entries	A reminder: depreciation, provisions, stock, accruals. Record an entry opens the journal.

Steps 2 to 4: the result and the entries

The The result of … step shows income, expenses and the profit or loss, and where the closing carries it.

Legal form	Where the result goes
Company limited by shares (AG), limited liability company (GmbH), cooperative	To the “Profit / loss for the year” account. The general meeting then decides how it is appropriated: see Have the profit appropriation decided.
Sole proprietorship	With your private account, to your owner’s capital.
Partnership	To the partner’s result account; its allocation is then recorded in the journal.

• The closing entries: income and expenses back to zero, then the result carried to equity. Show the entries details them. They are added to the journal: nothing is changed or deleted.
• Fiscal year … (the next one): the closing carries the balances of your balance sheet accounts into it, as opening balances. As long as the previous financial year is open, To Bill already keeps provisional opening balances up to date; the closing confirms them.

Step 5: close

1. Read the sentence in the Close … step: once closed, the financial year is locked.

2. Tick I have booked my year-end entries (depreciation, provisions, stock, accruals), or there are none.

3. If the financial year is not over yet, fill in Why close now?, at least 10 characters.

4. Click Close 2025 (1).

   

A blocking point to override

An administrator or your fiduciary can click Close despite the blocking points… and give the reason. This is never possible for an unbalanced or altered journal. The reason is kept.

After the closing

The page shows 2025 is closed, the date, the person and the result, and the Entries booked by the closing, each with a link to the journal.

• The financial year is locked: no entry is possible in it any more. A correction is posted in the following financial year.
• The notes are frozen as they were at the closing.
• Your annual accounts leads to the balance sheet, the income statement, and the next financial year’s balance sheet compared with the closed year.
• The result, next leads to the profit appropriation, for an AG, a GmbH or a cooperative.

The next financial year

It opens by itself with its first entry. To enter entries ahead of time, click Open financial year … at the top of the page.

Reopen a closed financial year

This is exceptional, and reserved for an administrator or your fiduciary. Under Reopen the financial year, click Reopen 2025…, enter the Reason for reopening, then confirm. The closing entries and the opening balances are reversed, never deleted: the journal keeps a record of both. The notes can be edited again.

When it is no longer possible

As soon as the next financial year contains an entry other than its opening balances, for example the profit appropriation decision or an invoice, the closed financial year can no longer be reopened. Correct it then with an entry in the next financial year.

The first financial year

A newly founded company can have a first financial year shorter or longer than 12 months: from 1 to 24 months, closed no later than 31 December of the year after it was founded. You choose it when you turn accounting on, at the Starting point step, under Your first financial year: choose Shorter or longer first financial year, the Start (day of incorporation) and the End of the first financial year (1). The following financial years last 12 months.

Beyond 18 months, To Bill warns you: several cantons then ask for a justification. A sole proprietorship or a partnership closes its accounts every calendar year: its first financial year cannot span 31 December. See also Turn on accounting.

Deadlines after the closing

• The annual accounts are submitted, signed, to the body that approves them within six months of the end of the financial year.
• For an AG or a GmbH, the ordinary general meeting takes place within those six months. It approves the accounts and decides on the profit appropriation.
• The books, the vouchers and the annual accounts are kept for ten years from the end of the financial year.

Legal basis

• The annual accounts consist of the balance sheet, the income statement and the notes; the annual report is prepared and submitted within six months of the end of the financial year, signed by the chair of the management body and the person responsible for the accounts: Art. 958 para. 2 and 3 CO.
• The accrual of expenses and income: Art. 958b CO. Every entry is supported by a voucher: Art. 957a para. 2 no. 2 CO.
• The ordinary general meeting takes place within six months of the end of the financial year: Art. 699 para. 2 CO (AG) and Art. 805 para. 2 CO (GmbH).
• The books and vouchers are kept for ten years from the end of the financial year: Art. 958f CO. They cannot be changed without the change being visible: Art. 3 GeBüV, the Ordinance on the Keeping and Retention of Accounting Records (German version: fedlex has no English one).
• A legal entity closes its accounts every calendar year, except in the year it is founded: Art. 79 para. 3 DBG, the Federal Act on Direct Federal Taxation (German version: fedlex has no English one). A self-employed person closes their accounts in every tax period: Art. 41 para. 3 DBG.