What people forget

The working-hours register for each employee

The Labour Act requires you to keep, available to the inspectorate, the schedule and duration of each employee's work, day by day, week by week, , overtime, and breaks of half an hour or more. Not an end-of-month statement: a register.

Two simplifications have existed since 2016, under conditions: a full waiver for highly autonomous, well-paid executives, and simplified recording of daily duration only for those who set a large part of their own schedule. A painter on site falls under neither.

It is the most inspected and least known obligation. Without a register, the employee's version prevails in a dispute over overtime.

Reporting vacancies to the regional employment office

Since 2020, in occupational groups where national unemployment reaches 5%, every vacancy must be reported to the regional employment office (ORP) before any other publication, and stays reserved to it for five working days. Publishing on a job board first is an offence.

The list of occupations concerned changes every year; it is published in the autumn on arbeit.swiss and applies from 1 January to the following 31 December. In 2026 it covers 10.8% of the workforce, against 6.4% in 2025: check your trade before each recruitment, not once and for all.

Geneva cantonal maternity insurance

Geneva tops up the federal maternity allowance with a cantonal insurance, financed by a mandatory contribution from every Geneva employer, collected like AVS with the other social contributions. It is not taken out: it applies from affiliation. Its rate is not given here, for lack of a dated source for 2026, your compensation office knows it.

The annual general meeting of an Sàrl or an SA

A company does not approve its accounts on its own. Every year, the meeting of members or shareholders approves them, decides on the use of profit and discharges the managers, even when the sole member and the manager are the same person. Minutes, signed, filed. Without them, the discharge does not exist, and an undocumented distribution decision turns against the one who made it.

Ten years of records

Books, accounting records, reports: ten years of retention. An invoice from 2026 must be producible in 2036, legibly. It is not the bookkeeping that gets forgotten, it is the archive box thrown out when moving.

And the one that no longer exists: the municipal business tax

You will still hear it mentioned. It was abolished on 1 January 2024, unanimously by the Geneva Grand Council, as a counter-proposal to an initiative demanding its removal. An activity started after 31 December 2023 has nothing left to declare; only tax periods up to 2023 remain to be settled for those who were liable.