Onboarding
Guided setup — seven questions that take a Swiss organization from signup to a working workspace.
Overview
Self-serve onboarding is available for Swiss (CH) organizations only. Signing up asks for four things about you — email, password, first name, last name — nothing about your company. Everything the commercial register already knows is looked up rather than typed, and the questions that remain are the ones no register can answer.
Setup asks one question at a time. The answers you have already given stay on screen above the current question, each with an Edit link. On a large screen, a rail lists the seven questions plus the final build step, and lets you jump back to any question you have already answered — steps still ahead of you are shown but not clickable.
Where in the app
- Setup interview:
/{locale}/onboarding - Company portal:
/c(once setup is finished)
Step-by-step
- Register — email, password, first name, last name. No company name, no domain (UAT-T-ONBOARD-WIZARD-001).
- Verify your email — your workspace and first company are created at this point.
- Answer seven questions. Your company, the start of your financial year, VAT
registration, employees, the areas you will manage, colleagues to invite and the
starting data. Each fits on one screen and is usually one click.
- Your company is looked up in the Swiss commercial register, Zefix — which fills in the legal name, the UID and the address — or entered by hand. The legal form is required either way; it is pre-answered from the register when the match is certain, and left for you to choose when it is not. Two further identity questions follow: when the company started trading, and the turnover it expects in Switzerland and worldwide. Both may be left blank, but not filled in badly — an amount, with at most two decimals after a comma or a dot, and no thousands separator.
- What the register does not give — legal name, street, postcode, town — is listed before you confirm the company, with the choice of confirming now and completing it in the settings, or entering the company by hand.
- The areas you will manage are picked as areas, not as modules: no module count is shown, because the module plan is worked out from your answer rather than by you.
- Change your mind without redoing the rest. "Edit" on an answer reopens that one question; the later answers stay on screen, and you return to where you were as soon as you have answered (UAT-T-ONBOARD-GUIDED-001).
- Watch your workspace being built. Chart of accounts, modules, access and rules are set up in front of you, stage by stage, with the real stages and the real progress rather than a spinner. It usually takes one to two minutes. If the build fails, you restart it from that screen: your seven answers are kept and no question is asked again.
- Your workspace opens on its own. A screen confirms it is ready, then the company dashboard opens by itself — the "Open my workspace" button is the fallback for a blocked navigation. The dashboard proposes a first result to reach — add a document, create an invoice — rather than asking the setup questions again.
On a phone, progress fits on one line above the question; the full list of steps exists on large screens only.
VAT has three answers
Yes, no, and not decided yet (UAT-T-ONBOARD-VAT-TRUTH-001).
- Yes asks for the reporting method, the filing frequency, the VAT number and the date
you became liable. The number is checked on the screen itself, in the form the federal
administration writes it —
CHE-123.456.789, the language suffix (TVA, MWST, IVA, VAT) optional — so a typo is refused here rather than on your first return. The date has a one-click shortcut that fills in the start of the financial year you declared, not 1 January (UAT-T-ONBOARD-VAT-003). - The register prefill never carries a VAT number. Zefix states the UID; the VAT number is derived from it only once you have answered yes.
- No and not decided yet both remove the VAT number and empty the filing calendar. What they record differs: no states that the company is not liable, while not decided yet records a non-answer — the VAT status goes back to unknown instead of being asserted as "not registered" (UAT-T-ONBOARD-VAT-NOTREG-001).
Employees work the same way
Answering no after a yes takes back what the yes had written: the first payroll month is removed, and the collective-agreement answer returns to I don't know — never to not applicable, which would state a legal conclusion you never gave (UAT-T-ONBOARD-ANSWERS-REACH-001).
"I don't know" is a real answer
You are never forced to invent a value. Choosing not to answer records an explicit I don't know rather than leaving the field silently empty. The setting is then flagged for review and resurfaces when the obligation that needs it actually arrives — it never blocks you from finishing. And taking an answer back retracts what that answer had written, instead of leaving behind a value nobody stands behind any more.
What is refused, and what is only stated
Six answers the screen will not let you skip: the legal form; the company name when you enter the company by hand; the VAT number and the liability date when you say you are registered; at least one area to manage; the collective-agreement answer when you have employees; and at least one valid address when you choose to invite your team.
Most of the rest is stated rather than refused: an incomplete address — street, postcode and town stay optional when you enter the company by hand — and the fields the register did not give. One nuance is worth knowing: a postcode you leave empty is accepted, but a postcode that is not four digits is refused, so a typo is caught here rather than on your first invoice. Only a country Numezis does not support for self-serve stops the process, because that is a genuine product limit rather than a missing field.
You also keep access to your workspace once you have opened the interview: leaving it unfinished no longer locks you out of the parts that already work.
Picking up where you left off
Reloading the page brings you back to the question you had stopped on, VAT included. Reopening a question shows what you had answered: the trading start date and the expected turnovers, the areas you had kept, and the colleagues you had invited with their access level. Not decided yet comes back as not decided yet, not as an unanswered question.
Permissions and modules
Onboarding is available to the first tenant administrator (TENANT_ADMIN).
Load or erase sample data
Open Settings → Sample data in your company workspace. The page shows whether sample data is absent, present or partially loaded.
- Load sample data to explore with fictional customers, invoices, purchases and employees.
- If only part was loaded, retry loading from the same page.
- To remove it, choose Erase sample data and confirm. Your own data is not removed.
When your workspace opens
Your workspace opens once, as soon as its foundation — chart of accounts, VAT setup, numbering and your company's base settings — has been built. Until then, opening the app shows a short "Your workspace is being prepared" page that refreshes on its own; teammates you invited see the same page instead of an empty portal. Once open, the workspace stays open: turning a module on later, or loading sample data, never closes it again.
Starting with your company (gradual rollout)
On accounts where it is switched on, the whole setup happens before your account: you search the Swiss commercial register (Zefix) or type the company in by hand, say what you want to start with, then answer the setup questions — fiscal year start, expected turnover, VAT, employees, "How do you want to start?" and the areas you use. You then create your login. Your answers are tied to this device for seven days; the turnover you enter is never shown back or sent to our measurement tools. Right after your email is confirmed, every answer is applied to your workspace and it starts building by itself: meanwhile you are asked one question only, which colleagues to invite. If an answer cannot be applied, setup tells you which field to fix and keeps everything else. The areas you chose (and so the modules) are fixed as soon as the build starts; change them from Settings afterwards, like every other answer.