Glossary

Swiss HR and payroll terms used across the product, in German and English.

Swiss HR runs on German and French terminology even in English-language organizations. The product keeps the German term where it is the legal name of a thing.

Employment and HR

Term	Meaning
Arbeitszeugnis	Full qualified work certificate an employer must issue on request (OR Art. 330a).
Zwischenzeugnis	Interim certificate issued during ongoing employment.
Arbeitsbestätigung	Simple employment confirmation — dates and function, no assessment.
Personalstammblatt	The personal-data form a new hire completes before their first day.
Privatauszug	Criminal-record extract. Sonderprivatauszug is the special extract required for work with minors.
Probezeit	Probation period. Max. 3 months (OR Art. 335b).
Rechtsträger	Legal entity — the employer of record. See Legal entities.
Standort	Location / site. Drives canton, and therefore holidays and sick-pay scale.
Pensum	Employment level, as a percentage of a full-time position.
Kündigungsfrist	Notice period.
GAV / CCT	Collective labour agreement (Gesamtarbeitsvertrag / convention collective de travail).

Time and absence

Term	Meaning
ArG	Arbeitsgesetz — the Swiss Labour Act. Governs maximum hours, breaks, rest.
OR	Obligationenrecht — the Code of Obligations. Governs the employment contract.
Ferien	Vacation. Minimum 4 weeks; 5 for employees under 20 (OR Art. 329a).
Jahresarbeitszeit	Annualised working time — hours budgeted over a year rather than a week.
Personengruppe	Staff group — bundles time-capture mode, weekly plan, and school openings its members inherit. See Staff groups.
Betriebsferien	Company/school closure periods, defined per staff group.
Lohnfortzahlung	Salary continuation during illness (OR Art. 324a).
Berner / Basler / Zürcher Skala	The three common scales converting service years into weeks of continued salary.

Payroll

Term	Meaning
Lohnabrechnung	The monthly payroll run, and the payslip it produces.
Lohnart	A paycheck item type — an earning, a deduction, a base. The catalog is the taxonomy the calculation engine works from.
Lohnkonto	Per-employee year-to-date payroll account.
Kontenplan	Chart of accounts driving the transfer into financial accounting.
FIBU	Finanzbuchhaltung — financial accounting. The Übertragung posts payroll to it.
Stammdaten	Master data — the tenant-level configuration the engine reads.
AHV / IV / EO	Old-age, disability and income-compensation insurance. AHV number is the 13-digit social security number.
ALV	Unemployment insurance.
BVG	Occupational pension (second pillar).
UVG / KTG	Accident insurance / daily-sickness-benefit insurance.
QST (Quellensteuer)	Withholding tax for employees taxed at source.
Lohnausweis	Year-end salary certificate handed to the employee and the tax authority.
Jahresmeldung	Year-end declaration transmitted to insurers and authorities over Swissdec ELM.
Swissdec ELM	The Swiss standard for electronic payroll declaration (Einheitliches Lohnmeldeverfahren).
EMA	Electronic notification of a wage-relevant event to an authority.
pain.001	The ISO 20022 credit-transfer message sent to the bank to pay salaries.
camt.053 / camt.054	ISO 20022 bank statements used to reconcile whether those payments actually settled.

Recruitment

Term	Meaning
Stellenmeldepflicht	The duty to report vacancies in high-unemployment occupations to the RAV before advertising them publicly (AIG Art. 21a).
SECO Job-Room	The federal job platform where those reports are filed.
RAV	The regional employment office.
Talent pool	A saved group of candidates kept for future openings, with consent.
Pipeline stage	A configurable step an application moves through, with its own mails, tasks and documents.

Data protection

Term	Meaning
nDSG	The revised Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection.
DSAR	Data subject access request — a person asking what you hold about them, or asking you to delete it.
EDÖB	The Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner.