Data sovereignty, prices, editions, migration, fiduciary value, the Apple stack, updates, support, training, data protection and the new functions from version 3.0. Clearly worded, without sales fluff.
This collection covers understanding and purchasing decisions. If your question is not here, come to us, it then moves into the list.
You decide where your data lives. ewws runs self-hosted on your hardware or with a Swiss host of your choice. There is no necessarily foreign cloud, no US provider in the data path and no hidden data exports. PostgreSQL and Java 25 are standard technology without a proprietary database.
The editions range from Start at CHF 39 per month to Fiduciary at CHF 599 per month. Every edition includes the Mac app, the Windows app, the iOS app and the server. The editions page shows the modules per plan and which edition fits which company size.
Start fits the self-employed with an invoicing focus. SME fits businesses with sales, purchasing, inventory and accounting. SME Pro adds project controlling, payroll and extended analytics. Fiduciary is for multi-tenant bookkeeping of several customers in one system. You can switch editions without losing data.
Yes, right away and without a conversation. The public demo runs on our server: the credentials are in the download area and work in all three apps for Mac, Windows and iPhone. Mac and Windows are a direct download there, the iOS app is free on the App Store. You see a complete Swiss fiduciary client with accounting, payroll, dunning and point of sale, with read rights. For your own operation, ewws then runs 30 days in trial mode with all functions of your edition.
No. The native clients run on Mac and iPhone in Swift as well as on Windows in WinUI 3 and C# on .NET. The server runs platform-neutral on macOS, Windows, Linux or in your Swiss public cloud. You choose the platform that fits your operation, not the other way around.
The iOS app is included in the license scope of every edition, not as a surcharge. It is not mandatory, but useful for mobile document capture, the service cockpit, expenses with a receipt photo and a mobile register. Whoever has no mobile use case uses only Mac and server, without a loss.
The migration wizard takes over chart of accounts, open items, master data and documents from the common Swiss systems. You usually run three to four weeks in parallel operation, close a deadline and then switch over. Fiduciaries accompany the switch without data loss and without live-operation improvisation.
ewws is multi-tenant from the start, the fiduciary portal is part of the platform. Fiduciaries manage several clients in one system, with a shared cockpit, rolling days, closings and license control. Dunning levels, VAT reconciliation, payroll run and consolidation are at the core, without a third-party system or surcharge per client.
ewws uses file-based Ed25519-signed licenses that you import via setup. A license unlocks an edition for a specific number of tenants. Updates within the edition are part of the license, not an additional service package. License transfer to a new Mac or server is possible.
ewws follows a line of incremental delivery. Functional updates come on a weekly rhythm, security-relevant updates immediately. Mandatory migrations such as ESTV tariff changes or Swissdec phase changes are delivered within the legal deadline. Updates can be released per edition automatically or manually.
Via an update manifest of the ewws server. The Mac app checks daily, shows a banner with the version number and changes and installs in one click. The signed DMG download is verified via SHA-256 against the manifest, the build carries the Apple Developer ID and is accepted by Gatekeeper. You decide the time; in the payroll window the banner stays visible until you are ready. A version branch can be fixed per tenant, so that fiduciary clients do not jump unplanned.
Direct contact to the vendor via the contact form or by mail. Fiduciary customers are additionally served via their fiduciary office. For critical cases, a fast escalation is agreed, without ticket roulette.
Yes. For fiduciary partners there is a structured onboarding with tenant setup, VAT reconciliation and payroll run. For end customers there are short topic units on document creation, accounting and analytics. Training takes place remotely via video conference or on site, as needed.
In the editions Start, SME and SME Pro, one tenant is included. The Fiduciary edition includes 25 tenants and an unlimited number of users at a flat price; if you need more tenants, we agree that individually. Switching tenants in the Mac app is one click, without a separate installation or license file.
Yes. ewws assigns a data protection officer and a record of processing activities per tenant. Data exports, access and deletion requests are documented with an audit trail. With self-hosted operation, the data stays in Switzerland, which eases the requirements for data location and processing on behalf.
No, and we do not write that anywhere. ewws is implemented to the Swissdec standards ELM 6.0 and KLE 2.0, withholding tax computes all 109 Swissdec test examples correctly, and since 1 August 2026 you configure the whole reporting setup inside the product, including recipient distribution and attestations. We have prepared the certification; the certificate itself we will only carry once we hold it. In practice: the payroll run produces the ELM report as a file, which you submit through the designated route.
Yes, via EBICS 3.0 to H005. We built the channel ourselves, without a third-party SDK, and proved it at the PostFinance test platform: the payment order was accepted, and the collective booking that keeps salaries discreet is evidenced on both sides. It belongs to the product; there is no extra module and no surcharge from us. You enrol with your bank for EBICS and send the initialisation letter, and from then on ewws fetches statements and sends payments directly. What your bank charges for its own EBICS contract is up to them. The file route always remains available as a fallback.
Yes. The ewws server runs on Swiss public cloud providers such as Infomaniak, Exoscale, Swisscom and CloudSigma, as well as on your own Linux VM. We recommend Swiss locations for data protection and latency reasons. AWS, Azure and GCP work technically, but are not our recommendation for Swiss SMEs.
Via the full-text search in the document archive. Every PDF document is automatically indexed on upload, a PostgreSQL full-text index makes the content searchable by keywords. You type a term in the Mac app and see hits from thousands of documents in two seconds, instead of clicking through folders for half an hour. Sales invoices archive themselves idempotently with a hash on creation, the GeBüV retention obligation is met without a separate secretarial task. Document management is built in, a separate subscription alongside is not needed.
Yes. On the iPhone, expenses are captured with a receipt photo, amount, date and cost center, the status (submitted, in review, approved, rejected) appears on iPhone and Apple Watch. Managers get a dedicated approval queue in the Mac app, separate from the supplier-invoice inbox: approved per click, rejected with a reason or deferred for a query. Different roles, different approval limits, no mixing of the approval logic.
An X report during the day for interim totals at cash or shift changes, a Z report in the evening with a reset of the daily till and a signed PDF from the Mac app. Cash, card and Twint are shown separately, the posting suggestion lands automatically in accounting. Card-terminal providers such as SumUp, SaferPay and Worldline are set up in the code as adapters, you activate the live connection per tenant with your provider account data. Compliant with Swiss cash-register practice, GeBüV audit-proof from the day-end closing time.
No. The AI in ewws is deterministic and runs self-hosted on your own database. Documents, postings, salaries and bank movements are routed neither through OpenAI nor through Anthropic. There is no cloud AI pipeline, no external inference, no secret telemetry. Fiduciary offices, law firms, doctors and associations thus keep full data sovereignty, even in AI operation.
Every AI recommendation comes with a source: from which table, which period, how many documents. Instead of "the AI thinks", you read something like "based on 47 postings since March, 89 percent posted the same way" or "with this supplier the correction rate rises from 17 to 67 percent". This lets every recommendation be checked, compared and documented in the fiduciary conversation. Whoever signs sees why.
In OCR document capture, dunning risk, liquidity forecast, payroll anomaly and cross-domain recommendations, ewws is ahead of the five providers. In cloud AI ornamental functions (auto mail, generative texts, chatbot), ewws deliberately stays back. For SMEs and fiduciaries this is also the wrong area, where data otherwise goes out. You find the full comparison on the AI page.
Yes, per tenant. You store a logo, a hex brand color for the header and QR accent as well as a multilingual footer in German, French, Italian, Romansh and English. On invoice printing, the customer language is chosen, the matching footer adopted and the brand color renders consistently in PDF and QR-bill. Available from the SME edition, without a layout license and without an external designer tool.
Yes, every tenant profile holds several named templates at the same time, for example "Standard B2B", "Retail quick invoice" and "Fiduciary client". Per template you choose the layout variant, your own brand color and your own footer per language, exactly one template is marked as the default. When sending, you choose from the list, a live PDF preview shows the result immediately. No other provider in the Swiss SME segment (Bexio, Topal, Abacus, Banana, Sage, Klara) offers this function publicly.
Yes, additively and without touching postings. You start with the Swiss SME standard, later you add the full fiduciary catalog, an industry chart of accounts or the association chart of accounts at the push of a button. The backend only adds the missing account numbers, existing accounts and postings stay untouched and the audit trail documents the switch. In the Swiss SME market, no other provider (Bexio, Topal, Abacus, Banana, Sage, Klara) offers a documented chart-of-accounts switch after setup publicly, because the posting integrity is mostly not guaranteed.
ewws uses the moving average price per article and tenant. Every goods receipt with a supplier invoice updates the unit cost value, sales and stock withdrawals are posted out at the current average price (COGS account, cost of sales). The inventory value report lists stock, average cost and book value per article, with a total per warehouse and tenant. This is Swiss SME practice per CO 960 and compatible with fiduciary reporting.
Yes, the calculation covers all 26 cantons. Canton membership, tariff code and marital status feed into the payroll run automatically, and withholding tax computes all 109 Swissdec test examples correctly. The official ESTV tariff rates are stored per tenant; we set up the rates for your canton when your tenant starts, so you maintain no tables of your own. For employees liable to withholding tax, the payroll run calculates transparently with the stored cantonal tariff and documents the calculation in the salary certificate.
Yes. ewws generates the quarterly or semester return as ESTV-compliant XML, form 220 for the effective method or form 221 for the net tax rate, per the eCH-0217 schema. The XML file is reconciled against accounting before generation and filed in the GeBüV archive. You upload the finished file in the ESTV portal. There is deliberately no direct transmission via an ESTV interface, because no vendor in the Swiss market offers one; the XML upload is the standard route.
In the team calendar you set a manager for each employee and enter appointments with a participant list. A pre-save conflict check warns when an assigned employee already has an appointment in the period. Leave requests run as a workflow through the manager (approval inbox with a badge), a weekly heatmap shows the availability of direct reports at a glance. The employee sees the status on iPhone and Apple Watch.
Yes, every employee has a personal iCal subscription URL per RFC 5545, read-only. You copy the URL from the employee profile and add it in Apple Calendar, Outlook, Google Calendar or Thunderbird as a calendar subscription. Appointments, vacation and approval events appear with description and status on all devices, without you having to open ewws separately.
Write to us briefly what you want to know. We respond personally and add the question to this list if appropriate. Whoever wants to review ewws without contract paperwork downloads the Mac app and looks directly.