ELM stands for ‘Einheitliches Lohnmeldeverfahren’, which means standardised salary reporting procedure. ELM eliminates the need to fill in numerous forms manually. Instead, salary reporting is carried out electronically, without the use of paper. Companies can send salary data to all recipients in a single transmission, thus saving time and effort.

You need Swissdec-certified payroll accounting software and your individual insurance profile from V⁠i⁠s⁠a⁠n⁠a. The profile contains all the details that you need to enter – once only – into your payroll accounting software.

In personal insurance, a distinction is made between collective daily allowance (DA) insurance, accident insurance as per AIA and top-up accident insurance as per IPA. For each contract, you enter the details of the relevant insurance profile into your payroll accounting system.

The declaration period is generally the same as the insurance year, which runs from the 1 January to 31 December.

If co-insured companies are listed in the insurance contract, the policyholder must report all salary data as a combined sum for all companies, in accordance with the contract.

Groups of persons are identified by means of group codes and characters in the insurance profile. These refer to the salary category. Please note that for top-up accident insurance, several codes have to be assigned, depending on the insured cover.

Owing to the many different parameters within a declaration period, the Swiss standardised salary reporting procedure Swissdec ELM cannot be used if there are changes to groups of insured persons during the year. In such cases, the salary data for the year in question must be declared using the form. Data transmission via ELM is possible again as of the following year.

If there are changes to the insurance contract, the insurance profile usually has to be modified. Make sure that the data stored in your payroll accounting system matches the current profile.

If there is a change of insurance provider, you will have to add the new insurance profile to your software.

Existing customers who have already requested an insurance profile from V⁠i⁠s⁠a⁠n⁠a will automatically receive a new insurance profile for each following year. Compare the details with those in your payroll accounting system before the next transfer and make any necessary adjustments.

The test report tells you whether you have entered all the data into the payroll accounting system correctly in accordance with the current insurance profile. Use this function before actually transferring the data.

If incorrect profile data is stored in your payroll accounting system, such as wrong group codes or characters, the data cannot be transferred to V⁠i⁠s⁠a⁠n⁠a. The system will generate an error message. Please note that there may also be other reasons for an error message. In such cases, please contact the software provider.
 

If you are unable to meet the deadline, please let us know in good time. Otherwise, salaries will be estimated and a surcharge applied. The contractual reporting obligation remains in force.