Migrating from Crésus to online software, what the takeover really demands

Crésus outputs its data in text files, not through an interface

The vendor's documentation, read on 23 August 2026, describes data exchange through configurable templates. Two formats come out, the tab-separated text file and the semicolon CSV file, both readable in Excel. A precious detail for a takeover: the import templates are identical to the export templates, which allows building a trial file and reading it back before touching anything. The accounting accepts importing entries, the invoicing accepts importing customer lists.

No public programming interface intended for third-party developers appears in the documentation read. The APIs the vendor mentions are outbound, the PostFinance API channel and the tilbago key in Crésus Banking. The practical consequence is simple. The raw material of a migration from Crésus is files produced by an operator, one client file after another, and not a flow you plug in once and for all.

A Crésus licence covers several client files. A migration therefore rarely concerns a single set of files, and the work counts in client files rather than in programs. Each client file has its chart of accounts, its VAT codes, its document templates and its masks. A fiduciary moving thirty dossiers does not do the same thing thirty times, it does a neighbouring thing thirty times, which is longer and less predictable than it seems.

Balances get transported, settings get redone

Two families of data live together in a Crésus dossier. Those that transport: opening balances, customers, articles, entries of the current financial year, debtor and creditor documents still open. And those that are rebuilt in the new tool because their structure differs: chart of accounts, VAT codes, wage types, document templates, posting rules. Confusing the two is the most frequent mistake, because a successful import onto approximate settings produces accounts that are wrong and silent.

Payroll deserves its own decision. Crésus Salaires appears in the Swissdec register as Swissdec certified basic, ELM 5.0, with self-validated versions 5.1 and 5.3, certificate 1034.23. The target is checked at the same register rather than on a brochure. bexio Lohnbuchhaltung carries there certificate 1142.24 for ELM 5.0, 5.1 and 5.3, KLARA certificate 1134.25 under ePost Service AG, Odoo certificate 1203.25 for ELM 5.0 and 5.3, WinBIZ certificate 1028.25.

Transporting wage types is the hard point. Infoniqa, which documents payroll imports from several earlier programs, itself notes that converting the wage type plan is a complex operation. Nothing in the documentation read suggests it is easier elsewhere. Add the year's cumulations, withholding tax and salary certificates, which make sense only attached to a complete financial year kept in a single system.

What each target can read, according to its own documentation

bexio documents importing by Excel and CSV files for contacts, products and the chart of accounts, with two dedicated help articles, and a limit of 15'000 products on import is reported. On the way out, the vendor documents PDF and Excel exports. smallinvoice documents importing contacts and the catalogue by CSV or by copy-paste from Excel, as well as direct accounting exports to Banana, Infoniqa ONE 50 and Topal, which interests the company keeping its fiduciary.

KLARA documents importing camt.053d for bank transactions and an Excel file for updating the article catalogue. Odoo documents native import and export of any business object in CSV and Excel from the interface. Run my Accounts documents CSV import for customers, debtor invoices, articles and general accounting entries. Abacus goes through AbaConnect for mass exchanges, completed by its REST APIs. SelectLine offers guided import assistants in text, CSV and XML, saveable as models.

One case stands out. WinBIZ documents an entry import from Crésus as a migration path, and it is the only vendor read that names Crésus in its import documentation. The counterpart reads in the general terms. The subscription carries an initial period of twelve months with three months' written notice, and the vendor writes that at the end of the contract access to WinBIZ Cloud data ceases, recommending archiving the accounts as PDF before leaving.

The order of operations decides how much gets redone

Extract first, configure next, import last. Taking the templates out of Crésus before anything else gives the real map of the data, which never quite resembles what one believed. The target's configuration is then built on observed data and not supposed data. Reversing this order amounts to building a chart of accounts for entries you will discover afterwards.

Inside the import, the sequence counts too. Chart of accounts and VAT codes first. Opening balances next. Master data, customers, suppliers and articles after. Open items last, unsettled debtors and creditors, because they rest on everything before. Each step is checked before the next, by a trial balance and a general ledger compared with those of Crésus, on the same scope and at the same date.

The takeover date is chosen before the rest. A start of financial year avoids reconstituting VAT straddling two systems. A payroll switch set at the start of the calendar year avoids keeping cumulations in two tools in parallel. These trade-offs are decided with the fiduciary, since it will close the financial year, and not with the target software's reseller.

The two systems overlap for a while

Invoices already issued from Crésus keep coming in with their QR-IBAN and their references. Two routes exist. Leave collection and the matching of camt.053 and camt.054 in the old tool until the receivables die out, or switch the open items into the target and live with reissued references. The first route lengthens the period of double bookkeeping, the second loads the takeover. The choice depends on the volume of open debtors on switch day, not on a preference of principle.

The eBill connection is redone, it does not transport. Epsitec SA is an eBill network partner registered with SIX, sending leaves directly from Crésus Facturation at twenty centimes per dispatch before tax, and the vendor writes that Crésus Facturation cannot receive eBill invoices. On the target side, the set-ups differ. bexio goes through a third-party Marketplace application, eBill by iomarket AG, paid on top. KLARA goes through ePost Service AG, a network partner. Abacus Research AG also appears among the published network partners.

Bank synchronisation is also put back in place, and rarely on the same day as the rest. KLARA documents a PostFinance activation by signed paper form sent to the bank, an e-banking login at each fetch for Raiffeisen and Basler Kantonalbank, and no takeover of movements prior to activation. This last point is noted before the switch, because it fixes the date from which matching becomes automatic.

• The eBill issuing contract and the QR-IBAN registration
• Bank synchronisation, institution by institution
• Document templates and their layout
• Users' roles and rights
• The rules for automatic payment posting

Leaving file-based software changes how you work as a team

Crésus is single-user for writing. A single employee modifies a client file at a time, the others access it read-only. The vendor also indicates that the files must not be stored on Dropbox, OneDrive, SharePoint, Google Drive, iCloud, kDrive or ownCloud, flags a risk of data corruption and declines all liability. Many companies go online exactly for this reason, and not for the functions.

Crésus Cloud exists as an intermediate answer, a remote virtual desktop hosted at Silicom with servers in Switzerland, charged CHF 26.00 per month before tax and per simultaneous access, the write lock remaining. The published entry costs of the targets read differently. bexio Basic announces CHF 35.00 per month before tax on annual invoicing for one user, KLARA Business BASIC CHF 48.00 per month before tax for three administrators at most, smallinvoice STARTER CHF 15.00 per month, WinBIZ Cloud CHF 64.00 before tax per access on annual invoicing. None of these amounts covers the takeover itself.

Hosting is checked too, because it no longer changes afterwards without a new migration. bexio declares storing and processing its clients' data exclusively in Switzerland. KLARA announces geo-redundant Swiss data centres. Odoo Online lists in its privacy policy regions in the United States, Canada, France, Belgium, Singapore, Taiwan, India, Saudi Arabia and Australia, with no Swiss data centre.

What LYVIA does in a takeover from Crésus

We sell no licences. Our starting point is reading the existing export templates and the real structure of the client files, before any discussion about the target software. This survey says whether the switch will be a file job or a rebuilding job, and it is done on the client's data, not on a product sheet.

Then come the extraction, the transformation of the files into the format the target documents, the batch import in the order described above, and the acceptance by comparing trial balances and general ledgers. Open items are checked one by one, because a lost debtor does not show in a total. Each step leaves a written trace that allows replaying the operation if a check fails.

After the switch remains the work the target's vendor does not take on: connecting to the trade tools the company keeps, restarting the bank and eBill flows, and writing the procedures so the team works the same way in the new tool.

Where these answers come from

Every fact on this page can be checked at the source. The links open directly the website of the vendor or body concerned.

• Crésus Facturation, vendor's technical sheetSupported platforms, single-user operation for writing, multi-client capability, multilingual and multi-currency options
• Crésus and synchronisation services, vendor's answerDropbox, OneDrive, SharePoint, Google Drive, iCloud, kDrive and ownCloud advised against, risk of data corruption
• eBill sending from Crésus FacturationSending via the SIX network, twenty centimes per dispatch, and mention that Crésus Facturation cannot receive eBill invoices
• Crésus CloudRemote virtual desktop at CHF 26.00 per month before tax and per simultaneous access, Silicom hosting with servers in Switzerland
• Crésus price listPurchase of a perpetual licence with annual Crésus+ or monthly rental, rates per module and brackets of five salaries
• Official register of Swissdec-certified softwareCertificates and ELM levels of Crésus Salaires, bexio, KLARA, Odoo, WinBIZ, Abacus, SelectLine and Infoniqa
• bexio, plans and pricesPrices of the Basic, Advanced, Optima and Ultimate packages, users included and price per additional user
• bexio API documentationREST API with OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect, personal access tokens, scopes and pagination
• KLARA, pricesBusiness BASIC at CHF 48.00 per month before tax for three administrators, rate per payslip
• KLARA, setting up the bank connectionQR-bill variants and synchronisation terms depending on the bank
• smallinvoice, integrationsNative connectors and direct accounting exports to Banana, Infoniqa ONE 50 and Topal
• WinBIZ general termsInitial period of twelve months, tacit annual renewal and three months' written notice

SURVEY OF 23.08.2026

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