Earny closes seed round to automate payroll

Today, Accountants, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and employees are still exchanging emails and excel files containing sensitive payroll data, which is then re-typed into payroll software, either an Abacus or Cresus. This approach is unsecure and costs time for everyone in the payroll process, as Bassil Eid, cofounder of Earny, observed. Moreover, the cost of running payroll is typically between CHF 25-50 per employee, according to Sven Roost, Managing Partner at the accounting firm Infeas – and the administrative burden associated with it makes the process infuriating.

Founded in May 2021, Earny allows for entering data securely into a central platform that is automatically included in a company’s payroll. In addition to automating the payroll process every 25th of the month, the platform offers company & employee onboarding features, tracking of payroll changes such as hours and vacations, and an accountant dashboard to manage all clients. Earny saves on average 2-3 hours a month and removes idle time while waiting for payroll data to come in. Considering the hourly rate of payroll experts (90-150 CHF per hour) this results in an average cost saving of 180-300 CHF per month.

The platform has already secured a Swissdec certification, which usually takes two years to acquire, to ensure Earny can calculate payroll accurately in all employee scenarios. Earny’s team of nine currently has a private beta running with a set of innovative startups and SMEs in Switzerland. In October, it will launch the public beta – the waiting list sits at 60 SMEs and continues to grow with anticipation for the release, as revealed by Eid.

Investors including Polytech Ventures, ACE & Company and Fusion Partners are supporting Earny in accelerating its plans with close to one million investment, raised as part of a seed funding round.

Over 600,000 SMEs could benefit from Earny
To exhibit the potential of Earny’s business model and the addressable market, Guillaume Dubray, CEO of Polytech Ventures, says, “We were inspired by a U.S payroll startup called Gusto who secured 175 Mil in August 2021 for a 10 Billion USD valuation claiming 200,000 SME customers. In Switzerland, we have close to 600,000 SMEs with three million employees. In addition, there are 45,000 newly created SMEs each year, and today alone, there are 137 newly created SMEs.”

(RAN)