The business magazine Bilanz is one of Switzerland’s most widely read and consulted economic magazines. It offers solidly investigated printed business journalism and a balanced international perspective.
The BILANZ Private Banking Awards (BILANZ-Private Bankenpreise) recognise outstanding quality in the financial services provided by Swiss banks and institutions. Every year, a high-calibre jury puts 80 private banks under the spotlight and sends an actual client to around 100 of them as a test subject.
A merger between UBS and Credit Suisse was considered seriously during discussions earlier this year, according to a report in the finance periodical Bilanz. Nevertheless, the talks had since stagnated amid a share price decline that placed their respective valuations beyond the threshold for a merger of equals, sources told Bilanz.
E-Bilanz is a requirement for companies in Germany, starting in 2014. In accordance with section 5b of the German Income Tax Act (EStG), certain taxpayers must submit their balance sheet and income statement (profit and loss account) to the fiscal authority in electronic format. The document must be sent electronically from the control authority’s portal (ELSTER).
For submitting an electronic financial report, all general ledger accounts of the company must be mapped to the e-bilanz taxonomy in SAP. This is a demanding task that requires an accurate mapping of the data.
SNI’s e-bilanz solution works within the SAP application and covers the mapping of general ledger accounts to e-bilanz schemes (taxonomies). The electronic balance sheet and income statement document is automatically generated from extracted data in the system, and is then delivered to the ELSTER portal directly from SAP through a connector.
In addition, the system is certified by the Federal Ministry of Finance for e-bilanz submissions. This ensures that users can access the required functionality with the appropriate authorizations in the SAP ERP Client for E-Bilanz and that the data is properly structured.
ELBA is part of the ‘digital agenda’ of the government and aims to replace paper-based annual accounts with digital financial reports. It is designed to automate credit standing checks and reduce the number of manual processes for financial institutions.
The ELBA project is the first step in the process of digitalising financial reporting. It replaces the traditional, paper-based annual financial report with a digital version which can be submitted to the public authorities and banks.
As a result, the process of transmitting and processing E-Bilanz can be greatly simplified, making it possible to significantly increase the speed of business. In addition, it provides additional benefits such as faster and more efficient credit standing checks.
In the future, it is hoped that the e-bilanz project will be a major milestone in the digitization of the economic reporting process in Germany. This will allow more information about the business and its economic performance to be available in the same format, as well as facilitating the use of new technologies.