by Ketl
June 29, 2026
11 min read
Fiduciary Document Management: 10 to 30 Hours Lost Every Month
How Swiss fiduciaries lose 10 to 30 h/month on document filing, and how to automate it without hiring. A field experience report.
TL;DR
A mid-sized fiduciary company devotes between 10 and 30 hours per month and per team to manual document filing alone. That is time taken away from advisory work, client relationships and value-added tasks. The cause is structural: without an automated filing system, each employee develops their own naming conventions, documents accumulate in emails, and audit preparation becomes a manual reconstruction. This article documents the problem, quantifies its real cost, and presents the steps to solve it without service interruption.
Introduction
Document management at a fiduciary rarely looks like the priority problem. Clients are served, filings go out on time, files exist somewhere. The real cost remains invisible because it dilutes into daily micro-tasks: finding a 2023 invoice, reconstructing a client's history before a meeting, verifying that the latest version of the balance sheet is indeed the one sent to the auditor.
At Ketl, we have been working since 2021 with Swiss fiduciary companies of 3 to 50 employees. We systematically observe significant document disorganisation that stems from a process architecture problem, and only secondarily from discipline. Fortunately, it can be corrected with the right tools, without hiring.
Document dispersion: a cost few fiduciaries have quantified
Findings from a two-hour document audit
When we onboard a new fiduciary client, the first step is an assessment of the existing document organisation. The findings are remarkably consistent from one company to another.
Supporting documents arrive by email, sometimes as scanned mail, sometimes deposited directly by the client into a shared folder. Each employee renames them according to their own logic. The same document can exist in three versions in three different locations, without any being clearly identified as the reference version.
Searching for a specific document takes an average of 3 to 8 minutes when filing is manual. At 20 searches per day per employee, that is 1 to 2.5 hours devoted daily to document location alone.
The real cost: 10 to 30 hours per month per team
Based on measurements taken at our clients before Ketl deployment, the time devoted to document filing alone sits between 10 and 30 hours per month per team for a mid-sized fiduciary company.
This figure includes:
- Renaming and manual filing of incoming documents
- Document searches during client exchanges
- Reconstruction of document history before audits
- Correction of filing errors discovered late
At an average hourly rate of CHF 80 to 120 for a qualified employee, these 10 to 30 hours represent between CHF 800 and CHF 3'600 per month of invisible operational cost, before even accounting for filing errors and their consequences.
Observed in production: at a Geneva fiduciary of 8 employees, the pre-Ketl document audit revealed an average of 4.2 versions per reference document, and an audit preparation time estimated at 3 working days per financial year. After deployment, this time fell to less than half a day.
The four structural errors of fiduciary document management
1. Email as an archiving system
The employee's mailbox has become, by default, the primary archiving system of most fiduciaries. Attachments accumulate there, hard to find, impossible to share without being re-sent, and completely invisible if the employee leaves the company.
2. Folder trees without a shared convention
Every company involves a file tree. Few have a written and respected naming convention. Result: Meier_invoice_march.pdf, Invoice Meier 03-2025.pdf and 2025_03_Meier_I.pdf coexist in three different directories, all created by different employees who thought they were doing the right thing.
3. Audit preparation as a reconstruction project
Without automated traceability, preparing an audit file is a work of reconstruction: gathering documents from multiple sources, checking versions, ensuring nothing is missing. This work typically takes 2 to 4 days per financial year for a company of 10 to 20 employees.
4. The absence of a document validation workflow
A document that is received and filed, but unvalidated, can wrongly be used as a reference. Without a validation workflow integrated into the document system, validation remains informal: a Slack message, a confirmation email with zero traceability.
Concrete contributions of a suitable document management system
Automatic filing by client and financial year
A DMS adapted to fiduciaries analyses each document on receipt: it identifies the client name, the financial year, the document type (invoice, payslip, tax return, bank statement) and files it automatically in the right tree.
At Ketl, this filing happens in one click from Outlook. The attachment of a client email is analysed by the document AI, which proposes the appropriate filing. The employee validates or corrects in 10 seconds. The document is archived in the chosen storage solution according to a standardised convention, with timestamp and traceability.
Measured impact: 1 to 3 minutes saved per document processed. On a volume of 50 to 200 incoming documents per day, the daily gain is immediately noticeable.
Instant search across all documents
A structured document system allows any document to be found in seconds, regardless of the filing date or the employee who processed it.
Search by client, financial year, document type or text content replaces manual navigation through complex folder trees. For an employee responding to a client request in real time, it is the difference between 30 seconds and 8 minutes.
Integrated validation workflows
Ketl's Flows allow document validation circuits to be defined visually, without IT skills. A received payslip can automatically trigger a verification task assigned to the payroll team leader, with a deadline and automatic reminder. The audit trail is complete and accessible at all times.
One-click audit preparation
With a tree standardised by client, financial year and document type, exporting a complete file for an external audit takes just a few minutes. All documents are versioned, timestamped and attached to their processing context.
Document storage: SharePoint, kDrive or Nextcloud
Ketl works independently of the storage solution chosen by the user. Three options are commonly used by our fiduciary clients, each with a different sovereignty and cost profile.
Microsoft 365 / SharePoint is the most widespread solution. Ketl integrates natively: documents are filed and archived directly in your existing SharePoint environment, accessible from Teams and Outlook. For clients already on M365, adoption is immediate and the marginal cost near zero. Worth noting: SharePoint relies on Microsoft infrastructure, a company domiciled in the United States, which introduces exposure to the US Cloud Act for sensitive client data.
kDrive (Infomaniak) is the most accessible Swiss sovereign alternative. Infomaniak is a Geneva company subject exclusively to Swiss law. Its datacenters are in Switzerland, powered by renewable energy. The US Cloud Act does not apply. kSuite with 3 TB of storage per user is available at approximately one third of the price of an equivalent M365 licence. Ketl connects natively for clients who want a fully sovereign solution at a controlled cost.
Nextcloud is the choice of fiduciaries requiring total control of their infrastructure. Installed on a server on your premises or with a specialised Swiss hoster, Nextcloud guarantees that zero client data transits to a third party. Ketl integrates with it as well. The trade-off is a higher maintenance burden, recommended for companies with dedicated IT support or a trusted provider.
For Swiss fiduciaries subject to the nLPD and professional secrecy, kDrive or Nextcloud offer a more solid answer than SharePoint on the data sovereignty question. Our complete comparison of the three solutions details the differences on legal, technical and pricing levels.
Fiduciary document management and nLPD compliance
The new Federal Act on Data Protection (nLPD), in force since September 2023, strengthens fiduciaries' obligations regarding the processing of their clients' personal data.
A compliant document system must guarantee:
- Data segregation by client
- Complete traceability of access and modifications
- The ability to produce or delete a client's data on request
- Hosting that satisfies nLPD requirements
Ketl is designed nLPD-native: data hosted exclusively in Switzerland, by a Swiss company, with a complete audit trail and segregation by client. For fiduciaries whose clients are Swiss natural persons, nLPD compliance constitutes a regulatory requirement in its own right.
Table: before and after a DMS adapted to fiduciaries
| Situation | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Filing of incoming documents | Manual, 2-5 min/document | Automatic, 1 click from Outlook |
| File naming | Heterogeneous by employee | Standardised by AI convention |
| Document search | 3-8 minutes on average | Under 30 seconds |
| Audit preparation | 2-4 days of reconstruction | Export in minutes |
| Document validation | Informal (email/Slack) | Traced workflow with automatic reminders |
| nLPD compliance | Partial, untraceable | Native, complete audit trail |
| Total filing time/month | 10-30 h per team | 1-5 h per team |
FAQ
How long does it take to deploy a DMS at a fiduciary company?
Standard Ketl deployment takes 4 weeks, team training included (2 hours). Configuration covers the connection to the chosen storage solution (SharePoint, kDrive or Nextcloud), historical document import, naming convention definition and initial workflow setup. Current operations remain active throughout the deployment period.
Does Ketl replace SharePoint or integrate with it?
Ketl integrates natively with Microsoft 365, including SharePoint. Documents are filed and archived in your existing environment. Ketl adds the document intelligence layer (automatic filing, OCR, semantic search, workflows) while keeping your storage infrastructure. For companies wanting a Swiss sovereign solution, Ketl also integrates with kDrive (Infomaniak) and Nextcloud.
What is the return on investment for a 10-person fiduciary company?
Based on Ketl deployments at comparable fiduciaries: productivity gain of 15 to 30% per employee, average break-even at 4 months, measured ROI between 100% and 350% over 4 years. At CHF 89 per user per month for 10 users, the monthly cost is CHF 890, compared to the CHF 800 to CHF 3'600 estimated monthly cost of manual filing.
How does Ketl handle scanned documents and mail received by post?
Ketl includes automatic OCR with data extraction on scanned PDFs, images and photographed documents. Scanned invoices, payslips and tax returns are indexed, their key fields extracted, and filed according to the same conventions as native digital documents. Recognition accuracy on clean documents: 98%+.
Is fiduciary document management different depending on the size of the fiduciary?
The underlying problem is identical whatever the size: dispersion, heterogeneity, absence of traceability. The scale varies with size. A 3-person company loses 10 to 15 hours per month. A 20-person SME will lose 60 to 80. Ketl is used by structures from 3 to 300 users with the same pricing model and the same functionality.
Conclusion
Document management at a fiduciary is above all a tooling problem. When filing is manual, dispersion is inevitable. When a search takes 8 minutes, employees eventually stop searching and redo the work. When audit preparation takes 3 days, that is 3 days of advisory work lost.
Automating filing, search and document validation frees up between 10 and 30 hours per month per team. Those hours return to where they create value: advisory work, client relationships, business development.
Concrete next step: estimate your current monthly filing time (number of documents processed × average time per document). This figure alone is generally enough to justify the decision.
Book a demo on your own documents We have been supporting Swiss SMEs and regulated professions in their digital transformation since 2019. Contact us or contact@ketl.ch
Written by James McGill, co-founder of Ketl. Structured and optimised with Ketl AI, our sovereign AI hosted in Switzerland.
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