Results are always up to date. Changes, retroactive calculations and corrections are calculated immediately after every case change - there is no separate payroll run to trigger.
Integrating Ason into your platform usually also means getting access to the outputs Ason generates from those results: payslips, payroll journal, posting documents, Swissdec declarations and more - generated automatically. This can mean automatically importing positions from the accounting document or providing a platform-native way for your clients to access the document from the payroll process.
Ason makes this easy by allowing you to subscribe to webhook events for the closure / finalization of the payrun period. The event for the closure will be fired shortly after closing the period. Documents associated with the closure are AccountingDocument, Payslip, CumulativeJournal and PaymentFile. The finalization of the period can take longer: Ason handles the submission to regulatory bodies in each country and will fire the finalization event when the process is complete. Depending on the country, different documents will be available from this process.
What you get, and when
After each payment
- Payment file (pain.001)
After closing the payroll period
- Payslips (per employee)
- Cumulative payroll journal (per employee and overall)
- Posting documents and recap
- Payroll statements
After finalising the payroll period
- Swissdec payroll notifications (ELM)
- Declarations to authorities and insurance companies
- Withholding tax reports
- Year-end reports
The accounting posting document
Every closed payroll period produces an accounting posting document (Buchungsbeleg) - a structured export of all payroll-related bookings, ready to import into any accounting/Fibu software:
- Salary expense, deductions and employer contributions per employee and Cost Center
- Bank transfer totals matching the payout that was executed
- One posting document per closed payroll period, generated automatically - no manual booking
How wage types map to accounts is configured once per payroll via WageType-Accounting-Allocation - and must be complete before a period can close.
Going live: enabling Swissdec transmission
Closing a period does not send anything to Swissdec until the payroll has been switched to "live" - a one-time step, not something that happens automatically on signup. Until then, periods close normally, but the Swissdec-related documents (declarations, ELM notifications) are simply not generated or sent.
To go live, update the payroll with a transmissionStartDate (UI: Payroll → Settings → "Go live"; API: PUT /tenants/{tenantId}/payrolls/{payrollId} with transmissionStartDate set to the period you want transmission to start from). From that period onward, closing will also submit to Swissdec.
Getting notified
Set up a webhook subscribed to PayrunPeriodClosed and PayrunPeriodFinalized to get notified the moment these happen - see the Webhooks page for the full setup, payload shape and signature verification. Webhook payloads are thin: they tell you that a period closed or finalised, not the documents themselves - use the retrieval endpoint below for those.
Retrieval
Code
The response is an array of documents:
Code
To fetch a single document instead of the whole list, use GET /api/tenants/{tenantId}/payrolls/{payrollId}/payrunperiods/{payrunPeriodId}/documents/{documentId}.
Testing
In the sandbox environment the finalization of the period is faked. Shortly after closing the period a finalized event will be sent with a document for each listed category.
FAQ
Do I need to trigger a payroll run to see updated results?
No - results recalculate automatically after every case change, within the open payrun period.
What triggers a recalculation?
Any New CaseChange - a salary change, a bonus, an absence, and so on.
How far back can results be recalculated?
Retroactively, based on the case change's start date - see Migrating historical data. The practical floor is the payroll's configured accounting start date; nothing can be dated earlier than that.
Can I see how a calculation is put together?
Yes - GET .../entries/{payrunPeriodEntryId}/relevantEventValues shows the case-change values that fed into that entry's result.
What's the difference between Outputs and the documents I upload myself?
Outputs are generated by Ason (payslips, declarations, posting documents). Files you attach to a case value are yours to upload - see Company Data / Employee Data.
Why isn't anything being sent to Swissdec after I close a period?
The payroll hasn't been switched to "live" yet - see "Going live" above.
Why does generating the accounting document fail?
The wage type to account mapping isn't complete for every wage type used in the period - see WageType-Accounting-Allocation.
Can the accounting document be generated as JSON?
No - generated documents (including the accounting document) only come as Word, Excel, Pdf, Xml, XmlRaw or Csv, whichever the assigned accountingDocument regulation produces. Xml/XmlRaw is the closest structured-data option; if you specifically need JSON, get in touch.
Do I need to poll for outputs?
No - subscribe via webhook. The payment file is also returned directly when you create a payout.
How do outputs fit into an accounting product?
See Embedded Into Your Platform.
Are payslips always up to date before a period closes?
The payslip file itself is only generated once the period closes - while the period is still open, the results above reflect up-to-date numbers, not a draft payslip file.
Where do I see the cumulative journal and payslips across all employees?
The cumulative journal is part of the period's Documents view, generated on close. Individual payslips are per-employee documents within that same set - there isn't a single "all payslips at once" page in the standard product UI, but the period's Documents endpoint returns every payslip document if you want to build that view yourself.
Can the layout of the payslip or cumulative journal be customized?
No customization option was found - treat the layout as fixed per regulation; get in touch if you need something different.
Where do I see which reports/documents were sent via ELM?
There's no dedicated "ELM submission log" - the closest is the period's Documents view after finalization, which includes the Swissdec-related declaration documents that were generated and sent.
When are year-end declarations sent?
As part of period finalization for the relevant year-end period, alongside the other Swissdec declarations - there's no separate manual trigger specific to year-end.
How do I automatically email payslips to employees after a period closes?
That's not a built-in Ason feature - Ason delivers the documents to you (webhook + documents endpoint); actually emailing them to employees is something you'd build on your platform, or check with support if you need this natively.
API Endpoints
| What | Call |
|---|---|
| Get current data values | GET /tenants/{orgId}/payrolls/{payrollId}/cases/values/time |
| Get values relevant to a payrun period entry | GET .../payrunperiods/{payrunPeriodId}/entries/{payrunPeriodEntryId}/relevantEventValues |
| List a payrun period's documents | GET .../payrunperiods/{payrunPeriodId}/documents |
| Get a specific payrun period document | GET .../payrunperiods/{payrunPeriodId}/documents/{documentId} |
| Update a payroll (e.g. set the go-live date) | PUT /tenants/{orgId}/payrolls/{payrollId} |
Webhook management endpoints (create/list/update/delete a subscription) are on the Webhooks page.