What is an alternative to an Excel list for job-search efforts?

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As of 4 September 2026. "not stated" means it could not be read on their own site — not "does not exist". Our rows come from the code (lib/stripe/trialConfig.ts) and from walking the live flow, not from marketing copy.

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As of 4 September 2026. "not stated" means it could not be read on their own site — not "does not exist". Our rows come from the code (lib/stripe/trialConfig.ts) and from walking the live flow, not from marketing copy.

Why a spreadsheet is not the proof

Two Swiss terms carry this question. Arbeitsbemühungen are your job-search efforts; the Nachweis is the monthly proof of them that you submit to your RAV (the regional employment centre). Unemployment benefit here is not paid against a registration alone — it is paid against a monthly, self-reported, individually checked record of what you did to end your unemployment.

The law is about the record, not the software. Art. 17 para. 1 AVIG requires the insured person to do everything that can reasonably be expected of them to avoid or shorten unemployment, in particular to look for work, if necessary outside their previous occupation, and closes with the sentence that matters here: they must be able to prove their efforts. Art. 26 para. 2 AVIV then fixes the mechanics — the proof is submitted for every control period by the fifth day of the following month at the latest, and para. 3 has the competent office check the efforts monthly.

The operative verb is “submit”. A file sitting on your computer, however neatly kept, has not been submitted. The form itself settles the tool question in a subordinate clause: after explaining that written details of your efforts must reach the competent office by the fifth of the following month, it adds that this form is what serves that purpose — and the French and Italian editions of the same form are more explicit still, requiring the details to be given “au moyen du présent formulaire” and “utilizzando il presente modulo”. If you want to hand in a list of your own, ask your RAV rather than assuming.

The alternative that actually replaces the spreadsheet

It is the eService on job-room.ch. arbeit.swiss lists three eServices from the RAV — efforts to find work, incapacity to work, and documents for jobseeking — and recommends them over the paper route in terms of the transfer itself: “These eServices guarantee that your data will be transmitted safely and confidentially.” That is not a slogan when the alternative is a spreadsheet travelling as an e-mail attachment with employer names, contact people and phone numbers in it, which is a real consideration under Swiss data-protection law.

The second difference is that the eService delivers by itself. Canton Zurich's instructions put it plainly: recorded efforts are transmitted to your RAV automatically overnight on the 5th to the 6th of the month, and a manual transmission can be triggered at set times. Record and you have submitted. With a spreadsheet those are two separate acts, and the second one is the one that gets forgotten at 11pm on the 5th.

The third point is where most arguments for keeping Excel quietly collapse. The same page states you can export an up-to-date summary of all of a month's efforts as a PDF at any time, “as a basis for advisory meetings or for your own local records”. If you kept the spreadsheet so you could put a sheet of paper on your adviser's desk, or look something up a year later, the eService gives you exactly that — without keeping the record twice.

The form, and how it is actually handed in

The second alternative is the PDF form from arbeit.swiss, which is the right choice if you do not want a Job-Room account or the portal login is failing. Its handling instructions are specific enough to change how you use it: download it, save it locally, open it in Acrobat Reader rather than in the browser, and then the sentence that matters — “Complete the form on your computer – this is important, as the ALK will scan the form using character recognition software.” A form filled in by hand, and a photo of one even more so, is the wrong format for this route; Canton Zurich states outright that photographs of the form should not be sent.

How you submit is decided by your canton, not by Bern. Zurich lists four routes side by side: online through the eServices, by e-mail to your RAV adviser, by post, or in person at the RAV. Other cantons run it tighter. Geneva posts a personalised form to you each month and its cantonal employment office states that the downloadable version may only be used to complement the one sent by SECO — “en complément de celui envoyé par le SECO”. If you move canton mid-search, do not treat that as a detail.

One field on the form explains why the tool question is finally a question about dates. The top of the sheet carries a box for the date of receipt or the postmark. What counts is when the office has the proof, not the date in your cell. A spreadsheet has no timestamp that anyone but you can confirm.

The weeks when your own list is the only option

There is a gap, and it falls exactly when most people start a spreadsheet. The form's notice states that the duty to look for work personally applies before unemployment begins — for example during the notice period, or during a fixed-term contract. Applications made while you are still employed count, and they are looked at when you first sit down with an adviser.

The eService is not open to you yet in that window. arbeit.swiss sets out the order without ambiguity: first sign on with the RAV, and only after the RAV has completed that sign-on do you register for Job-Room and open an account. Until then you have two options — the downloadable form, or your own list, transferred later. Geneva names this case explicitly as a legitimate use of the downloadable form: “en prévision d'une prochaine inscription”, in preparation for an upcoming registration.

What is at stake is printed on the same form: someone who does not make sufficient efforts to find suitable work is suspended from entitlement for up to 60 days depending on fault, under Art. 30 AVIG. So the list you keep during your notice period is not admin — it is the only thing you can show on the day you register. Keep it with the fields the proof will later ask for and the transfer takes fifteen minutes rather than an evening.

What the spreadsheet keeps

The honest balance: the file is yours, it works with no login and no connection, it still opens after your benefit period has ended, and it takes any column the official proof has no box for — when you meant to follow up, who actually called back, what the Pensum (workload, stated as a percentage) turned out to be negotiable to, how long the commute is, what you want to do differently at the second interview. The proof is a form for an authority; it is not a tool for running a search. Forcing both into one file makes neither better.

There is also an obligation the eService does not take off your hands: the form's notice states that written documents such as copies of applications or rejection letters are to be retained and produced on request. A folder of sent PDFs beside an index file is still the simplest way to hold that. So keeping the spreadsheet is defensible — just not for the reason people usually give. What it cannot be is the submission.

Five working days that only the official portal gives you

There is one advantage of the official channel that has nothing to do with the proof, and that no spreadsheet and no private job board — ours included — can reproduce. Since 1 January 2020, employers must report vacancies to the RAV in occupations with a nationwide unemployment rate of at least 5 per cent. Those vacancies appear first in the protected area of Job-Room, and only five working days later may they be advertised anywhere else.

For a jobseeker that is a five-working-day head start on everyone outside the system, in precisely the occupations where competition is heaviest. Only people registered with an RAV can see that protected area. If you are opening Job-Room every month for the proof anyway, you already have the access; if you run everything in Excel and avoid the portal, you are giving away a week.

Where SwissJobs.app fits, and where it does not

First the sentence that outranks anything we could say about our own tool: job-search efforts count where your RAV receives them — in the Job-Room eService or on the form. We are not a substitute for that and do not want to be. Running your month here and submitting nothing to the RAV means you have submitted nothing, and that can cost you daily allowances.

What we are is the list beside it. A vacancy you save from the feed lands in your application list with job title, employer, location, link and date; applications from anywhere else you add by hand, with a contact person. Free, an account is enough. The benefit here is narrow: on the 5th you have the details in front of you to type into the eService, instead of reconstructing them from your inbox.

And the limits, because they decide the choice: there is no export and no print view, no fields for Pensum, method of application or reason for rejection, no back-link to the advert for LinkedIn listings, and nothing at all without an account and a connection. If the monthly proof is all you need, you do not need us here — the eService alone is the complete answer.

Which one for whom

Registered, with a Job-Room account: use the eService, and export the monthly PDF if you want a copy. It is the only version in which you keep the record once, and the export covers what most people kept the spreadsheet for.

Under notice but not yet registered: keep your own list, but with the fields the proof will ask for — date of application, company and address, contact person with phone number, job title, Pensum, how you applied, and the outcome. File the documents you sent alongside it. On registration day, that list is your evidence for the notice period.

No Job-Room account and none planned: use the form, fill it in on a computer, and confirm the submission route with your adviser, because the routes differ by canton and Geneva even prescribes which copy of the form is valid. And if you are keeping a spreadsheet purely for yourself, with no RAV registration behind it, you have no problem to solve — the spreadsheet is fine.