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Invoices & accounting

Switzerland E-Invoicing: QR-Bill and eBill Are Not E-Invoices (and There Is No B2B Mandate)

Switzerland only mandates e-invoices for federal contracts above CHF 5,000. The QR-bill automates payment, not bookkeeping. What still arrives as a PDF and how to handle it.

4 min read

Switzerland has no B2B or B2C e-invoicing mandate, and the Federal Council has not announced one. The only obligation is B2G: since 2016, suppliers to the federal administration must send e-invoices for contracts above CHF 5,000. And two things Swiss businesses already use every day — the QR-bill and eBill — are often mistaken for e-invoicing, but neither makes an invoice structured data.

This guide sets out the rules, the difference between QR-bill, eBill and a structured e-invoice, and what that means for the documents your accounts team still types by hand.

The rules today

Status in Switzerland
B2B e-invoicingVoluntary; no mandate announced
B2C e-invoicingVoluntary
B2G (federal administration)Mandatory since 2016 for contracts above CHF 5,000

Switzerland is not part of the EU, so ViDA and the EU mandates do not apply to Swiss businesses directly — but Swiss companies selling into France, Germany or Belgium meet those rules through their customers. Confirm your position with your fiduciary (Treuhänder) — this article is not tax advice.

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QR-bill and eBill are not e-invoices

  • QR-bill. Since the old orange and red payment slips were withdrawn in 2022, Swiss invoices carry a QR code with the payment data: creditor, IBAN, amount, reference. It lets the payer's bank app pay without typing, but it does not contain the invoice lines, the VAT breakdown or the supplier's VAT number. The invoice itself is still a PDF or a sheet of paper.
  • eBill. A banking channel that delivers bills into the customer's e-banking for approval. It is a delivery and payment workflow, not a structured-invoice standard for bookkeeping.

For accounting, that means the payment can be automated while the booking still needs the invoice data — and that data sits in an unstructured document.

What still arrives as a PDF or a photo

  1. 1Supplier invoices from Swiss companies, QR-bill included.
  2. 2Invoices from EU suppliers. Cross-border invoices are outside the EU domestic mandates.
  3. 3Receipts behind expense claims.
  4. 4Delivery notes, quotes and purchase orders.

Where WhappScan fits

WhappScan is not an eBill or Peppol provider. It reads invoices, receipts, delivery notes, quotes and purchase orders that arrive as a PDF or a photo and returns their fields — supplier, VAT number, date, VAT, total, and each line where the document has them — ready for Excel or your accounting software. Staff and clients can send the photo by WhatsApp, with nothing to install.

Try it on your own documents: the invoice to Excel tool, the receipt to Excel tool and the delivery note tool are free, need no signup and handle up to three documents a day.

Next door: Germany's e-invoicing mandate, France since 1 September 2026 and Austria. All countries: e-invoicing mandates country by country.

Sources

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