Invoicing in Switzerland: what has to be on the invoice

What Art. 26 MWSTG requires

An invoice from a VAT-registered person has to carry:

1. Your name and the place you trade under
2. The statement that you are on the VAT register and the number you are registered under — the MWST-Nr. in the form CHE-123.456.789 MWST does both at once
3. Your customer's name and place, as they trade
4. The date of the supply, or the period, if it is not the invoice date
5. The nature, object and extent of what you supplied
6. The consideration
7. The rate that applies and the tax amount — or, where the consideration includes the tax, the rate alone

Seven items, and the important one is the one missing: a sequential invoice number is not on that list. Nor does Art. 26 ask for the invoice date as such — what it wants is the date of supply. Printing both is fine; citing Art. 26 as the reason you must is citing an article it does not appear in.

The systematics of numbering are in the invoice numbering guide, and if you would rather start from a ready-made layout, the formats are at invoice templates.

The invoice number: required, by a different statute

Almost every Swiss guide lists a unique invoice number among the Art. 26 MWSTG requirements. It is not there. That does not mean you do not need one.

• Art. 957a OR requires bookkeeping that is complete, truthful, systematic and auditable — which is not possible without continuous numbering.
• Your VAT return has to reconcile with your documents. A gap or a duplicate is exactly what an audit picks up.
• A customer who receives two invoices bearing the same number pays one of them, and you have no record of which.

So the practical answer does not change: number them, without gaps, on a scheme you will still understand in a year. What changes is the reason — and knowing the reason also tells you that a credit note or a collective invoice does not suddenly become unlawful for falling out of sequence.

The rates: 8.1%, 2.6% and one special rate

Three rates, at these levels since 1 January 2024 (Art. 25 MWSTG):

• 8.1% standard — everything not expressly treated otherwise
• 2.6% reduced — food, water, medicines, books, newspapers, magazines
• 3.8% special rate — accommodation, meaning a night's stay with breakfast
• 0%, or exempt without credit — education, health, letting, financial services and the rest of the list in Art. 21 MWSTG

The rate belongs on the invoice, and it is the rate in force when the supply happened rather than when the invoice was written. A supply spanning the year end is decided by the period of performance — which is one reason Art. 26 asks for the date of supply and not for the date of the invoice.

When you have to charge VAT: CHF 100,000

Liability starts at CHF 100,000 of annual turnover from taxable supplies (Art. 10 para. 2 lit. a MWSTG). Below it:

• You invoice without VAT and without an MWST-Nr.
• You show no rate and no tax amount — and anyone who shows them anyway owes the shown amount to the ESTV.
• You can register voluntarily, which is worth it if you carry a lot of input tax or your customers can deduct it anyway.

Above the threshold there is a simplification that does not relieve you of showing the tax: the balance-tax-rate method (Art. 37 MWSTG) lets you settle with the ESTV at a sector rate while the invoice still shows the statutory one. It changes your return, not your document. It is the one place where a simplification and an invoice genuinely have nothing to do with each other.

Francs, foreign currency and the five-centime question

You may invoice in any currency (Art. 45 para. 2 MWSTV). Conversion into francs is for your VAT return, not for your document — and that is a real difference from Germany, where §14(4) UStG wants the tax amount in euros on the invoice itself. A Swiss invoice in euros needs no franc line.

• For the return you convert at the ESTV's monthly average or at the daily rate — one of the two, chosen once per tax period (Art. 45 paras. 3 and 5 MWSTV).
• On the invoice the amount stands in the currency you billed in. An extra conversion note is allowed and required nowhere.
• The QR-bill's payment part knows exactly two currencies: CHF and EUR. Invoice in dollars and you send an invoice without a payment part.

On rounding there is a sentence you will read almost everywhere: final amounts must always be rounded to five centimes. That is true of cash — five centimes is simply the smallest coin. For an invoice settled by transfer the law asks for nothing of the sort, and the QR-bill's amount field takes centimes to the centime. An invoice for CHF 1'334.82 is valid, payable and scans cleanly. Plenty of Swiss software rounds anyway and prints a rounding line; that is habit and good manners, not an obligation.

The small-amount invoice Switzerland does not have

Anyone arriving from Germany or Austria looks first for the value threshold below which an invoice may carry less. Germany has one, Austria has one, and a great many Swiss guides print one too — usually as a “small-amount invoice up to CHF 400”. Switzerland has no such thing.

Art. 57 MWSTV relaxes exactly one item — the recipient's name and place — and only on cash-register receipts up to CHF 400.

A till slip in a shop is what that means. An invoice for CHF 300 that you write and send is not one; it needs its recipient like any other. The CHF 400 is real, the term is not, and the confusion costs your customer their input-tax deduction.

The QR-bill: the payment part is part of the invoice

Since 1 October 2022 the orange and red payment slips are history and Switzerland pays through the QR-bill. The payment part is not decoration: it is the machine-readable half of the document — account, amount, currency, creditor and, if you use one, the reference number, all repeated inside the Swiss QR Code.

• It sits at the foot of the last page, at a position the standard fixes, with perforation marks.
• A structured address is no longer optional: street, house number, postcode and town as separate fields rather than one block of text.
• A QR-IBAN goes with a QR reference; an ordinary IBAN goes with no reference or with an ISO 11649 Creditor Reference. Get the pairing wrong and the bank rejects the payment.
• The standard moves to version 2.4 on 14 November 2026 — a date most guides have yet to mention.

Two things get conflated here. The QR-bill is the paper, or the PDF, with the payment part at the bottom. eBill is something else: a network between banks that delivers invoices straight into your customer's online banking, with both sides enrolled. Sending a QR-bill does not put you on eBill, and being on eBill usually still means sending a PDF as well. To start with you only need the payment part.

If you invoice on both sides of the border, the German systematics — the §-references and the e-invoicing mandate — are in the guide to invoicing in Germany.

Customers abroad: no reverse charge, no EU line

This is where Switzerland parts company with its neighbours most sharply. It is not in the EU, so there is no intra-community supply, no recapitulative statement and no reverse charge to invoke. For services the place of supply is where the recipient is (Art. 8 para. 1 MWSTG), and what is there is outside Swiss VAT.

• A customer in Germany and a customer in the United States are the same case. Neither invoice carries VAT.
• The invoice should say why, in one line: no VAT, recipient abroad. A reference to an EU directive does not belong there.
• Liechtenstein is the exception. It is inside Swiss VAT territory by treaty, so 8.1% applies exactly as it would at home.
• Your EU customer accounts for the tax in their own country. That is their obligation, not yours, and you do not mention it on your invoice.

Four places where a Swiss invoice is not a German one

The shared language invites a shortcut: a German template looks usable at a glance. These four points make it unusable.

• The word is MWST, never Umsatzsteuer. Umsatzsteuer names a tax levied under the EU VAT Directive — printing it on a Swiss document names a foreign statute.
• The number is the MWST-Nr. in the form CHE-123.456.789 MWST, not a Steuernummer and not a VAT ID. The MWST suffix is required, and it is what states that you are registered.
• There is no small-business scheme under §19 UStG and no sentence citing one. Below CHF 100,000 you are simply not liable, and the invoice says nothing about it.
• Germany's e-invoicing mandate does not reach Switzerland. The Confederation requires electronic invoices from its own suppliers; between private parties there is no such obligation.

Austria sits between the two: EU law like Germany, but with its own systematics — invoice requirements in Austria are set out on their own page.

Sources

Every statement on this page comes from one of these documents.

• MWSTG (SR 641.20) — the VAT Act — the consolidated text on Fedlex: Art. 26 the required particulars, Art. 25 the rates, Art. 10 liability, Art. 8 the place of supply, Art. 37 the balance tax rates
• MWSTV (SR 641.201) — the ordinance — Art. 57 is the only relief by value, and it applies only to cash-register receipts up to CHF 400
• OR (SR 220) — the Code of Obligations — Art. 957a requires auditable bookkeeping and is the real reason for a sequential invoice number
• ESTV — VAT rates — 8.1%, 2.6% and 3.8% from the federal administration itself, with the lists of what falls under which rate
• ESTV — VAT liability — the CHF 100,000 threshold, voluntary registration, and what registering asks of you
• BFS — business identification number — the CHE number, its check digit, and how the UID relates to the MWST-Nr.
• Swiss Payment Standards — QR-bill — the Implementation Guidelines for the payment part: geometry, reference types, and version 2.4 of 14 November 2026

Frequently asked