Knowledge for Swiss roofers

Here we explain the terms and steps Swiss roofing and sheet-metal firms deal with in the office, from the quote to the paid QR bill.

Updated October 2026

Guides

• QR bills for roofers
  Advance, interim and final invoices with a QR payment part, the right reference, and the structured addresses required since November 2025.
• camt.054 for trade firms
  What your bank's file contains, how matching by QR reference works, and what happens with partial payments.

What do the trade terms mean?

Offerte (quote)

The Offerte is a firm's written quote to the client or the architect. It lists positions, quantities and unit prices. Once the client accepts it, it becomes the basis of the work contract and later of the invoice.

Rapport (daily report)

The Rapport, usually kept as a daily report, records who worked how many hours on site, which material was used and what got done. It is the basis for wages, post-job costing and time-and-material invoices.

Regie (time and material)

Regie work is billed by effort, not by quoted unit prices: hours worked at agreed rates plus material. It is backed by Rapporte (daily reports) the client signs. Typical for repairs and unforeseen work.

Ausmass (measured quantities)

The Ausmass is the measurement of the quantities actually built, for example square metres of roof or running metres of gutter. It replaces the estimated quantities from the quote and is the basis for interim and final invoices.

NPK

The NPK (Normpositionen-Katalog, standard positions catalogue) by CRB describes construction work in standardised positions: about 200 chapters, organised by trade, in German, French and Italian. Architects use it to build the bills of quantities for their tenders. Source: CRB.

SIA 451

SIA 451 is the SIA recommendation for data formats of bills of quantities, published in 1992 together with CRB. It made the electronic exchange of NPK tenders possible. Since 2020 the CRB guideline IfA18 with the CRBX format applies. Sources: SIA, CRB.

camt.054

camt.054 is the ISO 20022 bank message Swiss banks use to report credits and debits. For batch bookings it lists every single payment with its amount and reference. Software uses it to match open invoices automatically. Source: SIX. More on this.

QR-Rechnung (Swiss QR bill)

The QR bill is an invoice with a payment part and a Swiss QR Code. It replaced the red and orange payment slips on 30 September 2022. The code holds account, amount, reference and addresses, and the banking app reads it. Source: PostFinance. More on this.