The conversation about e-invoicing often focuses on automation, data quality, and compliance. The cost comparison rarely gets as much attention, which is a shame, because it is one of the most straightforward arguments for making the switch. Paper invoicing in Switzerland is genuinely expensive, and the gap between what a paper invoice costs and what an eBill invoice costs is large enough to justify the investment on its own.
This post builds the comparison from the ground up, so you can adapt it to your own volume and cost structure.
What a paper invoice actually costs
Most companies that calculate the cost of a paper invoice for the first time are surprised by the number. The visible costs — printing and postage — are only part of it. Here is the full breakdown.
Printing. A single-page invoice on A4, printed in colour on a laser printer, costs roughly CHF 0.05–0.10 per page in consumables (toner, paper, maintenance allocation). If the invoice is two pages or includes an insert — a remittance slip, a QR-bill section, a promotional flyer — the cost rises proportionally. High-volume billers using dedicated print infrastructure may get this lower; smaller companies with office printers pay more.
Envelope and materials. A C5 or DL envelope with a window, plus any insert materials, runs CHF 0.08–0.15 per invoice.
Postage. Swiss Post's standard B-Post rate for a letter up to 100g is CHF 1.10 as of 2025. A-Post is CHF 1.20. Most companies send invoices B-Post unless payment terms are very short. For invoices over 100g — thick attachments, multiple pages — you move into a higher weight band.
Staff handling time. Printing, folding, inserting, sealing, and franking take time. For a small company doing this manually, budget 2–3 minutes per invoice. For companies with franking machines and envelope stuffers, it drops to under a minute — but the equipment has its own costs.
Address verification and returns. Undeliverable mail comes back. If a customer has moved and your address master has not been updated, you pay the outbound postage and then handle the return. Even a 1–2% undeliverable rate adds measurable cost at scale.
Inbound query handling. Paper invoices generate more queries than electronic ones. Customers misplace them, cannot read the payment details, or call to ask whether you received their payment. Each call takes staff time. This is harder to attribute directly to the paper format, but it is a real cost difference.
Adding these up for a typical paper invoice:
| Component | Cost estimate |
|---|---|
| Print and materials | CHF 0.20–0.30 |
| Postage (B-Post) | CHF 1.10 |
| Staff handling (1.5 min at CHF 80/h) | CHF 2.00 |
| Address errors and returns (2% allocation) | CHF 0.07 |
| Query handling allocation | CHF 0.30–0.60 |
| Total per paper invoice | CHF 3.67–4.07 |
For a company sending 500 invoices per month, that is CHF 1,835–2,035 per month, or CHF 22,000–24,400 per year. Just on the sending side, before any of the payment-side reconciliation costs.
What an eBill invoice costs
The cost of sending an invoice via eBill is primarily the service provider fee. This varies by provider and volume tier, but the market range for Swiss BSPs is approximately:
| Volume tier (invoices/month) | Typical per-invoice fee |
|---|---|
| 1–100 | CHF 0.50–0.90 |
| 100–1,000 | CHF 0.25–0.50 |
| 1,000–10,000 | CHF 0.10–0.25 |
| 10,000+ | CHF 0.05–0.15 |
There is also typically a monthly base fee or setup fee, which varies significantly between providers. Budget CHF 30–100 per month in base fees for a small to mid-sized biller, with setup fees of CHF 500–2,000 for initial integration.
The staff cost per invoice via eBill is close to zero for invoices generated automatically by your billing system. If your system is integrated — your ERP sends invoices to the service provider's API without manual steps — the marginal effort per invoice is a fraction of a minute, concentrated in setup and exception handling rather than per-invoice handling.
Adding it up for eBill at 500 invoices per month:
| Component | Cost estimate |
|---|---|
| Service provider fee (mid-tier rate CHF 0.35) | CHF 0.35 |
| Staff handling (automated, ~10 seconds per) | CHF 0.22 |
| Exception handling allocation (5% × 10 min) | CHF 0.67 |
| Total per eBill invoice | CHF 1.24 |
That is roughly three times cheaper than paper per invoice — and the gap widens as eBill volume grows and the per-invoice fee drops into lower tiers.
The break-even point
The main fixed cost of switching to eBill is the integration investment: connecting your billing system to a service provider, testing, and onboarding your customers. For a straightforward integration using your ERP vendor's native eBill module, this might be CHF 3,000–8,000 in one-time effort. For a custom API integration, it is more — typically CHF 10,000–25,000.
At a saving of CHF 2.50 per invoice (CHF 3.75 paper minus CHF 1.25 eBill), the break-even on a CHF 8,000 integration investment is 3,200 invoices — about six months at 500 invoices per month.
At higher volumes, payback is even faster. A company sending 2,000 invoices per month saves roughly CHF 5,000 per month net, recovering a CHF 20,000 integration investment in four months.
What the comparison misses
The per-invoice cost is the most visible part of the comparison, but not the only one.
Payment speed. eBill invoices reach the payer's e-banking immediately. Paper invoices take one to two working days to arrive. For payment terms of 30 days, that difference in delivery time can translate to two days of additional DSO. Over a year, at scale, that is a working capital difference worth tracking.
Reconciliation. Paper invoices with QR-bill sections do enable automated reconciliation via the QR reference — but only if the customer scans the code rather than entering the IBAN manually. eBill payments carry the reference automatically, regardless of how the customer approves the invoice. The reconciliation exception rate on eBill payments is lower. That means less AR staff time per CHF of revenue.
Environmental cost. Not directly financial, but for companies with sustainability reporting commitments, eliminating paper invoices reduces paper consumption, printing energy, and transport emissions. Some Swiss companies report this as part of their ESG metrics.
Not all customers are on eBill. The cost comparison above assumes you can switch a customer to eBill. Customers who are not registered eBill payers stay on paper or move to email PDF. The overall cost reduction depends on what share of your customer base is reachable via eBill — currently around 3 million registered payers in Switzerland, growing steadily. For consumer billers in particular, the reachable share is already high enough to make eBill worthwhile even if a third of customers stay on paper.
The right way to read these numbers
The figures above are illustrative. Your actual costs will depend on your postage volume, your staff costs, your service provider choice, and how automated your billing already is. Build the comparison from your own data: take last month's invoice volume, estimate your current per-invoice cost using the components above, and compare it to what a service provider would charge for the same volume at their published rates.
In almost every case, the answer comes out clearly in favour of eBill above a few hundred invoices per month. The question is not whether it saves money — it does — but whether the implementation investment is proportionate to your volume. For companies sending fewer than 50 invoices per month, the savings are modest and the effort may not be worth it. For anyone above that threshold, the numbers work.