VAT Report
The VAT Report is where a Swiss VAT filing gets done — start to finish. Instead of exporting raw numbers and hoping they’re right, you review every VAT-relevant booking of the period, tick off what you’ve checked, let the automatic validation checks flag likely errors, then export the filing and lock the period so nothing changes after the fact.
Go to General Ledger → Reports → VAT Report (requires the VAT report permission — like all reports, the menu entry is hidden without it). The VAT codes themselves are configured under Taxes.
Choosing your method
Open Filters and pick the VAT Method that matches your registration with the tax administration. There are four options, built from two choices:
Effective or Saldo:
- Effective — the standard method: you owe the VAT you charged on sales, minus the input VAT (Vorsteuer) on your purchases. Filed quarterly.
- Saldo — the flat-rate method for smaller businesses: you owe a fixed percentage (your saldo rate, agreed with the ESTV) of gross turnover, and input VAT is not deducted. Filed half-yearly.
Agreed or collected:
- Agreed (vereinbart) — VAT counts in the period you invoiced. The default and most common basis.
- Collected (vereinnahmt) — VAT counts in the period you were paid. Only if the ESTV has approved this basis for you.
The default is “Effective — agreed (accrual)”. The Period selector matches the method — Q1–Q4 for Effective, H1/H2 for Saldo, or Custom From/To dates — and defaults to the current quarter or half-year; switching methods snaps the period accordingly. A Department filter is available if you use departments, and results update as you go — only Custom From/To dates wait until you press Search.
When a Saldo method is selected, a banner reminds you: “Saldo method: the tax filed is gross turnover × your saldo rate; input VAT (Vorsteuer) is not deducted.” The review tabs still show your input-VAT bookings so you can keep the books tidy — they just don’t reduce what you file.
The review workflow
The period’s bookings are split across three tabs, each with a badge counting the rows still to review:
- Receivables — output VAT: your customer invoices, plus credit-side GL postings.
- Payables — input VAT (Vorsteuer): vendor bills, shown as positive amounts. Both legs of a reverse-charge (Bezugsteuer) posting appear here too — the offsetting output leg as a negative amount, so the two legs cancel out on this tab.
- Other GL — GL postings without VAT, as a completeness check: scan it to confirm nothing here should have carried a VAT code.
Within each tab, rows are grouped per tax account with a subtotal per group and a grand total. Each row shows the Date, the Number (linking to the source document), Description, the Customer/Vendor with country and address, a Receipt column with attachment thumbnails, the Accounts involved, the Amount, the VAT Amount, and the VAT %. When a row’s VAT has been verified by the automatic recalculation, the VAT % column shows the official rate; a row that genuinely deviates keeps its real effective rate — and the column header sorts, so clicking VAT % groups deviating rates together within each tax-account section. A transaction that uses more than one VAT code appears once per code; each of its rows carries a small hint under the Accounts cell listing the other codes used in the same transaction.
The rhythm is simple: check a row against its receipt, tick its Status checkbox, and it disappears from the list — so the list shrinks to zero as you work. Ticks are saved, so you can review a quarter across several sessions. The header checkbox ticks or unticks everything visible at once, and each tax-account section header carries its own checkbox that ticks or unticks every transaction of that VAT code in one click. The Show checked toggle brings reviewed rows back into view. When a tab is done it says so: “All transactions here are checked — enable ‘Show checked’ to view them.” Zero-amount documents (for example a fully discounted invoice) carry no VAT and are checked off automatically.
Narrowing the list
The toolbar Search box narrows the tabs as you type, and the Filters panel adds a Column filters block for precise cuts: Number, Description, Customer / Vendor, Accounts, VAT % (with an Is / Is not switch), Amount and VAT Amount ranges, Receipt, and Validation. Two of them are review shortcuts — set Receipt to Without receipt to isolate bookings still missing their evidence, or Validation to With issues or Errors only to work through flagged rows first. Clear resets them all at once. Search and filters only narrow what’s on screen: the Excel and XML exports always cover the whole period, whatever filters are active.
If you correct a booking in another tab while reviewing, the toolbar Reload button re-fetches the report with the current period, search, and filters intact — no full page reload needed.
Automatic validation checks
Every row carries a Validation column — a green OK, or an issue count you can click to expand. Four checks run automatically:
- VAT recalculation — the system recomputes the expected VAT (base × official rate) and flags rows where the booked amount differs. Catches typos, wrong rates, and manually overridden tax amounts.
- Reverse charge (Bezugsteuer) may be required — a vendor booking from a foreign supplier without a reverse-charge code. Foreign service purchases usually require you to self-declare VAT; this catches the ones that slipped through.
- No VAT code on this debtor booking — a customer invoice booked without any VAT code. Every debtor invoice should carry one, even if it’s a 0% export code.
- Multiple VAT codes used for this contact — the same customer or vendor appears with different VAT codes in the period. Mixed codes can be legitimate — please validate.
An issue doesn’t block anything; it tells you where to look before you sign off the row.
Exporting the filing
Two exports cover both ways of filing:
- VAT Filing Report (Excel) — the MWST filing workbook: the return’s figures plus detail sheets backing every number, ready for your records or your fiduciary. The Erfassung sheet includes a Korrekturen Vorperioden section with one input row per VAT code: corrections from previous quarters entered there flow by formula into the Umsatz and Vorsteuer totals, the Buchungssätze, and the MWST Formular sheet.
- VAT Return (XML) — the electronic MWST return (saved as
MWST_{from}_{to}.xml) for upload to the ESTV “MWST abrechnen” portal. The file follows the official eCH-0217 V2.0.0 standard and validates against the published schema.
For the per-transaction drill-down behind the filing figures — every invoice that makes up a tax account’s total — see Tax Collected & Tax Paid.
Lock Period
Once filed, the period must stop moving — a booking edited after filing means your books no longer match your return. Lock Period asks for a date (“Lock all transactions up to and including”); transactions on or before that date can no longer be posted or deleted — the buttons disappear on any document dated inside the locked period. The page then shows “Period locked up to {date}”. There is one lock date per dataset, and you can move it again from Closing the Books.
Lock the period as the final step of every filing, right after exporting.