The payment code is a QR code on the invoice. Your customer scans it with their banking app and the transfer is ready to send: your name, your IBAN, the amount and the invoice number in the payment reference. No retyping, no transposed digits. In Germany it is known as the GiroCode, in Austria as the QR-Zahlungscode — it is the same European standard.
Next to the code, the same details always appear as readable text — for anyone who prefers to type or cannot scan.
Settings → Accounting → Payment code, one switch for the whole company. In addition, every document has its own switch — for the one invoice that should not carry a code.
What it needs
- A complete bank account: account holder and a valid IBAN, maintained under Business details. A BIC is not required; if one is entered, it has to be correct. The code always points to an account that is also printed on the sheet.
- An invoice. No code appears on quotes, delivery notes or letters — nothing is due there. Nor on cancellation and correction documents: with a reduction, money flows back, and a code would invite the customer to pay a second time.
The amount in the code is the amount payable without early-payment discount. The discount is an offer your customer may take up — if the lower amount were encoded, even a customer paying after the deadline would transfer too little.
Switzerland: the QR-bill
Switzerland has its own standard. If your account is held in Switzerland or Liechtenstein, Zirko automatically produces the QR-bill instead of the payment code: the payment part with the Swiss cross at the bottom of the sheet, as Swiss banks have required since 2022 — in CHF and in EUR.
This additionally needs the complete address of the company (postcode, town, country). A QR-IBAN is only allowed for invoices in francs and requires a QR reference, which Zirko builds from the digits of your document number.
When no code appears
Zirko never drops it silently: the document always states the reason — bank details incomplete, document type without a payment, currency not suitable. Fix the named reason and the code appears with the next preview.
What does not work today
- Euro and Swiss francs only. For other currencies there is no code — neither of the two standards knows them. So anyone invoicing in pounds, kronor, koruna, złoty, lei, dollars or yen gets no code.
- A franc invoice on a German account gets no code: the payment code knows only euros, the QR-bill only Swiss and Liechtenstein accounts.
- Zirko does not see whether the transfer was made. The code makes paying easier, not the bookkeeping — you record the incoming payment yourself, see Recording a payment.