bexio alternative: when an invoicing tool is enough, and when bexio stays the better choice

Three reasons come up, and only one is really about price. The first is the price itself: on 11 November 2026, bexio starts at CHF 35 a month excluding VAT (Basic, one user, yearly plan). The Advanced package (2 users), which bexio describes as ideal to get you started, costs CHF 42 a month excluding VAT on a yearly plan, so CHF 504 a year, or CHF 52 billed monthly, so CHF 624 a year.

The second, more common: you pay for a business suite and only use it to invoice. Your books are kept by a fiduciary, you have no employees, no stock and no projects to track. What remains is one real use, issuing invoices, for the price of a tool that does much more.

The third has nothing to do with money: getting started. A full suite asks you to learn a chart of accounts, financial years and postings. For a tradesperson who wants the invoice out the same evening, that is daily friction, and it is often why invoices go out late.

This is what should decide, so it comes first. bexio keeps double-entry accounts, handles payroll (as a paid add-on from Advanced, included in Ultimate), connects to e-banking from Advanced, manages several users (1 to 25 depending on the package), and offers stock management and projects with time tracking from Optima. bexio states that its data is stored in Switzerland. Fele-facture does none of this.

If you have employees to pay, keep your own books, or have several people working in the same account, a full suite such as bexio remains the right choice, and switching to save CHF 20 to 40 a month would be a bad deal. Other full suites and lighter tools, with their prices, are in our comparison of Swiss invoicing software.

Fele-facture covers something else: creating an invoice or a quote on a phone, on site or in the workshop, by voice, from a photo of a handwritten work report or by typing. You dictate or take the photo, check the fields, and create the PDF. From the Independent plan (and during the full 14-day trial, offered once when you enter a Swiss or Liechtenstein IBAN), the invoice carries a QR-bill that follows the SIX standard, with a structured address. Quotes never carry a QR payment part, and outside the trial the Free plan produces invoices without one.

From the Independent plan, the app also keeps your expenses (photo, PDF or dictation of the receipt), gives a basic report (income, expenses, estimated profit and estimated VAT balance), prepares an export for your fiduciary, emails a payment reminder with the invoice attached when you tap, and reads a bank statement (camt.053/054 or CSV downloaded from your e-banking, read on your device) to tick off paid invoices. It is not a connection to your bank, and it is not accounting.

The table sets out what each tool's own website states. bexio quotes its prices excluding VAT; Fele-facture's prices are the amounts you pay. Many prices assume a yearly plan: check the billing period and whether VAT is included before you compare.

Over a year the difference is concrete. bexio Advanced at CHF 42 a month (yearly plan, excl. VAT) is CHF 504 a year; Fele-facture Independent at CHF 15 a month is CHF 180, or CHF 150 on the yearly plan, so about CHF 350 less. Compared with bexio Basic on a yearly plan (CHF 420 a year excl. VAT), the difference is about CHF 270.

What it costs you: your accounting is no longer in the same tool. In practice, you send your invoices to your fiduciary instead of giving them direct access. Each invoice can be exported as CSV (opens in Excel) on every plan; from Independent, the export for your accountant (Reports tab) collects, for a month, quarter, half-year or year, the list of income and of expenses (CSV), a PDF summary and, if you wish, the photos of the receipts. This export is on the website and the Android app, not in the iPhone app. The app does not produce native Excel (.xlsx) files.

If your fiduciary already does everything, nothing changes for you. If you post your own entries in bexio, everything changes, and you should not switch. An honest test before deciding: open your current tool and look at the last five screens you used. If they are all invoices and customers, a lighter tool will do. If they include postings, payroll or a VAT return you prepare yourself, stay where you are.

Magic Heidi sits in between: invoicing with simple bookkeeping, at CHF 299 a year or CHF 39 a month including VAT. We compare it with Fele-facture on our Magic Heidi alternative page.

Nothing prevents you from changing invoicing software during the year in Switzerland. What stays: your accounting records and vouchers (invoices issued and received) must be kept for ten years from the end of the financial year (Art. 958f CO), complete and readable at any time; if you move them to another format, the transfer must be documented in a record kept with them (GeBüV/Olico, Art. 10). Numbering without gaps or duplicates is not required by law, but it is strongly recommended: it shows that no invoice is missing.

In practice, three steps. Before leaving, export your invoices as PDFs and their list to a spreadsheet, and store this archive outside the software you are leaving; bexio states that your data can be easily exported and that you can cancel at the end of the next billing period. Then write down the last invoice number issued and keep it with the archive. Finally, check how the new tool numbers invoices: Fele-facture does not let you choose the starting number. Its numbering is automatic and yearly (YYYY-0001, 0002…), kept by the server, so it will not continue from your last bexio number. The note in your archive links the two series.

The start of a quarter or of a year is a clean moment, because the cut falls on an accounting period; with yearly numbering, starting on 1 January also avoids two number series in the same year. It is not mandatory: the law sets no date for changing tools. Last check, whatever you choose: send a real invoice to a real customer and make sure it can be paid by scanning the QR code in an e-banking app.

Create a real invoice by voice, from a photo or by typing during the full 14-day trial, without a card: it starts when you enter your Swiss or Liechtenstein IBAN. The app's screens are in English, French, German and Italian. How dictation works, and which languages you can dictate in, is on our page on creating an invoice by voice.