Magic Heidi alternative: Fele-facture and Magic Heidi, compared plainly

Magic Heidi is a good app, and this page does not say otherwise. Freelancers who look for an alternative usually have one of three reasons: the monthly price (CHF 39 without a yearly commitment), a free plan that is meant for trying rather than staying (3 invoices and 3 receipts in total), or wanting a faster way to invoice on site, without typing on a small screen.

Others need more bookkeeping than Fele-facture offers: VAT figures ready for the FTA ePortal, a direct bank connection, income and expense accounts. Fele-facture gives an estimated report and an export for your fiduciary from the Independent plan, but it is not accounting. For them, Magic Heidi, or a full suite such as bexio, remains the right choice.

So the useful question is not which one is best, but how you work. The sections below compare the two on what matters to a Swiss freelancer or tradesperson.

This is the most concrete difference. With Fele-facture you dictate, for example “invoice for Mr Rossi, brake pads replaced, 280 francs”, or you photograph the handwritten work report; the app reads the customer, the work, the quantities and the prices, you check, then you create the PDF, with the QR-bill from the Independent plan or during the 14-day trial. The keyboard is still there, but it is no longer the main path. How dictation works is explained on our page on creating an invoice by voice.

With Magic Heidi, you create the invoice by entering it in the app (line, quantity, price, customer), with a clean interface, client lists and quotes that become invoices in one click. Its AI scanning reads expense receipts (merchant, date, amount, VAT); the pages we read on 11 November 2026 do not mention creating an invoice by voice or from a paper document.

If you invoice from the van or the workshop, often, for simple jobs, voice and photo save time on every invoice. If you invoice at a desk, at your own pace, Magic Heidi's classic entry will suit you just as well.

Both vendors' prices as published on 11 November 2026. Magic Heidi's prices include VAT; Fele-facture's prices are the amounts you pay.

Under Art. 957 para. 2 CO, sole proprietorships and partnerships with less than CHF 500,000 of sales revenue in the last financial year “need only keep accounts on income and expenditure and on their asset position”. Magic Heidi is built for this simplified bookkeeping: it records invoices as income, scans expense receipts, connects to the bank or imports CSV/Excel statements and matches payments to invoices automatically, and prepares VAT figures for the FTA ePortal (effective or net tax rate method). A limited liability company or a company limited by shares must keep full accounts (Art. 957 para. 1): either a fiduciary keeps them, with Magic Heidi or Fele-facture for day-to-day invoicing, or you use software with a chart of accounts, such as bexio, compared on our bexio alternative page.

Magic Heidi also lists recurring invoices sent automatically, deposit and partial invoices, credit notes, invoices in any currency, payment reminders that it sends without you having to click, sending by A-Post (CHF 2.50 a letter), access for your accountant and your team, and data stored encrypted on servers in Zurich (AI receipt scanning partly runs outside Switzerland, it says). If you want to keep your small business's books, VAT included, in the same tool as your invoices, that is a real advantage.

Fele-facture keeps no accounts: no official VAT return, no year-end closing, no bank connection, no recurring invoices, and invoices in Swiss francs only. It does the invoicing: quotes converted into invoices, deposit invoices, a discount per line, payment terms per document, an alert in the app when an invoice is still unpaid 30 days after its date, customer records, and a CSV export of each invoice on every plan.

From the Independent plan and during the trial, it also keeps your expenses (photo, PDF or dictation of the receipt, VAT read), emails a payment reminder with the invoice attached when you tap, and ticks off paid invoices from a bank statement you download (camt.053/054 or CSV, read on your device). The Reports tab gives the basic report (income, expenses, estimated profit, estimated VAT balance) with an export for your fiduciary (website and Android app); the full report is in Unlimited and during the trial. Data is stored in the EU, in Frankfurt (Supabase on AWS eu-central-1), not in Switzerland; dictation and photos are processed by US providers (Anthropic, OpenAI, and Deepgram or Groq as fallback), and emails go through Resend (USA).

Fele-facture is the alternative if you want to invoice fast and correctly from the field, from CHF 15 a month with the QR-bill, by voice or photo. Magic Heidi is the better choice if you want to keep your simplified books, VAT figures included, in the same place as your invoices, or if several people work in the account. Both can be tried for free: make a real invoice with each.

Other tools, free or cheaper, with their prices and what they leave out, are in our comparison of Swiss invoicing software.

Switching needs no migration. Fele-facture numbers invoices automatically, on every plan, as YYYY-0001: the counter restarts at 0001 each year and the starting number cannot be chosen, so it will not continue your Magic Heidi series. Write down your last Magic Heidi number and keep it with your old invoices, which you must keep for ten years (Art. 958f CO).