A fee invoice (Honorarrechnung) is the invoice freelancers use to bill for work charged by time or by output – lawyers, coaches, consultants, therapists, lecturers, translators and IT consultants. It differs from a regular invoice in one crucial way: the fee is not based on a product price but on an hourly rate, daily rate, flat fee, retainer or success fee – usually backed by a documented time sheet (Arbeitsrapport). On top of that come separately itemised expenses, the MWST (Swiss VAT) question depending on your profession, and the mandatory details required by the Swiss Code of Obligations (OR Art. 469) and the VAT Ordinance (Art. 26 MWSTV).

In this guide I'll show you which fee models exist, which mandatory details belong on your invoice, how to pass expenses on correctly, and how MWST treats your profession. With a copy-paste template, three concrete examples with real CHF amounts, and no theoretical fluff.

The key points at a glance

• Fee models: hourly rate (e.g. CHF 180.00/h consulting), daily rate (e.g. CHF 1,400.00/day), flat fee, retainer (e.g. CHF 1,800.00/month) or success fee – you set your model before the work starts.
• Mandatory details: OR Art. 469 and Art. 26 MWSTV require, among other things, names and addresses, the date, a unique invoice number, a concrete description of the services, the net amount, the MWST rate and the MWST amount in CHF.
• MWST 8.1% on consulting, coaching and IT services (taxable); medical treatments are MWST-exempt under Art. 21 MWSTG/MWSTV – your status depends on your activity.
• The QR-bill is the standard – with a QR-IBAN and QR reference, your clients pay with a single scan, no typing errors when transferring.
• Tool tip: With Magic Heidi you create a fee invoice in under 2 minutes – from CHF 25.00/month. That's half the price of bexio (CHF 52.00/month) for the same core features.

What is a fee invoice (Honorarrechnung) – and who needs one?

The fee invoice is the standard instrument for anyone who doesn't sell a product, but time, knowledge and skill. The term shows up wherever the classic professions work: in law firms, coaching practices, fiduciary and consulting offices, among lecturers, translators, therapists and IT consultants. Unlike a tradesman's invoice with materials and spare parts, the question here is a different one: How much time did you invest – and how do you substantiate your price?

That's exactly why the foundation of every good fee invoice is the Arbeitsrapport (time sheet): a complete record of which activity you performed, when and for how long. Without a time record, your fee is an assertion – with one, it's substantiated. That matters in disputes with clients, during a MWST audit, and quite simply when the client asks: "What exactly did you spend those three hours on?"

The legal situation in Switzerland is manageable: the invoice content follows from the Code of Obligations (OR Art. 469), the MWST requirements from the VAT Ordinance (Art. 26 MWSTV). Whether you pay AHV (Swiss old-age insurance) contributions as a self-employed person is governed by the AHVG (Art. 2 and 3) – the compensation fund clarifies your status. Anyone registered as a sole proprietorship in the commercial register, or wanting to check a legal form, finds the full texts of the laws on admin.ch.

An example from practice:

Mini-story: Clarissa, lawyer in Zurich. Clarissa runs a small law firm as a sole proprietorship and bills CHF 250.00 per hour. One mandate covers 12.5 hours of preparation and drafting plus CHF 85.00 in expenses (register extracts, copies), which she passes on at cost. Her invoice: 12.5 h × CHF 250.00 = CHF 3,125.00 fee net, plus 8.1% MWST = CHF 253.13, plus CHF 85.00 expenses. Total: CHF 3,463.13. Because Clarissa attaches her time records as an Arbeitsrapport and sends a QR-bill, the client pays within a week – without a single follow-up question.

Fee invoice, Honorarnote or Kostennote: the terms clearly separated

The abundance of terms confuses many people. A quick breakdown:

For Switzerland, the rule is: you issue a fee invoice (Honorarrechnung). "Honorarnote" is the Austrian term – Austrian VAT law (UStG) applies there, with its own rules such as the EUR 400 threshold, which play no role for you in Switzerland. Don't let online articles confuse you on this. When clients or partners from Austria talk about a Honorarnote, they mean the same document – but the formal requirements that apply to you are OR Art. 469 and Art. 26 MWSTV, not Austrian law.

The term Kostennote has a long tradition in Switzerland, particularly in the legal profession and among doctors: it refers to the final overall invoice of a mandate. Formally, a Kostennote is nothing other than a fee invoice – the same mandatory details, the same MWST logic. Anyone using the term isn't doing anything wrong; anyone working with German or Austrian clients is on the safe side with "Honorarrechnung".

The five fee models compared

Before you can write a fee invoice at all, you need a fee model. That sounds trivial, but it's the point where most self-employed people leave money on the table. The five common models:

1. Hourly rate

The classic: you bill every hour worked. Typical rates in Switzerland: coaches CHF 150.00–250.00/h, consultants CHF 150.00–300.00/h, lawyers CHF 200.00–500.00/h, IT consultants CHF 120.00–180.00/h, translators CHF 80.00–140.00/h. Your hourly rate has to cover your annual costs: AHV contributions, insurance, continuing education, holidays and idle time all belong in the calculation.

Advantage: fair for both sides, cleanly documented via the Arbeitsrapport. Drawback: you punish yourself for speed. If you finish in 2 hours what takes others 4, you earn less.

2. Daily rate

For full-day engagements – workshops, training courses, on-site mandates – you bill per day instead of per hour. Typical: CHF 1,200.00–1,800.00 per day for trainers and lecturers. Half-days are usually billed at 50–60% of the daily rate. Clarify in writing beforehand how preparation, travel time and overtime are handled – those are the three classic points of contention.

Advantage: less admin, predictable for both sides. Drawback: needs clear rules for half-days and extra effort.

3. Flat fee

A fixed amount for a clearly defined engagement: "Concept and creation of the website: CHF 8,000.00." The flat fee rewards efficiency and experience – and demands a precise scope of work. If the engagement is vaguely defined, you carry the risk of extra work with no compensation.

Advantage: you profit from your speed; the client has cost certainty. Drawback: with a poorly defined scope, you end up working for free. Protect yourself with a detailed deliverables list in the contract.

4. Retainer

A retainer is reserved availability: the client pays you a fixed amount monthly – e.g. CHF 1,800.00 for up to 10 hours of legal advice or IT support. Unused hours expire or are carried over as agreed. The retainer gives you a predictable base income and the client guaranteed capacity.

Mini-story: Markus, business coach in Bern. Markus had eleven different clients with hourly rates between CHF 160.00 and CHF 220.00 – and more than 20 individual invoices every month. He moved three regular clients onto a retainer: CHF 1,800.00/month each for 10 guaranteed hours. Result: CHF 5,400.00 of predictable income per month from just three invoices instead of twenty, and his billing time dropped from around 4 hours to 30 minutes a month.

5. Success fee

With a success fee, part of your fee depends on the result – common in the legal profession (a percentage of the amounts recovered), in sales, or for certain consulting mandates. Often as a combination: reduced hourly rate plus a bonus when the target is reached.

Important: clarify in writing how "success" is defined and measured. Success fees are fundamentally permissible in Switzerland, but they need a precise agreement – a short conversation with a specialist before you sign is worth it here.

Which model suits you? Rule of thumb: hourly rate for open-ended work, flat fee for clearly defined projects, retainer for ongoing support, daily rate for on-site engagements. Many freelancers combine: one or two retainers as a base, plus hourly and flat-fee projects.

Mandatory details: what belongs on a fee invoice?

Formally, a fee invoice is an invoice like any other – with the requirements of OR Art. 469 and Art. 26 MWSTV. If a mandatory detail is missing, your client can refuse the input tax deduction and reject the invoice. That's the most common reason fee invoices sit unpaid.

The mandatory details at a glance:

1. Name and address of the invoicing party – for a sole proprietorship registered in the commercial register, the registered name
2. Name and address of the invoice recipient
3. Invoice date
4. Unique, sequential invoice number – no gaps
5. Type and scope of the service – concrete: "Strategy consulting, March 2026, 14.5 h as per attached Arbeitsrapport" instead of just "consulting"
6. Net amount in CHF
7. MWST rate and MWST amount – shown separately, 8.1% for taxable activities
8. MWST number – the CHE number with MWST extension, e.g. CHE-123.456.789 MWST
9. Payment deadline – 14 or 30 days are common

Three practical tips that aren't mandatory but are worth money:

• State the service period: "Service period: March 1–31, 2026" answers the question "When was that again?" before it's asked.
• Attach the Arbeitsrapport: with hourly rates, always. It halves the follow-up questions.
• Offer an early-payment discount: 2% for payment within 10 days often speeds up payments massively – a discount of CHF 20.00 on a CHF 1,000.00 invoice costs you less than three weeks of waiting.

Mini-story: Sandra, translator in Basel. Sandra translates specialist texts DE/FR and, after her voluntary MWST registration, once sent an invoice for CHF 2,400.00 to a limited company – without a MWST number on it. The company's accounting department refused: no MWST number, no input tax deduction. The invoice went back, Sandra corrected it, and three weeks of payment delay followed. Since then, the MWST number has a fixed place in her template – and her software assigns invoice numbers automatically and without gaps.

Itemise expenses separately

Expenses are the second building block of many fee invoices – and often the most neglected. The basic rule: the fee and expenses must be itemised separately. Your client wants to see what your fee is and what costs you passed on – and your MWST accounting needs the separation anyway.

Two categories, two treatments:

• Expenses with input tax deduction (e.g. specialist literature, a software licence for the client): you bill them on at 8.1% MWST, because you received an invoice with input tax yourself.
• Travel and out-of-pocket expenses (trips, Half Fare travelcard, meals, postage): you pass these on as agreed, usually at cost with no MWST markup of your own.

Put the rules in a short expense policy: what applies to travel? To overnight stays? To meals? A single page prevents 90% of the discussions – you'll find the details and flat rates in our guide to expense claims.

MWST on fees: taxable or exempt?

The MWST question can't be answered the same way for every fee invoice – it depends on your activity:

In short: consulting, coaching and IT services are taxable – you charge 8.1% MWST if you are MWST-liable or voluntarily registered. Medical treatments are MWST-exempt under Art. 21 MWSTG/MWSTV – you charge no MWST and write "MWST-exempt under Art. 21 MWSTG" on the invoice. For special cases: check your activity against the current version of the MWSTG on admin.ch and the industry-specific information sheets of the FTA (ESTV).

From when are you MWST-liable? From annual worldwide revenue of CHF 100,000.00. Below that you can register voluntarily – often worthwhile, because you recover the input tax on your laptop, software and continuing education. Everything important about the threshold, registration and accounting is in our article on MWST for freelancers.

Important for MWST-exempt activities: even a MWST-exempt fee invoice needs all mandatory details under OR Art. 469. "MWST-exempt" doesn't mean "no formal requirements". And you still pass expenses on cleanly and with receipts – your client's accountants will thank you.

Template: your fee invoice, ready to copy

Here is a complete template with all mandatory details. Copy it, fill it in, send it. This is what a fee invoice with an hourly rate, a daily rate and expenses looks like in practice:

Your company / Your name
Street No.
Postal code, City
Phone / Email / Website

Invoice to: Client Name Ltd
Street No.
Postal code, City

Zurich, September 24, 2026

Invoice no.: 2026-047
Service period: September 1–30, 2026
Our reference: quote 2026-012

Dear Sir or Madam

We are pleased to invoice you for the following services:

Item 1: Strategy consulting, 12.0 h at CHF 180.00        CHF 2,160.00
Item 2: Digitalisation workshop, 1 day at CHF 1,400.00   CHF 1,400.00

Subtotal fee (net)                     CHF 3,560.00
MWST 8.1%                              CHF   288.36
Subtotal fee incl. MWST                CHF 3,848.36

Item 3: Expenses (train ticket, 2nd class,
at cost, receipts attached)            CHF    84.50

Invoice total                          CHF 3,932.86

Payable within 14 days, net, to the account stated below.
The QR payment part with QR-IBAN and QR reference is enclosed.

MWST number: CHE-123.456.789 MWST
UID: CHE-123.456.789

Thank you for your business.
Kind regards
First name Last name

Notes on the template:

• The invoice number is sequential and gapless – mandatory, and a check criterion in a MWST audit.
• The description of services is concrete: what, how long, in which period. Just "consulting" is too vague.
• The QR payment part belongs on every invoice – attached as a PDF or physically. Without it, you're sending your clients off to type in numbers, and that's exactly where errors and delays come from.

Getting paid faster: QR-bill, deposits and payment deadlines

The best fee invoice is worthless if the money doesn't arrive. Three levers:

1. Use the QR-bill. The QR payment part turns paying into a three-second scan: no typing IBANs, no typos, no wrong amounts. How to create the payment part correctly is shown step by step in our guide to creating a QR-bill.

2. Ask for a deposit on large engagements. From a mandate of around CHF 5,000.00 it's standard practice to ask for a deposit – e.g. 30% at the start, so CHF 1,500.00 on a CHF 5,000.00 engagement. That secures your liquidity and filters out clients who can't pay at all. At the end you issue the final invoice and offset the deposit already paid. What the form for that looks like is in our article on the deposit invoice (Akontorechnung).

3. 14-day payment deadline instead of 30. The shorter the deadline, the faster the money arrives on average – and 14 days are completely normal in Switzerland. Combine it with an early-payment discount: "2% discount for payment within 10 days" often pushes the effective payment time below a week. And anyone who doesn't pay after the due date owes you default interest – you'll find the current rate in the current version of the OR.

A word on tools: you don't need an expensive ERP for your fee invoices. A simple invoicing app does the job – it generates the QR-bill, numbers sequentially, tracks open items and sends reminders automatically. Magic Heidi does exactly that for CHF 25.00 to CHF 39.00 per month; bexio costs CHF 52.00 per month for the same core package. Same core features, half the price.

Frequently asked questions