The 4 categories of freelancers

And you? What kind of freelancer are you? Let's take a look together, in broad strokes, at the 4 categories of freelancers I've come across.

The small, pragmatic freelancer

This is the freelancer who earns less than 100k a year and wants to do things properly, but efficiently, without spending hours on it. He doesn't see himself as an accountant and gets no joy out of messing around in Excel for hours. In the past he outsourced his accounting to a fiduciary (or at least thought about it), but finds it kind of ridiculous to pay that much — especially since he still has to do a ton of the work himself: scanning and organizing expenses, filing invoices, and so on, just to send it all off to the fiduciary.

The small freelancer who secretly wanted to be a fiduciary

I love this freelancer. This is the super-serious person who absolutely insists on following an SME chart of accounts, the person who takes pleasure in complexity, who wants to depreciate their MacBook but ideally on a declining-balance basis rather than straight-line to "really properly" reflect the change in value. The freelancer who absolutely needs a direct connection to their bank account to import the 3 payments they get each month.

This is the freelancer who wants every feature of SME software: double-entry accounting, assets, liabilities, and ideally also wants to manage the house they own inside the software too — but finds the SME software a bit too pricey and not as simple as they'd like. So they want software made for freelancers.

The freelancer who made it

This is the freelancer who earns more than 100k, but less than 500k, with no employees. Their collaborators are other freelancers who invoice them, so they don't have to bother with payslips. Every invoice they receive is simply a new expense. They want something simple and professional that lets them do their tax return, handle their VAT filings, and that's it. They don't need super complex features for importing goods from a non-EU country where you also have to pay duties that then get refunded later and so on...

The freelancer who's already an SME

He started out years ago as a freelancer, but in the meantime he's founded a GmbH (limited liability company), has a few employees, and has understood that the main thing about his job is his job (not the accounting).

His fiduciary told him he needed to switch to serious software, but he hates that software and wants to keep using something simple. At the end of the day, he couldn't care less about knowing his profitability per client. He just wants to keep selling his service, sending his invoices, and getting paid: Basta!

The ideal software

Now let's look at what the ideal software is, in my opinion, for each type of freelancer described above. To make my choice and reach my decision, I picked a few basic criteria — a few "sine qua non" conditions, without which I figure the software isn't even worth it.

Four criteria, then — nothing wild in itself: available in your language, around for a few years, at least a handful of reviews across different sites, and a mobile app to complement the main software... And in practice, you'll see there isn't much left in terms of options for Swiss freelancers...

The ideal software for the small, pragmatic freelancer

Magic Heidi is the ideal accounting software for pragmatic Swiss freelancers. Designed to be simple to use (it takes, for example, the fewest clicks of any Swiss software to create an account and send an invoice).

You can do everything: invoices with a compliant Swiss QR-bill, quotes, payment reminders, invoices in foreign currencies, hourly billing, scanning and categorizing your expenses, importing bank transactions, exporting your data in a compliant format for your tax return, a client list — the software does everything a small freelancer needs, simply because that's exactly what it was built for.

What it doesn't do: payslips, complex project management, sales pipeline/client CRM, double-entry accounting, complicated accounting procedures, ...

And finally, you get phone customer support available around the clock, and of course email too — so if you've got a problem or a question, it always gets sorted out fast.

For a small, pragmatic freelancer, it's perfect. Little time spent on accounting, invoices are quick to create, expenses get uploaded and scanned by the AI automatically, and you can export a clean Excel with your complete accounting at any time, plus a full archive of all your files. You mostly focus on your business, and the software does the rest.

The ideal software for the small freelancer who secretly wanted to be a fiduciary

I've met several of these freelancers who love complexity, even when it isn't necessary. Like this freelancer who wanted to run double-entry accounting (so, much more complex) for her sole proprietorship, even though it isn't legally required and simple accounting (income / expenses) is enough for a sole proprietorship.

Or this freelancer who wanted to categorize his expenses, then sub-categorize them, then sub-sub-categorize them. There was also this freelancer who'd been assigned two VAT rates (he was on the net tax rate method) because his business operates in two different sectors with very different average profit margins. That was another example where we had to say: "Sorry, this is so rare that it makes no sense for us to develop a feature just for you that would make life more complicated for 99% of our customers."

Often, these freelancers already use bexio, and when bexio raises its subscription prices yet again, they go looking for an alternative that does everything bexio does, only cheaper — and unfortunately, that doesn't exist. These freelancers should (and usually that's what they end up doing) stick with bexio.

The ideal software for the freelancer who made it

This freelancer is registered for VAT and wants to keep the simplicity of his earlier life (back when he earned less than 100k/year), while playing by the rules and therefore paying his VAT properly.

Magic Heidi has all the features you need to get paid and invoice with VAT (you can even add several VAT rates to the same invoice), everything you need to track how much VAT was paid (you can add VAT to expenses and even flag expenses or invoices that aren't subject to VAT), and finally you get a table with all the info you need to copy-paste your VAT data from Magic Heidi into the Swiss Federal Tax Administration's ePortal.

The ideal software for the freelancer who's already an SME

The freelancer who's become an SME has two challenges when it comes to keeping his accounting simple like in the good old days when he was all alone in his company:

1. GmbHs require double-entry accounting: so you have to understand what an asset is, a liability, a balance sheet, and so on...
2. Every employee wants their salary: it's no longer simply a paid expense, it's a salary with contributions, taxes, social security, and so on, that you have to pay.

The upside of an SME is that the freelancer has a bit more budget and can afford to work with a fiduciary for the company's accounts. The fiduciary will obviously recommend bexio (the software allows all the complex operations an accountant dreams of), but since it's still the entrepreneur, the freelancer, who'll use the software day to day, it's simpler to use Magic Heidi.

But this time, instead of doing the tax return himself (which is no longer possible now that you need a balance sheet, double-entry accounting, and so on), the freelancer gives his accountant access to Magic Heidi. The accountant exports the accounts to Excel and takes care of turning the simple accounting into double-entry accounting (they usually do this for 1'000–1'500 francs, our AI does it for 500).

Then for the salaries, there are several pieces of software that handle all the paperwork, and the freelancer then simply imports the gross salary paid as an expense into Magic Heidi — or the accountant takes care of that too, on top of the tax return.

The other software

Here are three more pieces of software that unfortunately don't meet the basic criteria, but that I think are worth mentioning — and that I'm proud to have as competitors.

The ideal software for the freelancer running a Swiss-German micro-SME

Milkee is built by a good friend of mine (only in Switzerland can you be a friend and a competitor at the same time!) and targets the Swiss-German market exclusively. It's an ideal solution for freelancers and small SMEs, because the software tries to stay as simple as possible while still offering its customers double-entry accounting. It recently added the ability to create payslips, so a small SME can use this software and do everything by hand.

The ideal software for Swiss-German startups

Besides bexio and Magic Heidi, the only other software with a website available in all the Swiss languages — but the software itself is unfortunately only in German. They're missing a mobile app, and there are almost no reviews available across the various platforms like Google Maps, Trustpilot, Capterra, and so on...

It's a software that surprises me, because they seem to have a lot of customers, have raised several funding rounds, are present at every Swiss startup event, have brand-name partners, but have almost no reviews online. And every time I try their software, I just can't manage to do simple things like create an invoice, or upload an expense, have it scanned by AI and save it. They position themselves as the modern alternative to bexio, and I wish them the best (I love that they have a TikTok account!), but I just don't get the product right now :/

The ideal software for the freelancer on a tight budget

Swiss21 has the most complicated branding in the world, and it's in moments like these that I realize I'm still pretty young, because the freelancers who've told me about this software still call it AbaNinja (which seems to have been its previous name, before they got acquired). It stands out because it offers a generous free version that lets a lot of freelancers use their solution without having to pay.

The fact that the software is integrated into their product suite makes it more complicated to use, and I suspect (judging by the reviews) that customer support isn't really there (which makes sense when you're offering a free product!), and generally speaking, the software seems to me better suited to SMEs (they describe themselves as an ERP — three letters that should scare any freelancer).

But as a free solution, it's better than Magic Heidi, which only offers 3 invoices and 3 expenses in the free version :)

The click test

Every software claims to be "simple". So we measured it: in January 2026 we counted the clicks required for three recurring tasks across six Swiss tools — onboarding (from signup to ready for the first invoice), creating a compliant QR invoice, and uploading an expense with its receipt. Every test was screen-recorded (links in the appendix below).

Appendix: Video Evidence

Every click count in this test is backed by a screen recording:

• bexio Click Test
• Smallinvoice Click Test
• Infinity Click Test
• Simplino Click Test
• CashCtrl Click Test
• Magic Heidi Click Test

Testing conducted January 2026.

To wrap up

That's it — my little article written by hand, without AI (well, almost — the AI still scans your receipts in Magic Heidi 😉).

If I had to sum it up: most Swiss freelancers make life unnecessarily complicated for themselves. Under 500'000 CHF, keep it simple. Pick the simplest software that still does everything you need — QR invoices, VAT, expenses, export for taxes — and spend the time you save doing your actual job.

For the vast majority of Swiss freelancers, that software is Magic Heidi. But now you also know when bexio, Milkee or Swiss21 are better choices for your situation, and that's what really matters.

The easiest way to make up your own mind: try it yourself, create your first invoice, and see if it saves you time. And if you have a question, write to me — I really do reply.