Play Store Bookkeeping in 2 Minutes with Magic Heidi

You publish Android apps or in-app purchases on the Google Play Store and you need bookkeeping that actually works with your reality: Google payouts in several currencies, simplified bookkeeping, the VAT threshold from CHF 100'000, receipts organised, tax export at year-end. You're in the right place.

Here's what this looks like in practice. Google Play collects your sales, deducts the 15% or 30% service fee, acts as Merchant of Record for consumer VAT in the EU, UK and Switzerland, offsets refunds and chargebacks, and transfers the net amount to your bank account around the 15th of the following month. That net payout is the amount that actually lands with you.

For simplified bookkeeping you don't have to manually reconstruct every single in-app purchase. You can record the Google payout as an income entry or incoming payment and attach the monthly Earnings Report from the Play Console as the receipt. The important bit: the report has to clearly show what's inside the payout, so gross sales, refunds, service fee and net amount. That way your books stay simple but still auditable.

Recording a payout in Magic Heidi is straightforward. You drag and drop the PDF of the Google Payments transaction confirmation into Magic Heidi, and we read out the amount and date from the PDF.

Picture Nadja, a fictional Android developer from Lausanne with a paid productivity app and a few in-app purchases, around CHF 45'000 annual revenue. She runs a sole proprietorship and isn't VAT-registered. Her bookkeeping in Magic Heidi: per Google payout, drag the PDF in, Magic Heidi creates the entry, the receipt stays attached, done. Spread over the year, that's about 30 minutes of pure bookkeeping work for her Play Store earnings. At year-end she exports her income, expenses and receipts for her fiduciary and has also saved herself the cost of an auto-sync integration entirely.

The key points at a glance

• Simplified bookkeeping under Swiss Code of Obligations (CO) Art. 957 applies to Swiss sole proprietorships and partnerships with less than CHF 500'000 in revenue in the last financial year.
• You don't need double-entry bookkeeping and you don't have to book every single in-app purchase individually.
• In practice, per Google Play payout you can record the net payout as an incoming payment, as long as the Earnings Report from the Play Console is preserved as the receipt and reconciliation.
• Google Play is Merchant of Record in CH, EU and UK and handles consumer VAT. For solo developers who aren't VAT-registered, that's a massive advantage.
• The 15% or 30% service fee, plus refunds and chargebacks, are already deducted from the net payout and don't need to be booked separately.
• Once you're VAT-liable, run a GmbH/AG, use the effective VAT method, send B2B invoices outside the store, or have revenue approaching CHF 500'000, more detailed bookkeeping with a fiduciary check makes sense.

What simplified bookkeeping means for Android developers

Swiss law allows sole proprietorships and partnerships with less than CHF 500'000 in revenue in the last financial year to use what's called simplified bookkeeping. You don't run classic double-entry books like a GmbH or AG would. Instead, you track income, expenses and your asset position.

But simple doesn't mean anything goes. You still need traceable records, receipts, and at year-end an overview of your assets and liabilities, income and expenses, plus private withdrawals and contributions. In everyday language: you don't need to work with general-ledger accounts, but your numbers have to be explainable and backed by receipts.

In practice for the Play Store: if Google pays you CHF 2'340 to your bank account in April, you can record that amount as an incoming payment. You don't have to recreate 870 individual in-app purchases in Magic Heidi. The monthly Earnings Report from the Play Console belongs with the entry though, because it shows how the amount came about: gross sales per country, consumer VAT withheld by Google, service fee, refunds and net payout.

For sole proprietorships that aren't VAT-registered and stay under the relevant thresholds, this is usually the most pragmatic route: one entry per payout, a clean receipt with it, bank reconciliation done. You don't record the 15% or 30% Google service fee separately as an expense, because it's already accounted for in the net payout. What you do book separately as a business expense are things like the one-off developer registration, Google Ads for app installs, or tools and services that Google charges directly to your credit card.

The distinction matters for VAT. For VAT, what counts isn't simply what lands net in your bank account. What's relevant is the qualifying revenue from your sales. For pure Play Store earnings to consumers, this is usually relaxed in Switzerland because Google acts as Merchant of Record: you're not the direct seller to the end customer here, you're effectively selling to Google, and Google sells to the user. If you also send B2B invoices directly to corporate clients on the side, normal rules apply there, and that revenue counts fully toward the CHF 100'000 threshold.

For Swiss tax authorities, what matters in the end is that your cash flows, receipts and asset position are fully traceable. If you received 12 Google payouts in a year, that can become 12 income entries. The deciding factor is that these entries match your bank account and the Earnings Reports from the Play Console are kept with them.

If you're brand new to the topic, our guide to accounting software Switzerland will help you understand the basics for the self-employed before you get lost in platform details. You'll find the official legal basis for simplified bookkeeping in the Swiss Code of Obligations Art. 957.

Google service fee, refunds and developer registration: what else you need to book

This is where things confuse people most often, so let's go through it point by point. You'll find the items as an overview right under this section.

Picture Roman, a fictional indie game developer from St. Gallen with around CHF 95'000 annual revenue from a premium app plus subscription in-app purchases. His bookkeeping year looks like this: 12 Google Play payout income entries (partly in CHF, USD and EUR), the one-off developer registration as a business expense in the founding year, around 20 receipts for Google Ads campaigns, plus another 30 or so business expenses like hosting, test devices, licences and co-working. Roughly 60 to 80 entries per year in total. That's doable in 20 minutes per month, including uploading receipts.

VAT: what Play Store developers in Switzerland need to know

Under CHF 100'000 annual revenue you don't have to register for VAT in Switzerland. If you're in that range, you can skip this section without stress. You just book the net payout, done. The big plus with the Play Store: Google is Merchant of Record for third-country questions and consumer VAT in CH, EU and UK, and absorbs all of that complexity for you. You don't have to check whether you'd owe VAT in Germany, France or Italy.

Above CHF 100'000 it gets a bit more complex, but still manageable. You have two methods to choose from. With the Net Tax Rate Method you keep your simplified logic, so net payout as income. You apply the net tax rate set for your industry to that amount. This method is ideal for simplified bookkeeping. More on this in our guide to VAT for freelancers.

With the effective method you have to split out gross revenues more cleanly and deduct input VAT on your expenses. That's significantly more work and in the Play Store context tends to be the territory of studios above CHF 500'000 or developers with a heavy share of B2B invoices who want to claim input VAT.

Practical tip: whether Play Store revenue counts toward the CHF 100'000 threshold at all depends on how your fiduciary interprets the Merchant of Record nature. Conservatively, many include gross-gross sales, some only the net payout. If you're in that grey area, clarify with your fiduciary. If in doubt, you can also call your cantonal tax office or the ESTV (Federal Tax Administration). Compared to other countries, Swiss authorities are surprisingly cooperative and helpful.

A small note on Google invoices and reverse-charge VAT: Google Play bills from Ireland, specifically via Google Commerce Limited or Google Ireland Ltd, so from the EU. If you're VAT-liable under the effective method, the reverse-charge VAT (acquisition tax) question comes into play, because you're technically receiving services from abroad. Under the Net Tax Rate Method this usually isn't an issue. When in doubt clarify with your fiduciary, because the answer depends on your specific setup.

When the simple method hits its limits

We're here to save you time and money, but also to be honest: the 2-minute method doesn't fit every Android developer. The four situations where more detailed bookkeeping makes sense are in the overview below. In any of these cases we'd advise speaking with a Swiss fiduciary and evaluating a more specialised solution. Magic Heidi is deliberately built for solo self-employed people under CHF 500'000, not for scaling app studios with several employees. The number of in-app purchases per month is not a limit, by the way: whether you process 100 or 100'000 purchases, in Magic Heidi it stays one income entry per payout, because Google manages all transaction, refund and chargeback details in the Play Console.

If you're just starting out and wondering whether a sole proprietorship in Switzerland makes sense for you, start there. Your legal form directly affects which bookkeeping you need.

Finally, picture Levin, a fictional solo developer in Winterthur. He started in 2023 with a free app plus subscription IAP and CHF 35'000 in revenue, grew to CHF 240'000 in two years, is now VAT-liable on the Net Tax Rate Method, and still does his bookkeeping in Magic Heidi in about 25 minutes per month. If he hits CHF 500'000 one day, he'll switch. Until then he's saved himself the cost of auto-sync tools entirely, plus hours of fiduciary time, because his books are clean and simple.

Summary: how your Play Store bookkeeping in Switzerland should look

Three things to remember. Under CHF 500'000 annual revenue, it's enough to record the net payout from Google Play as income once per payout, plus the one-off USD 25 developer registration and any Google Ads receipts as separate expenses. You save yourself expensive auto-sync software because you don't need it as a solo developer, plus hours of setup and correction work. If you ever reach CHF 500'000, set up a GmbH, or have to work with the effective VAT method, you switch to more detailed bookkeeping. Until then: keep it simple.

Magic Heidi is built by two Swiss freelancers who had these exact problems themselves. We use our own software for our bookkeeping, and it was designed precisely for cases like this: for sole proprietorships earning revenue with Shopify, Stripe, App Store or Play Store who want to keep their books clean, fast and compliant. If you also write invoices outside the Play Store, for example to corporate clients for custom app development, our invoicing software helps you send QR invoices in under a minute.