Take an air-conditioning company in Figueres, a limited company with four technicians. Repair invoices are issued by an app that was custom-built for them years ago, which the technicians use on their phones at the end of each job. The monthly maintenance invoices for two hotels are prepared by someone in the office from an Excel template, and a gestoría, the local accounting and tax adviser, keeps the books. Under Verifactu, the app has to comply with the regulation and whoever built it has to sign a statement that it does. The hotel invoices can't keep coming out of Excel either, because if part of a business's invoicing goes through a program, the Tax Agency takes the view that all of it has to. And since it is a company, the first deadline applies.
What Verifactu is
Verifactu is the name everyone uses for Spain's regulation on invoicing software, approved by Royal Decree 1007/2023. It implements the 2021 anti-fraud law and sets conditions for the programs that companies and self-employed people use to make their invoices. What an invoice has to show barely changes: a QR code is added. The Spanish Tax Agency (AEAT) itself admits the name is a shorthand, and an "inaccurate" one, because VERI*FACTU is really one of the two ways of complying with the regulation.
What it asks for comes down to three things. Each time the program issues an invoice, it generates an invoicing record: a summary with the main details, a digital fingerprint and part of the previous record, so that if someone deletes or changes an invoice, it shows. The invoice carries a QR code that the customer can scan with a phone to send its details to the tax authority. And the program must be able to send those records to the Tax Agency. The official information is on its page about billing computer systems and VERI*FACTU.
Who Verifactu affects: the four "no" rule
It applies to companies and self-employed people who issue invoices and have their tax address in Spain's common tax territory, Catalonia included, and also to those who make or sell invoicing software. To check whether it applies to you, the Tax Agency offers what it calls the four "no" rule. You are in if all four are true:
- You don't invoice exclusively by hand: you use some program to make invoices.
- You aren't in the SII, the Immediate Supply of Information system that large companies already use to keep their VAT books on the tax authority's website.
- Your tax address isn't in the Basque Country or Navarre, which have their own rules.
- You don't have a ruling that exempts you.
Both full and simplified invoices count, simplified ones being till receipts, whether the customer is a business or a private individual. The Tax Agency goes through the borderline cases in its FAQs on who the rules apply to. These are the most common ones in a small business.
If you invoice with Excel or Word
It depends on what you use them for. If you only type in the details, print or send the invoice and keep it, the Tax Agency says the regulation doesn't affect you. If the spreadsheet does more with that information, for example a macro that prepares your register of issued invoices, it counts as an invoicing system and has to comply. Adding up the month's invoices in a column doesn't count.
What you can't do is mix. As a general rule, if you issue some of your invoices with a program, the rest can't be handwritten or come from a template: all your invoicing has to be computerised. That is exactly the Figueres company's problem with the hotels.
If you invoice by hand or your gestoría does it
If all your invoices come out of a handwritten receipt book, Verifactu doesn't affect you, because you don't use any program. If your gestoría issues your invoices with its own program, that program has to comply, and you remain responsible even though you handed the job over. If the gestoría only receives the invoices you write by hand so it can keep the accounts, nothing changes.
If you sell through an online shop
It affects you too. The Tax Agency is blunt about it: it makes no difference whether you sell in a shop or online. If the online shop issues the invoices, for example through a plugin that generates them when an order is confirmed, that plugin is part of your invoicing system and has to be adapted. If the shop only takes the order and another program makes the invoice, that other program is the one that has to comply. To work out which of the two invoices, look at where the PDF the customer receives comes from.
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When Verifactu becomes mandatory
The dates in force are the ones set by Royal Decree-Law 15/2025 of 2 December. Companies, meaning those that pay Corporate Income Tax, must have their software adapted before 1 January 2027. Everyone else, the self-employed included, before 1 July 2027. Until then there is a trial period: you can start with an adapted program and, if something doesn't convince you, keep invoicing with another.
Software makers had until 29 July 2025 to offer adapted versions, so the program you use most likely has one already.
The postponement of Verifactu to 2028
On 5 October 2026, Spain's Ministry of Finance announced that it plans to postpone the outstanding Verifactu obligations until October 2028, so that they coincide with mandatory e-invoicing for businesses and self-employed people whose annual turnover is no more than €8 million. The Tax Agency links to that note from its Verifactu page. The Ministry adds that it will later make a further change to bring the two sets of rules closer, and that the core requirements, such as records being kept and not altered, will be maintained "in substantially equivalent terms".
An announcement doesn't change the law. Until the postponement is published in the BOE, Spain's official gazette, the dates that apply are the 2027 ones, and they are the dates the Tax Agency still gives in its FAQs, updated on 21 October 2026.
Why it's best not to wait until the last month
Switching invoicing software takes more work than it seems: moving customers and products across, setting up the invoice series, checking that the QR prints correctly, training whoever invoices and rebuilding the connections with your online shop or booking system. Done in a rush, in the weeks before the deadline, something is likely to go wrong. Since the Ministry says the requirements will stay, whatever you adapt now will still serve if the postponement comes. And when you choose a program, ask about e-invoicing too, because the rules require those invoices to be produced by an adapted program.
Verifactu and e-invoicing are not the same thing
They get mixed up because they arrive almost together and because the Ministry wants to line them up on the calendar, but they are two different obligations. Verifactu governs how your program records every invoice it issues, whether to a business or a private customer, on paper or as a PDF. Mandatory e-invoicing governs the format in which you send invoices to other businesses and professionals: a structured file that the customer's software reads without anyone typing anything, sent through a private platform or through the Tax Agency's public solution, which is free. Sales to private individuals and till receipts are left out.
E-invoicing is regulated by Royal Decree 238/2026, and its deadlines started running on 6 October 2026. According to the Tax Agency's implementation schedule, businesses with turnover above €8 million a year will have to issue and receive e-invoices from 6 October 2027, and all other businesses and self-employed people from 6 October 2028. You will also have to report the status of each invoice, such as when it is paid or whether it is rejected: self-employed people below €8 million will have to do so from 6 October 2029.
What your invoicing software has to do
You don't need to know how it is programmed inside, but you do need to know what it has to do for you to trust it:
- Record every invoice at the moment it is issued, chained to the previous one.
- Not allow an issued invoice to be deleted or changed. Mistakes are fixed with a corrective invoice or a cancellation, which leave their own record.
- Include the QR code on every invoice, till receipts included.
- Be able to send the records to the Tax Agency.
- Come with its responsible declaration, the document in which the maker certifies that the program complies. It must be viewable inside the program itself, the Tax Agency recommends the help menu, and be available before you buy.
You can still make pro forma invoices and drafts, without a QR, as long as they come from the same system and stay linked to the final invoice. The fines are steep: €50,000 for each financial year for anyone holding a program that doesn't comply, and €150,000 per year and per type of program for whoever makes or sells them. If you switch programs, the old one can only stay to look up past invoices if it can no longer issue new ones. The safest option, according to the Tax Agency, is to export the records and uninstall it.
With or without Verifactu: the two modes
There are two ways to comply. In VERI*FACTU mode, the program sends each record to the Tax Agency as soon as the invoice is issued, and the invoice carries the phrase "Factura verificable en la sede electrónica de la AEAT", which your customer can check with the QR. In the other mode, the program keeps the records in your own system, electronically signed and with an event log, and you have to keep them for the whole limitation period.
The Tax Agency presents the first mode as the easier one to use: you don't have to look after the records or make sure the computer clock is right, and afterwards it helps you with the invoice register and your tax returns. If the internet goes down, you keep invoicing and the records are sent when the connection comes back. Once the obligation is in force, if you start sending records you have to stick with it until the end of that year.
If your invoicing software is custom-built
That is the Figueres company's case, and it is more common than it seems: a management dashboard, an app for technicians or a program someone built for the business that, among other things, issues invoices. For Verifactu, all of that is an invoicing system and needs its responsible declaration. If the business developed it in-house for its own use, the business signs it. If a supplier built it, the supplier does. And if someone added custom features to a commercial program, whoever built that extension certifies their part.
With a tool like that there are two routes. One is to adapt it: make it generate the chained records, the QR code and the submission, and sign the declaration. The other, which for a small business usually works out cheaper, is to take the invoicing out of it: the tool keeps handling jobs, orders or appointments, and passes the data to an off-the-shelf invoicing program that already complies, which issues the invoice. A program that doesn't issue invoices isn't an invoicing system, and the Tax Agency says so plainly. We explain when building pays off and when it doesn't in custom software: when it pays off and when it doesn't, and it is the work of our custom software service.
Connecting your online shop, bookings or CRM to invoicing
Verifactu has a side effect few people mention: copying and pasting gets more expensive. If someone types the online shop's orders into the invoicing program every morning, a typo can no longer be fixed by deleting the invoice; it has to be corrected with a new one. With a connection, the confirmed order reaches the invoicing program on its own, the program issues the invoice with its QR, and the data is entered once. The Tax Agency itself allows for this: among the ways of getting data into an invoicing program, it lists receiving it automatically from other systems.
The same goes for appointment bookings, the CRM or job sheets: the program that handles the work passes what needs charging to the invoicing one. In how much an online shop costs we explain why a shop connected to invoicing costs more than one that runs on its own, and in process automation: where to start, how to pick the first task. Setting up those connections is what we do in process automation.
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The Tax Agency's free invoicing app
For people who issue few invoices, the Tax Agency has a free invoicing app on its website. You fill in a form with each invoice's details and it returns the invoice with its QR, ready to print, with the record stored by the Tax Agency in VERI*FACTU mode. It has limits: it only does full invoices, not till receipts, it doesn't allow several recipients and every invoice has to be typed in. The Tax Agency intends it for micro-businesses and professionals with few invoices a year. For a freelancer invoicing other professionals ten times a month it may be enough; for a shop with a till, it isn't.
How to get ready for Verifactu in five steps
1. List everywhere your invoices come from. The till, the online shop, the office program, the technicians' app, the Excel template, the gestoría. There is almost always one nobody had thought of.
2. Ask each supplier for the responsible declaration for the version you use, or look for it in the program's help menu. If there isn't one, you know which program needs replacing.
3. Decide what to do with whatever doesn't comply. Update it, replace it, or stop invoicing with it and move those invoices to a program that complies. Remember that, as a general rule, you can't leave part of it in Excel if the rest comes from a program.
4. Connect what you copy by hand today. Orders, appointments or job sheets that end up as an invoice should reach the invoicing program on their own.
5. Start early. Use the new program before your deadline, check that invoices come out with their QR and that your gestoría gets what it needs, and export the old program's history before retiring it.
What adapting your software costs with us
It depends on what you have. If all you need is to switch invoicing program, the cost is whatever that program charges, and nobody needs to build you anything. When your shop, bookings or CRM need connecting to invoicing, or a custom tool needs adapting, it is quoted per project: like the rest of our custom software and process automation work, we give you a fixed price in writing before starting, as explained on our pricing page. The first conversation comes with no commitment.
If you're waiting for the Kit Digital grant, e-invoicing has been one of the solutions in its catalogue. On our Kit Digital page you can join the waiting list, and Kit Digital: what it is and how it works explains how the grant works.
Verifactu with a small team
We're three partners working from the Palau Firal in Sant Antoni de Calonge, with businesses and self-employed people in the provinces of Girona and Barcelona. Ivan builds the connections between your shop, bookings or CRM and the invoicing program, and the custom tools when they're needed. Izan looks after the data: making sure the history exported from the old program is stored and backed up. We don't touch the tax side: which regime applies to you or how each invoice is declared is for your gestoría or tax adviser to decide. Our job is making sure the software does its part properly.
If you're not sure how many places your invoices come from, message us on WhatsApp with the programs you use (the till, the online shop, the booking system, the gestoría) and we'll tell you what needs connecting or changing before your deadline. You can also write to us through the contact form.
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