self-employed workers with simple invoices are spared

As of January 1, 2026, Spanish companies will be required to implement Verifactu, the billing system of the Tax Agency to put an end to fraud. The self-employed have a little more time, until July 1, the problem is that communications are being very confusing and many still do not know if they should comply with the new regulations or how to do so. Now the Treasury has clarified something important: those who use simple invoices made by hand or with programs such as Word or Excel are exempt.

Alarm and confusion. This is what reigns among the group of self-employed professionals. They count in Europa Press that at the end of October, the Treasury sent a notice to all companies reminding them of the new regulations and the fines that failure to implement them would entail (up to 50,000 euros), creating an “unnecessary alarm.”

We are used to Communications from the Tax Agency are quite confusingbut with Verifactu it is being a real chaos. In statements to The Vanguardthe president of the self-employed employers’ association has criticized that “things are not done that way, they are done with a communication campaign” and admits that not even the agencies are clarified with the new system. He has requested an extension so that the self-employed are not obligated until 2027, although for now the dates remain the same.

A key clarification. The Ministry of Finance, through the General Directorate of Taxes, recently resolved a query and clarified something very important: all those companies and professionals who create their invoices manually or using simple programs such as Word or Excel are not obliged to use Verifactu, as long as they limit themselves to generating and printing invoices without any additional functions.

What is Verifactu?. Verifactu is a system to ensure the traceability and transparency of billing. It is not a billing program as such, but a technological system that is integrated into the SIF (computer billing systems) and guarantees that invoices are unalterable, secure and traceable. The key, therefore, is what is considered a SIF and what is not.

SIF. What exactly is a computer billing system? According to the regulationsis a “set of hardware and software used to issue invoices by performing the following actions”:

• Generate invoices: Billing information can arrive from any method, whether entering it manually or automatically from another program.
• Save invoice information: well stored in the program itself, extract it in some physical format (such as paper, USB, etc.), or send it telematically (over the Internet) to another computer or system, even if that other system is not a billing system.
• Process invoice information: use invoice information to generate other results derived from it, such as making reports, analyzes or statistics.

The nuance. The third point that defines a SIF is where the most important nuance is. In the response to the query, the General Directorate of Taxes makes it clear that the fact of creating an invoice with Excel is not synonymous with being exempt from applying Verifactu. The text says that “such spreadsheets may have data processing and conservation utilities that may imply their consideration as Computer Billing Systems.”

Therefore, if you use a program like Excel or Word solely to make the invoice and store the data (digital or printed), it is not considered a SIF. If, on the other hand, you reuse the data by applying calculation or programming functions or export it to other computer systems, it would be considered SIF and you would have to use Verifactu.

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