Article 12 of Spanish Law 18/2022 on business creation and growth, known as “Crea y Crece”, extended the obligation to issue and send electronic invoices to all dealings between businesses and professionals, not only those with a public authority as recipient. The stated aim is twofold: digitalisation and control of late payment in commercial transactions.
Who it affects
Any business or professional in their dealings with another business or professional. It does not affect invoices issued to end consumers, although consumers will be able to request them in electronic format on the terms set by the implementing rules.
The timetable
The law itself staggers entry into force by reference to the approval of its implementing regulation: businesses and professionals with annual turnover above eight million euros have one year from that approval; everyone else has two. It is a timetable counted from the regulation, so the exact date must be confirmed against the text in force at the time of planning.
The practical consequence is the same in both cases: the deadline looks generous until it crosses the renewal cycle of the management software, which in most companies is decided a year in advance.
Do not confuse it with Verifactu
These are two distinct obligations that overlap in time and get mixed up in almost every conversation. Royal Decree 1007/2023 governs the requirements for invoicing software systems: integrity, retention, traceability and unalterability of records, together with the invoicing register and the system for transmission to the tax authority. The electronic invoice under Law 18/2022 governs the format and the sending of the invoice between the parties, plus the obligation to report on its payment status.
You can comply with one and be in breach of the other. They are best reviewed together, with your software provider in the room.
The part almost nobody has read: invoice statuses
The rules do not stop at a format. They also require reporting on the status of the invoice (acceptance or rejection, actual payment and date) and retaining that information. That is the real mechanism against late payment: it turns payment terms into verifiable data rather than one party's assertion.
For those who get paid late, it is good news and a negotiating tool. For those who pay late, it is a new exposure worth putting in order before it becomes mandatory.
What to do now
- Confirm which timetable bracket your company falls into according to its turnover.
- Ask your invoicing provider in writing whether their system will issue in the admitted formats and whether it will handle invoice statuses.
- Review contracts with clients and suppliers: agreed payment terms are about to stop being invisible.
- Appoint someone internally. Almost every failure we have seen on digital compliance came not from a decision, but from nobody owning the file.
This article contains general information for informative purposes and does not constitute legal advice or an investment recommendation. The rules cited may have been amended after publication; always check the text in force before taking a decision.