B2B e-invoicing in Spain: what companies need to know

Spain B2B e-invoicing becomes mandatory on 6 October 2027 for companies with turnover above 8 million EUR, and on 6 October 2028 for everyone else. If you invoice other businesses in Spain, you’ll need to send structured e-invoices, copy each one to the tax authority’s public platform and report when you accept and pay the invoices you receive.

Here’s what the law requires, when each deadline applies and how you can prepare.

TL;DR

• Spain’s e-invoicing law makes structured e-invoices mandatory for domestic business-to-business sales.
• Companies with turnover above 8 million EUR must comply from 6 October 2027.
• All other businesses and professionals must comply from 6 October 2028.
• Recipients must report whether they accept or reject each invoice and the date they pay it.
• Every invoice sent through a private platform needs a copy sent to the public platform at the same time.
• The mandate runs alongside Spain’s other invoicing and tax reporting rules, so you’ll need to plan for all of them.

What is B2B e-invoicing in Spain?

Business-to-business, or B2B, e-invoicing is the exchange of invoices between companies in a structured, machine-readable format. A PDF sent by email isn’t an e-invoice. A structured e-invoice is a data file, usually in Extensible Markup Language, or XML, that your enterprise resource planning, or ERP, system can create, send, receive and process without anyone typing the data in by hand.

In Spain, the legal basis for B2B electronic invoicing is the Ley Crea y Crece, Law 18/2022 on the creation and growth of companies. Royal Decree 238/2026 sets out the detailed rules, and Order HAC/1028/2026 adds the technical specifications for the public platform. The Agencia Estatal de Administración Tributaria, or AEAT, is Spain’s tax authority and runs that platform.

The change goes further than the file format. Today, many companies in Spain send invoices as PDFs and key in the invoices they receive. That’s slow, it leads to typing errors and nobody gets a clear view of when an invoice was accepted or paid. Under the new Spain e-invoicing law, the *factura electrónica obligatoria*, or mandatory e-invoice, carries that information with it from issue to payment.

For your finance and IT teams, an invoice is no longer a document you send and forget. It becomes a record with a life cycle: issue, acceptance or rejection, and payment. The authorities can see each of those steps.

ecosio already exchanges structured invoices in Spain. Facturae, the Spanish e-invoicing format, is live with us for invoices to public administrations, and customers in Spain already use ecosio for electronic data interchange, or EDI, covering orders, delivery notes and invoices. The B2B mandate extends that same setup to invoices between businesses.

Why is Spain introducing mandatory B2B e-invoicing?

The main reason is late payment. The legal maximum payment period between businesses in Spain is 60 days, but the average is around 80 days **🕸️ gap**. Suppliers carry the cost of that delay, and small and medium-sized enterprises, or SMEs, feel it first because they have less cash to cover the gap.

Until now, the government had no reliable way to see when invoices were actually paid. Mandatory B2B e-invoicing changes that. When you receive an invoice, you’ll report whether you accept or reject it and the date you pay it in full. The government can then compare real payment dates with the agreed terms and act on companies that pay late.

The reform has other aims too. Structured invoices are easier to trace, which helps reduce the VAT gap. That’s the difference between the value added tax, or VAT, that should be collected and the amount that actually is. It also brings Spain closer to the EU’s VAT in the Digital Age package, known as ViDA, which moves member states towards digital reporting.

For your business, this means your payment behaviour becomes visible. If you pay suppliers late, it shows up in the data, and companies that don’t meet legal payment terms can lose access to public subsidies and public contracts. If you’re a supplier, the same data helps you see where your invoices stand and when you can expect to be paid.

That’s why it’s worth treating the mandate as a finance process as well as an IT project. With ecosio, the status events for each invoice stay linked to the invoice itself. Your accounts payable, or AP, and accounts receivable, or AR, teams work from the same record instead of a separate tracking spreadsheet.

Which companies will be affected?

Almost every business and self-employed professional, or *autónomo*, established in Spain that invoices other businesses is in scope. Your start date depends on your turnover in the previous calendar year.

The Spain e-invoicing requirements cover domestic B2B transactions between businesses and professionals established in Spain. Invoices to public administrations, known as business-to-government or B2G invoices, stay on FACe, the government’s central invoice portal, and the Facturae format. Business-to-consumer, or B2C, sales are out of scope. Cross-border transactions, where one party isn’t established in Spain, are also out of scope.

Simplified invoices are out of scope unless they include the buyer’s tax ID and address. In that case, the B2B rules apply.

The documents covered include standard invoices, corrective invoices, invoices that replace simplified invoices and self-billed invoices. If you use self-billing, where the customer issues the invoice on the supplier’s behalf, you’ll need to include those flows in your project.

How much changes for you depends on where you start. If you still send PDF or paper invoices, you’ll see the biggest change, as these won’t be valid for in-scope transactions. If you already send structured invoices in other countries, you’re further ahead, but you still need to meet Spain’s format, copy and reporting rules.

Groups with several entities in Spain need to plan carefully. One entity might be above 8 million EUR and another below it, so different parts of the group start on different dates. Some groups decide to move all their entities at once so they don’t have to run two processes side by side.

ecosio supports self-billed and corrective invoices for Spain, so you can include those flows in the same project as your standard invoices.

Spain B2B e-invoicing timeline and deadlines

Royal Decree 238/2026 of 25 March was published in the Boletín Oficial del Estado, or BOE, Spain’s official gazette, on 31 March 2026. Its deadlines run from the date the Ministerial Order for the public platform enters into force. Order HAC/1028/2026 was published on 5 October 2026 and entered into force the next day, so the Spain B2B e-invoicing timeline is now legally fixed.

Twelve months sounds like a long time, but it goes quickly. You’ll need to change your ERP output, clean your customer and supplier data, agree channels with your trading partners and test the full flow, including the copy to the public platform and the status messages. Each of those steps depends on people outside your own team.

The 2029 date doesn’t mean smaller businesses can wait. From 6 October 2028, they must send and receive structured e-invoices. Only the status reporting for sole traders and entities under the income attribution regime comes later.

ecosio’s Spain B2B flows are in early access now, ahead of phase one. You can test the full flow from your ERP to your customers, to the public platform and back, well before 6 October 2027. For the latest position, visit our Spain e-invoicing compliance page.

How does the new system work?

Spain has chosen a hybrid model. It isn’t a clearance model, where the authority approves each invoice before it reaches the buyer. Instead, you have two ways to exchange invoices:

• You can use a private e-invoicing platform. Private platforms must connect with each other free of charge, so you don’t have to join each customer’s platform. They can exchange invoices in four approved formats: Universal Business Language, or UBL, Facturae, EDIFACT, the UN standard for electronic data interchange, and the Cross Industry Invoice, or CII.
• You can use the free public platform, the *Solución Pública de Facturación Electrónica*, or SPFE, which the AEAT runs. The SPFE only works with UBL, based on the European standard EN 16931 with a specification for Spain.

Whichever channel you use, the SPFE acts as the central record. Three rules apply to every invoice:

• When you send an invoice through a private platform, even in Facturae or EDIFACT, the platform sends a faithful copy, the *copia fiel*, to the SPFE in UBL at the same time.
• Each invoice carries a unique identifier made up of the issuer’s tax identification number, or NIF, the invoice number and series, and the issue date.
• The recipient reports whether it accepts or rejects the invoice, and the date it pays it in full, within four calendar days of each event.

Invoices sent through private platforms also need an advanced electronic signature or seal. The copy sent to the SPFE can’t contain embedded attachments, apart from the signature file.

This is where most projects go wrong. A company can send a valid Facturae invoice to its customer and a broken UBL copy to the SPFE. The customer is happy, but the company still isn’t compliant. Missed status reports are the other risk. If you don’t report on time, the invoice can be treated as tacitly accepted, which affects payment terms and disputes.

ecosio creates both legs from the same data. You send your invoice data from your ERP once. We convert it into the format your customer needs, apply the advanced electronic signature, deliver it and send the UBL copy to the SPFE in parallel. Acceptance, rejection and payment events are handled in Compliance Transactions. Monitor, currently in early access, shows where each invoice stands against the reporting deadline, so your team can act on exceptions before the window closes.

How B2B e-invoicing differs from VERI*FACTU

It’s easy to confuse the two. Both involve the AEAT and arrive at around the same time, but they’re separate obligations with different goals.

An easy way to remember it: VERI*FACTU covers how you *create* and lock an invoice in your billing software. Crea y Crece covers how you *send* it to your customer and track it until it’s paid.

The Suministro Inmediato de Información, or SII, adds a third obligation. It’s Spain’s near-real-time VAT reporting system for large companies and some other taxpayers. Many of those companies assume the SII exempts them from the B2B mandate. It doesn’t. The AEAT has confirmed that B2B e-invoicing and the SII are separate obligations, so you need to comply with both.

Regional systems add another layer. TicketBAI in the Basque Country and the system in Navarre remain in force, and they sit alongside the national mandate rather than being replaced by it.

The risk is that each obligation turns into its own project, with its own vendor and its own data mapping. A change for one of them can then break another.

ecosio doesn’t replace VERI*FACTU, which stays with your ERP or billing software. What we do is keep invoice exchange in one place: Facturae for B2G, EDI for your order-to-cash flow and the new B2B mandate all run on the same connection. Your team works with one setup for exchanging invoices in Spain instead of several.

How companies can prepare now

You can break your preparation into six steps. Each one builds on the step before it, so start at the top.

1. Map your transactions: separate domestic B2B transactions, which are in scope, from B2C sales, exports and other cross-border transactions, which aren’t. Include self-billed and corrective invoices.
2. Clean your master data: remove duplicate NIFs, check addresses and collect the routing data you need for public and private entry points, such as the DIR3 codes that identify public administrations.
3. Check your ERP: confirm which of the four approved formats your ERP or accounting system can create, and whether it can apply an advanced electronic signature.
4. Plan your reporting: decide how your systems will send faithful copies to the SPFE and report acceptance, rejection and payment dates on time. Agree who in your AP team owns each status event.
5. Talk to your trading partners: agree which channels and platforms you’ll use to exchange invoices, and when you’ll test with your largest customers and suppliers.
6. Connect your obligations: plan your B2B e-invoicing project together with your VERI*FACTU software updates and SII reporting, as all three remain separate.

Steps two and five often take longest, because they depend on data quality and on other companies’ timelines. If you start them first, you’ll have more room to test before 6 October 2027.

Here’s how that looks in practice. Imagine you run a manufacturing company in Spain with turnover of 20 million EUR. You invoice around 300 business customers by PDF and receive most supplier invoices the same way. From 6 October 2027, every invoice you send has to be a structured e-invoice in an approved format, and a UBL copy has to reach the SPFE. You also have to report the status of the invoices you receive, including the date you pay them. That affects your ERP, your customer master data and your AP process, as well as the way you send invoices.

If you already work with ecosio for EDI or Facturae in Spain, part of this work is already done. Your trading partner data and ERP connection are in place, and B2B e-invoicing compliance in Spain becomes an extension of that setup.

Choosing a scalable e-invoicing solution

Once you know what you need, you’ll have to decide how to connect. There are two main options:

• Direct SPFE integration: your IT team builds and maintains the connection to the SPFE web services to send invoices and copies and to report payment status. The SPFE is free and gives you full control, but your team has to maintain the UBL mapping, and the SPFE doesn’t support other formats or embedded attachments.
• A private e-invoicing platform: you connect your ERP once, and the provider handles format conversion, the advanced electronic signature, routing to any recipient platform and the UBL copy to the SPFE.

Direct integration can work if you only invoice in Spain, send a small number of invoices and have developers available. It gets harder when the specification changes, when customers ask for formats the SPFE doesn’t support, or when you add other countries.

Spain is one mandate among many. Governments across Europe and beyond are moving to structured e-invoicing and real-time reporting. If you solve each country separately, every new mandate means another project, another vendor and another mapping to maintain.

When you compare providers, ask these four questions:

• Does the provider send the invoice and the SPFE copy from the same data?
• Does it handle acceptance, rejection and payment reporting for the invoices you send and the invoices you receive?
• Does it support every format your trading partners use?
• Who updates the mapping when the AEAT changes the specification?

With ecosio’s Global E-invoicing Compliance, you connect your ERP once and reach the platforms and formats each country requires, for B2B, B2G and B2C. In Spain, we convert your invoice data into Facturae, UBL, EDIFACT or CII, send the UBL copy to the SPFE and manage status reporting. When the specification changes, we update the mapping on our side, so you don’t have to reopen your project.