What is Verifactu and does it affect you?

Under Verifactu nothing is ever deleted or rewritten: the chain of records only grows. If you cancel an invoice, the system adds a cancellation record chained to the rest; if you need to correct it, you issue a factura rectificativa (a corrective invoice, types R1 to R5 in the official format), which creates its own record. The original invoice and its record stay in place: the chain keeps the full history of what happened.

No. The regulation covers computerised invoicing systems: if you issue all your invoices manually (handwritten or on pre-printed pads), you are outside its scope and nobody forces you to digitalise, as the AEAT (the Spanish tax agency) confirms in its official FAQ. Be aware, though: the moment you use a program to issue invoices, even occasionally, that program has to comply.

You can keep invoicing as normal: the records are still generated locally and simply wait in a sending queue. Order HAC/1177/2024 treats a lost connection as a foreseen incident: pending records are sent as soon as possible, in order, with retries at least once an hour and a visible warning while anything remains unsent. It is not a breach: the rules themselves regulate this scenario.

Yes. The chain of records exists per taxpayer and per software system: your old program closes its chain and the new one starts its own, with a first record flagged as such, so the chaining is never "lost" and nothing needs migrating. What you must do is keep the records generated by the old system for their retention period. Tools built for Verifactu, kontora among them, already generate these chained records with a hash fingerprint and QR code.

Yes. The AEAT confirms that taxpayers domiciled in the Canary Islands, Ceuta or Melilla fall within the regulation: where the rules refer to VAT, IGIC (the Canary Islands general indirect tax) or IPSI (the indirect tax of Ceuta and Melilla) applies instead, and the official record format explicitly covers both taxes, with dedicated regime keys for IGIC. The only territories outside are the Basque Country and Navarre, which have their own foral (regional) tax rules.

A special regime does not exclude you by itself. Under recargo de equivalencia (the special VAT scheme for small retailers), and similarly under modules or the agricultural regime, you are generally not required to invoice your sales; but if you invoice voluntarily with software, or must invoice in specific cases (selling business assets, or when the customer is a business or a public body), that software has to comply with Verifactu. For those occasional invoices you can even use the AEAT's free application, and the record format already includes dedicated fields for the surcharge rate and amount.

Without any problem: the rules require one single chain of records per taxpayer and per software system, so each tool keeps its own. You can issue till receipts from the POS and standard invoices from another program, as long as each system complies on its own (hash, chaining, QR). What you cannot do is let part of your invoicing come out of a non-adapted tool.

For the same period as your invoices: the limitation period of Spain's General Tax Law, four years as a general rule, which the invoicing regulation refers to. The official record format is XML and, in systems that do not send records to the AEAT, they must also be exportable to a readable external medium. If you work in VERI*FACTU mode, the AEAT already holds a copy of every record and your system is exempt from the reinforced retention regime, though the invoices themselves are kept as usual.

Never by editing the original record: a new record is generated, with the same invoice identifiers and a correction flag, and chained at the end of the chain. If the AEAT had accepted the record "with errors", it remains registered but you must fix it; if it was rejected, the resubmission also carries a prior-rejection flag. This route only covers errors in the record itself: if the invoice is what is wrong, you need a corrective invoice or a cancellation.

The system covers this: the record states whether the invoice is materially issued by the recipient or by a third party (your gestoría, an accounting agency in Spain, for example), and self-billing follows the same scheme. The software used by whoever issues the invoice must comply, but delegating does not release you: you remain the responsible taxpayer. There is one specific exclusion for operations documented in invoices issued by the recipient or a third party where the VAT ledgers are kept through the SII (Spain's real-time VAT reporting system).

The rules do not care where the software comes from: what matters is that the system generates the chained records with hash and QR, and that its producer issues the declaración responsable (a formal self-declaration of compliance). Many international platforms do not do this out of the box for the Spanish market, so ask the provider explicitly before relying on them. You can always take payments or sell through those platforms and issue the actual invoice from an adapted program.

No: the two regimes are mutually exclusive. If you keep your VAT ledgers through the SII, Spain's real-time VAT reporting system, you are outside the Verifactu regulation, because the AEAT already receives your invoicing data that way. It works in both directions: if you later join the SII, your software must stop printing the QR code on invoices.

You can: the AEAT's submission services have been live since 23 April 2025 and accept voluntary sendings. Under the AEAT's clarifications after the latest postponement, sending records in 2025 or 2026 does not lock you in: the stay-until-year-end rule operates once the obligation actually applies from 2027. Going early lets you road-test your system with real data ahead of the deadlines (1 January 2027 for companies subject to corporate income tax, 1 July 2027 for everyone else, including autónomos, the self-employed in Spain); just remember that whatever you send are records of real invoices, not test data.

Yes. The regulation covers everything you issue with an invoicing system, including facturas simplificadas (simplified invoices, the typical till receipts) handed to final consumers. Each one generates its record and carries its QR code, and any individual can scan it to check the invoice against the AEAT's records; that check is a verification, not a complaint.