Even though Spanish legislation is prone to change as from 1 January 2011 in the advent of the new EU E-invoicing directive, there is still room to take a look at the current legal situation. This article was inspired by an article from Julia Sanchez Meynial , Marketing Director at Pixelware. has created diverse Business Solutions for the electronic management of documents, which facilitate compliance with the regulations governing digital invoices.

Electronic signatures
First of all there is the regulation related to billing using digital signatures, Ministerial Mandate number HAC/3134/2002 of December 5th. This is complemented by the Resolution of the General Director of the State Tax Administration Agency, detailing the approved procedures for generating digital invoices and the approved methods of signing them (Resolution number 2/2003 of February 14th, entered in the Federal Registry on February 17th).

Since then, digitally signed invoices have enjoyed full legal validity, as well as the ability to replace paper invoices completely.

Contents of the electronic invoice
Obviously, the e-invoice must contain ALL of the information that it would have to include if it were a paper invoice. For example, you must include the Tax ID number, legal business name and physical address . Previously, this information could be omitted in the e-invoice, as the e-invoice lacked legal validity in anyhow.

Storage of the e-invoice
One of the main advantages of the new Spanish e-invoicing legal system is the elimination of the obligation to file paper invoices. With the e-invoice, the e-message and the digital signature must be maintained along with the digital certificate, which allows for verification of the sender. Furthermore, this digital filing can be done from anywhere, as long as access to the invoices can be guaranteed upon request by the Spanish tax administration. This means that whenever an auditor comes to your office, you must grant and guarantee him access to the invoice archives. Again, it is not necessary to submit the paper copies, because e-invoices are equally valid.

Certified e-invoicing providers and software houses
Julián Inza pointed out in this discussion about certification and homologation that:

• 46 Spanish companies working in the area of document management have their solutions certified to manage the requirements of certified digitalization, more on the way. These requirements guarantee that digitalization truly reflects the paper aspect and content in a way that can be audited by Spanish Tax Agency.
• 83 software houses registered as supporters of XML format "facturae" in Spain (this is not exaclty a certification process)
• 55 eInvoicing Service Providers as supporters of XML format "facturae" in Spain (similar process to be listed: send an invoice in facturae format to the tax agency)