The approval of the "Crea y Crece" Law in September of last year marked a milestone in the Spanish business world by introducing the obligation to use electronic invoices in transactions between companies and professionals. This requirement will take effect in one year for large companies and two years for others. But what does this transformation really entail, and how should we prepare for this change?
Spanish Electronic Invoicing
For several years, the European Union has been promoting the automated exchange of invoices and other documents among businesses as a way to simplify administrative processes. The key is that these documents follow a specific format that facilitates their processing. At the European level, formats such as PEPPOL or UBL have been primarily adopted, but in Spain, the decision was made to develop Facturae, a format specifically designed to meet our needs. For the past ten years, this format has been mandatory for sending invoices to public entities, although it has not seen widespread adoption in communications between private companies.
Mandatory Electronic Invoicing
With the approval of the mentioned law, the obligation to send this information via automated systems has been established. This means that all companies will need to use a platform to manage their documentation. Initially, the government will provide a public platform, but the use of other platforms will be allowed as long as they are compatible with the public platform and with each other. As a result, companies will have the freedom to choose the platform that best suits their needs.
The main benefits of this change include ensuring that customers receive invoices on time, receiving payment notifications, and the ability to automate document reading more accurately than the standard OCR systems used in conventional invoicing. This will prevent writing errors and streamline the automatic creation of invoices.
Odoo Community Association and Facturae
The Odoo Community Association (OCA) has been working on electronic invoice generation for years. This has allowed them to have direct integration with the public business portal for at least the last 6 years. With recent changes, the focus has shifted towards automating the sending of invoices to the public platform and the retrieval of purchase invoices. This will enable companies to use Odoo tools to simplify administrative processes, utilizing standardized technologies like the OCA's EDI Framework.
How Will the Process Work?
The goal is to keep the process as simple as possible for users. Therefore, it will be necessary to configure in contacts whether they have electronic invoicing and what their delivery address is. Once configured, every time an invoice is validated, it will be automatically sent. Similarly, in the purchasing journal, the reception address can be specified to efficiently receive invoices from the portal.
It is important to note that if suppliers correctly enter all the data, such as the FileReference field for contracts or ReceiverTransactionReference for purchase orders, the system will be able to accurately link all the information. This will allow us to enjoy all the benefits of electronic invoicing along with the enhancements offered by the OCA.