Crea y Crece finally has its regulation: the second clock your firm isn't watching

Update, 15 October 2026. The ministerial order this article described as pending has now been published: Orden HAC/1028/2026, of 2 October, appeared in the BOE on 5 October and took effect on the 6th. That starts the RD 238/2026 clock: the obligation arrives in October 2027 for businesses with turnover above €8 million and in October 2028 for everyone else, which is where the vast majority of law firms sit. The rest of the analysis stands.

Ley 18/2022, Spain’s business creation and growth law (Crea y Crece), was passed four years ago today, on 28 September 2022. Its article 12 announced mandatory electronic invoicing between businesses and professionals, and for most of that time the honest answer to “when?” has been “when the implementing regulation comes out”. We wrote exactly that on this blog.

That is no longer the answer. The regulation came out in March. Most firms we know are focused on VeriFactu, which is reasonable, since it falls due first. The problem is that this focus is turning into software decisions that will have to be undone when the second clock starts.

What RD 238/2026 says

Royal Decree 238/2026, of 25 March, sets out the mandatory e-invoicing system between businesses and professionals. It was published in the BOE on 31 March 2026 and came into force twenty days later, on 20 April. Being in force is not the same as being binding yet. The essentials for a law firm:

• Scope (art. 3). Anyone required to issue an invoice must issue it electronically when the recipient is a business or professional with its seat, a permanent establishment or its domicile in Spain.
• Format (art. 7.1). A PDF won’t do. The invoice must be a structured message following the semantic model of European standard EN 16931, in one of the accepted syntaxes: UBL, CII, EDIFACT or Facturae.
• Channel. Private platforms work alongside a free public solution run by the Spanish Tax Agency, AEAT (art. 11). A business that has not agreed another channel for receiving invoices is deemed to have opted for the public solution (art. 6.1).
• Invoice status (arts. 10 and 12). The recipient must report commercial acceptance or rejection and full payment, with its actual date. Payment or rejection is also reported to the public solution. This is the piece designed to measure late payment, and the one that adds the most admin.
• The link to VeriFactu (art. 2.d). The mandatory e-invoice must be produced by software that meets article 29.2.j) of the General Tax Law. That is the same provision the VeriFactu regulation (RD 1007/2023) implements.

Almost nobody has read that last point, and it explains why these are not two separate projects.

When the clock starts: it depends on an order that doesn’t exist yet

The fourth final provision does not set a date. It sets a period counted from the entry into force of the ministerial order that implements the public solution:

• 12 months later for businesses whose turnover exceeded €8 million in the previous year.
• 24 months later for everyone else, meaning practically every law firm.

The Ministry of Finance released a draft of that order on 16 April 2026, proposing that it take effect on 1 October 2026. On that basis, large businesses would start on 1 October 2027 and everyone else on 1 October 2028. But as of today, 28 September, the order has not been published in the BOE. 1 October 2028 is a reasonable working assumption, not a date. Every month the order slips, the obligation slips with it.

Two details in the decree matter for small firms:

• Professionals who are individuals, and partnerships taxed under the income-attribution regime, with turnover below €8 million get one extra year before reporting invoice status becomes mandatory. Until then it is voluntary (third transitional provision).
• The public solution must be available at least two months before the first effective date (fifth additional provision).

What’s out of scope: private clients and foreign clients

The decree covers invoices between businesses and professionals. When your client is an individual not acting in a business capacity (a divorce, an estate, a dismissal, a home purchase), that invoice is outside this obligation. It is still inside VeriFactu, which applies to every invoice you issue, whoever receives it.

A business client with no seat, establishment or domicile in Spain is also out (art. 3.1). For a coastal firm with an international client base, the share of billing affected can be much smaller than it looks. Measure it before you size anything.

The two clocks in a real firm

Take a Marbella firm set up as a professional limited company, with €1.4 million in fees and 1,150 invoices a year. By recipient, the numbers break down like this:

• 736 invoices (64%) to Spanish businesses and professionals.
• 253 (22%) to private individuals.
• 161 (14%) to clients based outside Spain.

First clock: VeriFactu. Royal Decree-Law 15/2025, of 2 December, set 1 January 2027 for corporate income tax payers and 1 July 2027 for everyone else. The firm pays corporate tax, so its date is 1 January 2027, three months from now. It covers all 1,150 invoices.

Second clock: Crea y Crece. If the order took effect on 1 October 2026, as the draft proposed, the company, being under €8 million, would have to issue structured invoices from 1 October 2028. That covers 736 invoices, plus every invoice the firm receives from its suppliers. Because it isn’t an individual, it would also report payment status from that same date.

There are 21 months between the two clocks. For a self-employed lawyer, the gap would be 15 months, from 1 July 2027, and invoice-status reporting would arrive a year later still.

The sequencing error

The mistake we keep seeing is buying a tool now, in a hurry, because it “is VeriFactu compliant”: it generates the record and sends it to the AEAT. But it invoices in PDF, can’t issue or receive UBL or Facturae, can’t connect to a platform or the public solution, and can’t handle payment status. That tool solves January 2027. In 2028 it forces a second migration: client data, invoice series, templates, staff training and, once again, changing the habits of whoever does the billing.

Our view: decide both at once, even though only one is urgent. What you need to choose before year-end is a tool that produces VeriFactu records and has a clear path to EN 16931 structured invoicing. That path can be direct issuance or a platform integration, but it has to be on the vendor’s written roadmap, not promised on a sales call. Article 2.d of the decree already ties e-invoicing to article 29.2.j) software. Two tools for two obligations that the law connects means paying for integration twice.

What to decide, and by when

Before 31 December 2026 (companies) or 30 June 2027 (everyone else):

1. A billing tool with working VeriFactu. Ask the vendor in writing which e-invoice syntaxes it will support, and by when.
2. A client record that holds the data that decides the regime: business or professional, private individual, and whether based in Spain or abroad. At 1,150 invoices a year, sorting this by hand in 2028 is not an option.

When the order is published:

3. Work out the real date: entry into force plus 12 or 24 months.
4. Choose your receiving channel: a private platform or the public solution. If you choose nothing, the decree chooses for you.
5. Review the edge cases with your tax adviser: foreign clients, recharged disbursements (suplidos), related companies.

During 2027: test structured invoicing with two or three business clients who already receive it. It is the cheap way to find the errors.

VeriFactu itself is covered in our VeriFactu guide for law firms and in the article on VeriFactu for lawyers. This piece deliberately doesn’t repeat it.

Where Mandato fits

Mandato’s billing is VeriFactu-ready and builds the invoice from the case file, with the client record as the source of tax data. That record is where it pays to flag, starting now, who is a business and who is a private client. On Crea y Crece B2B e-invoicing, we are following the order and the AEAT’s technical specifications, and will say what we support once they are settled, not before. The connection with the Tax Agency is described on the AEAT integration page. If you still invoice from Word, start with automating your firm’s billing: it comes before either clock.