Andrés installed and repaired air conditioning in Cartagena. Self-employed, no staff, twelve years in the trade. He invoiced with a Word template that had his logo at the top and his details at the bottom. When he finished a job, he opened the document, changed the client's name, the description and the amount, bumped the invoice number by hand and saved the PDF. He sent it to the client over WhatsApp.
It worked for him. His nephew, studying an admin course, told him over a Sunday lunch:
—Uncle, with this VeriFactu thing you're going to have to change how you invoice.
—I've always invoiced like this. Never had a problem.
—Right, but now it won't count.
Andrés kept eating. The nephew's words sounded like one of those things they say you have to do and then nothing happens.
Why his way was about to stop counting
He was right about one thing: Andrés defrauded no one. But his Word template had, without him thinking about it, exactly what the new rule wants gone. He could open an invoice from three months ago and change its amount without any trace. He didn't. But he could. And that “could” is what's being targeted.
A Word document is a sheet you can rewrite. January's invoice, in March, could say something else, and nobody would know. What VeriFactu asks is the opposite: that each invoice be recorded so that, if someone touches it afterwards, it shows. It's not about distrusting Andrés. It's that his tool left no record of anything.
The fear of the expensive program
What really held Andrés back wasn't the law. It was the image of having to buy a program full of buttons, built for a company with an admin department. He made twenty invoices a month. He didn't want a whole accounting suite for that.
—What I want is to keep doing the same —he said—. Put the name, the job and what I charge. And that's it.
It's a reasonable complaint, and more common than it seems. Half the freelancers who invoice with Word or Excel don't do it out of laziness: they do it because what's on the market is too big for them. Complying didn't have to mean changing his life.
What we set up
We didn't sell him a big program. We set up something to his measure: the same invoice as always, with his logo and format, but generated by a system that does three things Word didn't. It checks the data before issuing —the client's tax ID, that the VAT adds up, that the number follows the previous one—. It records each invoice with a hash chained to the one before, so none can be changed afterwards without it showing. And it puts the VeriFactu QR code on the invoice.
On the outside, for Andrés, little changed. He still enters client, description and amount, and still sends the PDF over WhatsApp. The difference is underneath, where you don't see it: now each invoice is sealed and in order. Before deciding, he spent a while on his nephew's computer entering a test invoice into a free tool to see this hash and QR business. When he saw it work with one of his own jobs, he relaxed.
What he said afterwards
Months later, over another lunch, he told his nephew:
—You know what this took off my hands? That little number I bumped by hand. I was always afraid of repeating one.
The nephew laughed. Andrés didn't. He said it like someone realising something. What he had lived as an imposition —a law forcing him to change— turned into a small, daily relief: one less thing to remember.
It's not that Word was wrong for twelve years. It's that homemade tools hold up until reality catches them: a big client asking for a proper invoice, a new rule, a scare. And on that day, changing calmly costs little. Changing against the clock costs much more.
Invoicing “as always” has an expiry date
Many freelancers invoice with Word, Excel or a PDF they fill in. It's worked for years and they defraud no one. But VeriFactu doesn't judge intent: it judges whether the tool lets you alter an invoice without a trace. An editable document, by definition, does.
Complying doesn't force you to buy a huge program or change how you work. It requires that, underneath, each invoice is recorded, validated and sealed. That fits in something as simple as what you already use, done properly. And it goes far better calmly than against the clock.
Still invoicing with Word, Excel or a PDF you can edit?
You don't need to burden yourself with a huge program. Tell me how you invoice today and I'll suggest the simplest way to comply with VeriFactu without changing your daily routine.
Tell me how you invoice