The journey of one invoice

Automated invoice bookkeeping, from the document to the Libro Mayor.

An invoice comes in through the browser or on Telegram, and comes out read, checked against the printed total and posted by double entry. Nothing reaches the books until a person approves it.

01The journey of one invoice

Which way does an invoice come in?

Through two doors: the browser and Telegram. There is no third.

In the browser you drag whatever you have: one file, several, a whole folder or a ZIP. Folders and ZIPs are walked through inside, nested ones included, and anything that is not an accounting document is counted and named to you, instead of simply disappearing. A ZIP takes up to 200 documents and 15 MB per file. Before you drop them you choose what they are: expense, income, credit note or payslip.

The other door is Telegram. The pattern we recommend is one group per client company: you link it once by sending “/link CODE” in the group, and everything that lands there is filed under that company. The bot takes PDFs and photos up to 15 MB, and refuses a ZIP saying why. It comes with the Despacho, Gestoría and Gestoría Plus plans.

The browser: One file, several, a folder or a ZIP. PDF, JPG, PNG, HEIC, HEIF and WEBP, with the ZIP as a container.
Telegram: One group per client company, linked just once. PDFs and photos up to 15 MB. A ZIP is only opened in the browser.
Who can send: Each chat has its own sender list. A file from someone who is not on it is held in quarantine and waits for your approval in the inbox.
By email, not yet: There is no email intake. It is still two doors: the browser and the bot.

02The journey of one invoice

Is it an OCR that reads the invoice?

No. There is no OCR layer and no template per supplier: the whole document is read.

Where an OCR recognises characters and needs a template for every supplier, iCifra sends the PDF or the photo as it is to a multimodal language model and gets the fields back: number and date, supplier and client with their NIF, taxable base, VAT rate and amount for each rate, IRPF, other taxes, disbursements and total. That is why a receipt with three VAT rates, or a payslip, needs no set-up beforehand.

That reading is the only part with AI: an Anthropic model, claude-sonnet-5, reads the document and proposes the fields. What it does not settle stays in review with its reason written down, and nothing reaches the books until a person approves it. What comes after is not reading but calculation: the arithmetic, the balance and the quarter's figures.

Written for Spanish documents: It looks for Base imponible, IVA, IRPF, Total factura, CIF and NIF, and recognises the abono, the factura rectificativa and the nómina by name.
Several VAT rates on the same invoice: The breakdown is kept: the base and the VAT amount of each rate. A rate that is not printed is not invented.
Ambiguous dates: It is the printed date that is normalised, not the model's reading of it. Correct a supplier's format and their documents are read again.
Payslips: Gross earnings as the base, net pay as the total, IRPF withheld, and the employee's Social Security separately. Here the supplier is the person and the client is the company.

03The journey of one invoice

What is checked before anything is posted?

The arithmetic against the printed total, in integer cents. That is the figure with legal force.

Base plus VAT plus other taxes minus IRPF has to come to the printed total, with one cent of tolerance; on a payslip, gross earnings minus IRPF minus Social Security has to come to the net pay. The breakdown is reconciled too: the bases add up to the base and the VAT amounts add up to the VAT. If something does not balance, iCifra corrects no number: it drops the document to review and writes down which figures disagree.

A document is approved only when all of it holds: the supplier is already known to that company, the reading reaches 0.75 confidence out of 1, there is a total and there is a supplier name, the arithmetic balances, it is not a duplicate, and the invoice is in the company's name. Everything else is review. A new supplier's first invoice always goes through review, so that you confirm how the date was read.

The states: Uploaded, processing, and then one of these: approved, needs review, duplicate or error. Only what is approved enters the books.
Duplicates: The same file uploaded twice through the browser is caught by its hash before it is read; the same invoice arriving another way, by its content. A duplicate is not posted, and the flag can be dismissed.
Billed to someone else: If the client's NIF or name is not the company's, the document is flagged and drops to review. It is not filed in silence.
If the reading fails: The file is not lost: it is kept with the reason. A failure of ours is called what it is, not a problem with your document.

04The journey of one invoice

What asiento does each document produce?

One by double entry, with the Plan General Contable accounts. If debit and credit do not match to the cent, it is not published.

On a received invoice, the category's account is debited for the base, 472 input VAT for the VAT amount, 631 for other taxes and 629 for disbursements; 4751 is credited for the IRPF withheld, and the supplier's subaccount, 410.0.NNNNN, for the total. On an issued one, 430 and 473 on the debit side against 700 and 477 on the credit side. On a payslip, 640 on the debit side against 4751, 476 and 465.

Every new company is created with twenty-four PGC accounts already seeded, and every supplier and every bank account gets its subaccount without anyone typing it. The imbalance is measured in integer cents and works as a gate, not as a warning: an asiento that does not balance exactly stays out of the Libro Mayor and comes back to you with its document, its date and the imbalance in cents.

Credit notes are not posted yet: They are read, kept and linked to the invoice they correct, and the Libro Mayor lists them as unposted with that reason.
The withholding goes to its own account: 4751 when you withhold it, 473 when it is withheld from you. VAT is never mixed with IRPF.
The rounding cent: The residue left by VAT rounded line by line is decided once per company: take it to the rounding-differences account, or hold the document back. Undecided, it is held back.
What is held back says why: “Out by X €”, “it has no amounts”, “its invoice is waiting to be approved”. It stays visible and out of the books until it is fixed.
The asiento number is not a reference: The Libro Mayor is recomputed on every query and the numbering is positional: an invoice with an older date shifts the ones after it.

05The journey of one invoice

How is the bank reconciled, and what does your adviser get?

Each movement looks for its invoice by amount and date; the quarter comes out in the Excel your adviser already reads.

Statements come in as CSV, Excel (.xlsx and .xls) or PDF, and the PDF is read by the same model that reads the invoices, so that one is worth checking. Each movement is scored against the invoices whose amount matches its own within two cents and whose date falls inside thirty days: if the likeness is high it matches on its own, and if it is doubtful it is proposed to you and you decide.

What is left without an invoice is not hidden: it appears on a review screen and is posted against its own category, so that the bank account keeps balancing. On the VAT side there are two Excel workbooks. The modelo one has three sheets: Facturas (303), one row per invoice with the base and VAT amount of each rate; Resumen 303, one row per quarter; and Modelo 347, one row per counterparty with its annual total. It is a working paper: the one who signs and files is your adviser.

The row that cannot be read: An unreadable date, an unreadable amount or a genuine zero: they are counted and named. A movement already imported is skipped when the same period is imported again.
The export reads the whole set: It does not export what is on screen: it reads every page again and, if it cannot, it refuses instead of handing you an incomplete quarter.
Formats: The modelo workbook is .xlsx because it is three sheets. CSV is there for the single sheet and for the invoice list. The Libro Mayor comes out in its own .xlsx, or to print.
Input and output VAT: Export from the received list for input VAT and from the issued list for output VAT: the sheet adds up the rows you give it.
Only what is approved: Review, duplicates and errors do not enter the Libro Mayor, or the reports, or any export. They stay visible on their own screens.

06The journey of one invoice

What does iCifra not do?

This list matters as much as the other one. Everything on it is here because it does not exist yet.

iCifra does not issue invoices. There is no creation, no numbering series, no PDF or XML generation and no sending: every document that exists here arrived as a file. That is why it is not a computerised invoicing system as Real Decreto 1007/2023 defines one, and it does not make anyone comply with Verifactu: the obligation belongs to whoever issues, and what is in iCifra is the invoices you receive and the ones you have already issued.

Nor does it file anything with the AEAT: no 303, no 347, no 390, no 111, no 130. It produces the sheets and keeps the receipt of what you have already filed elsewhere. It does not convert currencies, so the totals of a company with several of them would mean nothing. Credit notes are read and linked, and not posted. And a new account does not get in on its own: we check it by hand before it can do anything.

Issuing invoices: iCifra does not write them. No numbering, no PDF, no XML, no sending, no connection to the AEAT.
Verifactu: We do not say compatible, or approved, or adapted. The obligation travels with whoever issues the invoices, not with the program that reads them.
Bank connection: There is no connection to your bank, no PSD2, no Norma 43. Statements are files you import yourself.
Inviting your team: The roles and the permissions exist in the database; the screen for inviting a colleague does not, yet.

07Questions

What do gestorías and practices ask before trying it?

Do I have to set up a template for every supplier?

No. There are no templates to draw and no rules to write. A new supplier's first invoice goes through review and, when you confirm it, its category is learnt: the next one from that supplier files itself.

How many invoices can I upload at once?

A ZIP takes 200 documents and 15 MB per file. Reading also has an hourly rate set by the plan: 10 on the free plan and on Solo, 100 on Despacho, 250 on Gestoría and 500 on Gestoría Plus. What waits is not lost. The hourly rate is shared between invoice reading and the assistant: both draw on the same counter.

Does it read issued invoices and payslips too?

Yes. Expense, income, credit note and payslip, each with its own reading rules. A credit note is read and linked to the invoice it corrects, but it is not posted yet. What iCifra does not do is write your invoices.

Can I correct a field that was read wrong?

Yes, and it is the normal path: you correct the document in review, you approve it, and with that it enters the books. If what was wrong was the supplier's date format, correcting it makes their documents be read again.

Does it read bank statements in Norma 43?

No. That format is not supported and there is no connection to your bank. Statements come in as CSV, Excel (.xlsx and .xls) and PDF, and the PDF is read by the model, so it is worth checking before you reconcile.

Does it generate the Modelo 303?

It does not generate the form and it does not file it. It produces the received-invoice book, the breakdown by VAT rate, the quarterly totals and the list of counterparties with their annual total. The one who signs and files is your adviser.

Try it on a real client's invoices.

The free plan does not expire and we do not ask for a card: one company and ten invoices a month. We check every new account by hand before opening it, and it usually takes five to ten minutes during working hours.

Start free, no card Talk to us

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