Receipts, IVA and Modelo 303
Spanish shops print their own NIF on the ticket. Hacienda won't take that, and your gestor won't ring them about it either. They'll quietly leave the IVA off and you'll never hear a word. Photograph one receipt and we'll tell you what it's costing you, and which shop to go back to. No account, no card.
The IVA you charged, minus the IVA you paid. Everyone gets the first half right because it is on the invoices you sent. The second half leaks, and it leaks in the two seconds at the counter when nobody asked for a factura.
What you get handed is a factura simplificada. It names the shop, because the shop has to identify itself, and it says nothing about you. Under art. 7.2 RD 1619/2012 it is the buyer's NIF that settles whether the IVA is deductible. So the ticket looks fine, files neatly, and is worth nothing.
Your gestor files what lands on their desk. Handed a shoebox of tickets, nobody is going to ring Decathlon over €2.25 of IVA. They'll leave it out and you'll never hear about it. That's the sensible call on their side, and it's still your money. Nobody's doing anything wrong here. The amount just never gets counted.
Most shops will issue a proper factura against a ticket if you go back with it. That's why this is worth knowing in week two of the quarter rather than the night before you file. Catalejo puts the shops in order of what they're worth and writes the request for you, so the three calls that matter get made and the other thirty don't.
Fifteen at a time, or one photo of the whole kitchen table. Each receipt gives up its shop, its date, every line on it, and whose NIF is printed at the bottom. That last part is the one that decides whether the IVA is yours. A big shop takes a minute or two.
One trip can be printer paper and a week of dinners on the same slip. Booked as a single line it's either all deductible or none of it, and both answers are wrong. Catalejo keeps the lines apart, so the paper counts as a business cost, the dinners don't, and the IVA figure at the end is one you can actually defend.
Ask in English or Spanish, about your own receipts and statements rather than about tax in general. Whether a camera you are about to buy is deductible, what you have actually spent with one supplier this year, which receipts are missing a factura, or what your quarter looks like so far.
"Can I claim the IVA on the hotels from June?"
One itemised ledger for the quarter, grouped by category, with the receipt image attached to every purchase that has one and the NIF shown where the receipt carries a readable one. It is not a filing and it is not signed. It is the thing your gestor would otherwise build by hand out of a carrier bag.
Every budgeting app is built on the bank feed, so every one of them stops at the shop name. Monzo, Fintonic, the spreadsheet, all of them say “Mercadona, €52” and none of them can say more, because €52 is genuinely all the bank was told. The receipt is the only record of the shopping, and until now nobody kept it in a form you could add up.
A Mercadona shop from July: 37 separate lines, read off one photograph.
A Spanish ticket names the shop, not you, and it's the buyer's NIF that settles whether the IVA can be deducted. Nobody is going to chase that. Your gestor files what they're given, and by the time you think about it you can't remember which shop it was anyway. Catalejo reads whose NIF is on each receipt, prices what that's costing you, and writes the request to the shops still worth asking.
A €89 Amazon receipt: €15.45 of IVA at risk. A €75 food shop: €0.14, because groceries were never claimable anyway.
Import your statement and you have every euro that left the account, with nothing missing. Add receipts for the shops you care about and those lines get broken open. Catalejo matches the two so a shop you scanned and a card payment for the same shop are one purchase, not two, and it shows you plainly how much of your spending it can actually account for.
A switch at the top of the page: everything, only what has a receipt behind it, or only what does not.
You could paste one receipt into a chatbot right now and it would read it, probably well. Ask it in October what you paid for the same chicken in June and it has no idea, because it never kept the June receipt. That is the whole difference. One is a clever answer. The other is a record that builds up.
We are software, not your accountant, and we say so. Catalejo shows its workings, flags anything that needs a human, and never invents a number to look clever. Check the final figures with your gestor before you file.
If you live in Spain and work for yourself, both countries have an interest in your income. Put your figures in below and see where you stand in each one. Nothing is hidden and you do not need an account.
Your profit after business costs, not your turnover.
This matters more than people expect. Each region sets its own half of the income tax.
Spain gives you a real allowance per child. Leaving them out overstates your tax.
These are estimates for a self-employed autónomo, using 2026 rates, converted at £1 = €1.1736 (reference rate). They assume you have no other income, that you file individually rather than jointly with a spouse, and that you claim no regional deductions. We are software, not your accountant, and we are not registered tax advisers. Always confirm the final figures with a gestor before you file.
Your gestor is there for the filing and the judgement calls. Sorting a quarter of tickets into line items isn't what you are paying them for, and it isn't what they want to be doing. Catalejo does that part, so what lands on their desk is already itemised, dated and evidenced. The subscription is itself a deductible business expense.
See where you stand, for nothing. No card, no catch.
Know what Modelo 303 will say before the quarter closes, and which shops still owe you a factura while you can still ask.
14 days free, cancel anytime. No charge until the trial ends.
€39 a month is €468 a year. It pays for itself once you are recovering more IVA than that, which takes roughly €2,700 a year of business purchases bought on tickets. Below that, be honest with yourself and stay on the free plan. Drop a statement in and see your own number first.
Because it is the shop's. A factura simplificada identifies the seller, which is all the shop is required to do. Deducting the IVA needs a document that names the buyer, and that is a factura completa. This is the single most common reason IVA quietly does not get claimed, and it is invisible if you only ever look at the total.
Usually yes. Most shops will issue one against the original ticket if you bring it back, and larger chains will do it from the transaction number. It gets harder the longer you leave it and it is awkward once the quarter has closed, which is the point of knowing in September rather than in January. Catalejo lists the shops worth going back to and what each one is worth, so you make three phone calls instead of thirty.
It works out the purchases half, which is the half that takes the time: every receipt you have scanned, what IVA is on it, and which of those receipts actually support a claim. The sales half you type in, because we will not guess which money arriving in your account was invoiced work. A tax return is the one place where a plausible guess is worse than a blank.
Your quarter as one itemised ledger, grouped by category, with the receipt image attached to every purchase that has one and the NIF shown where the receipt carries a readable one. PDF to read, or a ZIP with the images. It is not a filing and it is not signed: it is the input your gestor would otherwise build by hand from a bag of paper.
Yes. Catalejo keeps the two sides apart rather than merging them, so UK-side costs stay in sterling with their own treatment and the Spanish side stays in euros. It does not decide your residency or file anything in either country. If your situation spans both, this is the prep, and your accountants are still the ones who coordinate it.
Because they are not doing the same job. Those are gestoría services: you send them the numbers and they file. Catalejo does not file anything, and if what you want is somebody to press submit then one of them, or your existing gestor, is the right answer and we would rather you did that. What no filing service does is open your receipts. They take the totals you give them, so a ticket that cannot support an IVA claim goes in looking exactly like one that can. Catalejo is the step before: it reads the paperwork, tells you which of it is worth anything, and gives you a quarter your gestor can file from.
We do not know, and anyone who tells you a figure before seeing your spending is guessing. It depends entirely on how much of your business buying goes through tickets rather than proper facturas. Import a bank statement on the free plan and it will tell you how much IVA is sitting in your own business purchases before you pay for anything. If that number is small, do not subscribe.
Fifteen files at a time, and one photo can hold several receipts side by side; those get split into separate purchases. Images or PDFs. A big supermarket shop with forty lines takes a minute or two.
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