Already operating in Spain
Not sure your Spanish advisor is doing it right?
The problem isn’t that something is wrong. It’s that you’d have no way of knowing.
Spanish compliance fails quietly. Filings are accepted whether or not they’re correct. A wrongly applied collective agreement runs for years without anyone objecting. A missed registration surfaces as a penalty two years later. From head office, with reports arriving in Spanish and an advisor who says everything is fine, there is genuinely no way to verify it.
Your current advisor doesn’t need to know. Nothing we need is anything you can’t obtain yourself.
- Emails go unanswered for days, and answers come back in Spanish.
- You learned about a penalty after it was issued, not before.
- Nobody has ever explained why something is done — only that it is.
- You’ve never been told about a deadline ahead of it, only after.
- Your accounts were deposited late, or you don’t know whether they were.
- Nobody has ever asked you about your business, only for documents.
- You’ve been told something is “complicated” instead of being told what it is.
- When you ask what happens next, you don’t get a sequence. You get reassurance.
None of these proves anything is wrong. All of them are reasons to check — starting with how to evaluate your current advisor yourself. If the company has simply grown, read the signs it has outgrown its accountant.
A story we often hear about
Has this been your experience in Spain so far?
When you set up in Spain, you did what anyone would do. You asked around, compared three firms, checked the references, and chose the one with the best name and the highest fee, because the higher fee felt like safety.
Now a letter from the Spanish tax authority has arrived that nobody warned you about. You email your advisor. Two days later a reply comes back, in Spanish, saying it’s being dealt with. You don’t know what “it” is, what it might cost, or whether there are others like it. Your board asks whether Spain is in order, and the honest answer is that you’re not sure.
What you want isn’t cleverness. It’s a sequence: what’s wrong, what it’s worth, and what happens first. Being far away doesn’t have to make this complicated. That is the whole reason this page exists.
What turns up, and roughly what it’s worth.
Not everything we find is serious, and we say so plainly when it isn’t. These are the findings that recur most often in subsidiaries of foreign parents.
- The wrong collective agreement, applied since the first hire. Underpayment accumulates, and it is owed retrospectively.
- Intra-EU VAT declared incorrectly, or a VIES registration that was never completed, leaving invoices that should have been exempt carrying Spanish VAT.
- Related-party transactions with the parent that have never been documented or reported, on arrangements that have been running for years.
- Annual accounts deposited late, or not deposited, which has consequences at the Registry that most parents don’t know exist.
- A digital certificate that lapsed, so filings have been made by a route nobody has checked, or notices have been going somewhere nobody watches.
- Permanent establishment exposure nobody has assessed, usually where the parent invoices Spanish customers directly while people here do the work.
- Contracts that don’t match reality — the role, the hours or the pay in the document isn’t what the person actually does.
Each finding comes with a risk rating, an estimated exposure in euros, and what to do about it in what order. Including the ones where the answer is to leave it alone. If the company was incorporated recently, start with the obligations that began at incorporation.
How it works
Your tax filings for the open years, your employment set-up and the agreement applied to your team, your corporate housekeeping at the Registry, your standing with the tax authority including anything outstanding, and your intercompany position with the parent.
A short call, access to your own filings, and your last set of accounts. That’s it. Everything required is something you’re entitled to hold already, which is why this can be done without involving your current advisor at all.
A written report in English, structured for a board rather than for an accountant: what we found, how serious each item is, what it’s likely to cost if left, and the order in which to deal with it. Plus a call to walk you through it.
Three weeks, at a fixed price agreed before we start. If you move to us, the full cost comes off your fee.
The switch is our job, not yours.
The reason most companies stay with an advisor they’ve lost confidence in has nothing to do with the advisor. It’s the prospect of the handover: the awkward conversation, the records nobody will release, and the fear that the new firm won’t understand the history.
- Step 01
We make the request, not you
A formal written request to the outgoing advisor for your books, records and access, with deadlines, sent by us. You don’t have to have the conversation unless you want to. It’s a routine professional process and we do it regularly.
- Step 02
We read everything before we touch it
Every open year, every filing, the employment file, the corporate records. This is the step almost nobody does, and it’s why takeovers usually go wrong in the first quarter — the new firm inherits errors, doesn’t find them, and then looks exactly like the old one when they surface.
- Step 03
A baseline report
A written statement of what we inherited and in what condition, on day one. It tells you what’s yours to fix rather than ours, and it protects both of us from arguing about it in a year.
- Step 04
Catch-up, quoted before it starts
If there’s cleaning up to do, it’s a project with a price agreed in advance. Never a surprise line on a monthly invoice.
- Step 05
Live
Thirty to forty-five days for a standard handover, with your filing calendar never interrupted. We time the move around your quarter so nothing falls between two firms.
The handover in full, from the cut-off date to the first payroll: how to change accountants in Spain, and the full handover timeline.
Two, in writing.
If you move to us, the full cost of the health check comes off your fee.
If the handover takes more than 45 days through our fault, that month is free.
We guarantee only what we control. Never the bank, the tax authority, the Registry — or how quickly your outgoing advisor responds.
What it costs.
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The health check
A fixed price, quoted before we start, and not charged at all if we find nothing material. If you move to us, it comes off your monthly fee at 25% of each invoice until it is used up. It depends on headcount and how many open years there are.
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Afterwards: a fixed monthly fee
Built from your obligations and agreed in writing before anything starts — tax, employment, your named advisor, administrative custody and the portal.
What companies ask before they let us look.
- Do we have to tell our current advisor?
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No. Everything we need is something you’re entitled to hold yourself — your own filings, your own accounts, your own access to the tax authority. Plenty of companies run a health check and never mention it, either because nothing turned up or because they preferred to raise it themselves afterwards.
- What if we’re mid-contract?
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Most Spanish engagements are month to month or have short notice, but check yours. If you’re tied in, the health check is still worth doing now: it tells you what to insist is fixed in the meantime, and it means you’re ready to move the day you can.
- When is the best time to change?
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A quarter end is cleanest, and a year end cleaner still. But no month is impossible — we time the handover so that no filing falls between two firms, which is the only timing risk that actually matters.
- Will a new firm understand our history?
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That’s the right thing to worry about, and it’s why we read every open year before taking anything over and write down what we found. Most takeovers fail in the first quarter precisely because the incoming firm skipped that.
- What if the old advisor won’t hand things over?
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It happens, occasionally. The request goes out formally and in writing, with deadlines, from us rather than from you. In the great majority of cases that’s enough. Where it isn’t, there are escalation routes — and in the meantime we can rebuild from your own filings, because your records at the tax authority are yours.
- How long does the health check take?
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Three weeks from receiving the documents. We’ll tell you within the first 72 hours if we see anything that shouldn’t wait for the report.
The worst outcome is that you find out nothing is wrong.
Tell us how many people you employ in Spain, roughly how long the company has been operating, and what made you wonder. We’ll tell you what a health check would cover and what it would cost, within one working day.
Replies within 24 hours, in English.