Libro registro de facturas recibidas: Spain's purchase VAT book

If you run a business or work as a freelancer in Spain, your asesor fiscal will sooner or later ask for your libro registro de facturas recibidas: the VAT book of every invoice you received. It is the basis for the input VAT (IVA soportado) you deduct each quarter, so a clean book means a quick, correct Modelo 303.

What the received-invoices book is

Article 62.1 of the Spanish VAT Regulation (Reglamento del IVA, Real Decreto 1624/1992) requires businesses and professionals to keep four VAT books: issued invoices, received invoices, capital goods and certain intra-EU operations (BOE, as of October 2026). Article 64 regulates the received-invoices book: you number all invoices, accounting vouchers and customs documents for goods and services acquired for your business correlatively, and record them one by one.

Books you already keep for other tax or accounting purposes can serve as the VAT book if they meet these requirements (article 62.3). The AEAT notes that the income tax (IRPF) books can be kept jointly with the VAT books as one unified book (AEAT, as of October 2026).

Who keeps it and when

The obligation applies to businesses and professionals subject to VAT. Article 62.2 excludes activities under the simplified regime, the agriculture, livestock and fishing regime and the recargo de equivalencia, with the exceptions in their own rules.

Some businesses must keep their books through the AEAT's electronic office (SII) by sending invoice records electronically (article 62.6). This applies to anyone whose VAT period is the calendar month under article 71.3: businesses whose turnover exceeded €6,010,121.04 in the previous calendar year, businesses registered for monthly refunds and VAT groups, among others (BOE, as of October 2026). For everyone else the VAT period is the calendar quarter, and the book is kept by the business itself.

On timing, article 69 says entries must be in the book when you settle and pay the VAT for those operations, and in any case before the filing deadline ends. Received invoices are recorded in the order you receive them, within the period in which you deduct their VAT.

What each entry contains

Article 64.4 lists the minimum content of every entry:

An invoice with several VAT rates can be recorded as several consecutive entries. A summary entry (asiento resumen) is allowed for invoices received on the same date from a single supplier, if the total does not exceed €6,000 and no single invoice exceeds €500, VAT excluded in both cases (article 64.5).

The AEAT's standard electronic format

The AEAT publishes a common electronic format for the VAT and IRPF books ("Formatos de los Libros Registro de IVA e IRPF", specifications 2025-2026). If the tax office requests your books during a review, and you are not in the SII, you can hand them in as XLSX following these record designs. The same format feeds the AEAT's import services for the income tax return, the Modelo 130 and the Modelo 303 (AEAT specifications, as of October 2026).

Key points of that specification:

• File name: tax year + NIF + book type + name or company name. Type C holds all VAT books, with received invoices on a sheet called RECIBIDAS; type T holds unified VAT + IRPF books, with a sheet called RECIBIDAS_GASTOS.
• Pre303 import: XLSX only, at most 4 MB, each book on its own sheet, and all entries from 1 January to the end of the quarter in one file, not split by quarter.
• Field conventions in the AEAT template: dates as dd/mm/yyyy; the settlement period as 1T–4T, never earlier than the invoice date; "Cuota deducible" equal to the VAT charged when all of it is deductible; the reception date decides the first period in which you can deduct the VAT.

How your asesor fiscal uses it

The book feeds the input VAT section of the Modelo 303. In the AEAT's Pre303 service, box 28 adds up the taxable bases and box 29 the deductible VAT of received invoices whose period matches the return being filed (AEAT Pre303, as of October 2026).

The most common problems are missing supplier tax IDs, a period earlier than the invoice date, files split by quarter, and gaps in the reception numbering. Checking these before the handover saves a round of questions.

How Bonro produces it

Bonro exports your receipts as a CSV aligned with the AEAT libro registro layout for received invoices: one line per receipt with taxable base, VAT rate, VAT charged and deductible VAT, and a reception number that continues across exports instead of restarting. Bonro treats the full VAT as deductible, and fields it does not record, such as the supplier's NIF, stay empty for the asesor to complete. Note that this is a CSV for your asesor fiscal's software, not the XLSX file the AEAT import services accept.

You can check and correct every field before exporting. The Libro Registro export is part of the Pro plan; see Bonro's pricing for details.