Invoicing and stock for retail and shops
If you are a retailer and an individual, you are probably on the recargo de equivalencia: you file no 303, but you pay a surcharge on every purchase. Cairos works it out, keeps the stock and tells you what each item really costs you.
What is particular about invoicing in retail and shops
Retail has a VAT regime of its own that completely changes how the books are kept, and a lot of people find that out late.
Recargo de equivalencia
If you are an individual or an entity under the income allocation system — a comunidad de bienes or a sociedad civil all of whose members are individuals — and you sell to the final consumer without processing the product, it is compulsory. Your supplier charges you the VAT and a surcharge of 5.2%, 1.4% or 0.5% depending on the rate, plus 1.75% of its own for tobacco. In exchange, you file no 303 and no VAT books: that surcharge is already your settlement.
The surcharge is a cost, not VAT to deduct
It is the mistake that costs the most money: anyone on the recargo deducts nothing of the VAT on their purchases, so the real cost of the item is the base plus the VAT plus the surcharge. If you record it as the base alone, all your margins are inflated.
Stock that matches the till
Every sale takes stock out and every purchase adds it. Without that, the year-end inventory is a blind count and there is no way of knowing what has been broken, lost or never paid for.
The closing inventory is not a formality
At 31 December you have to value what is left on the shelves, because the change in stock goes straight into the year's result and, with it, into your 130 or into Corporation Tax. Counting a shop with a thousand lines by hand is a lost Sunday and a number nobody can defend. With the stock up to date, the count only confirms the differences.
The till receipt goes up to €3,000
And not up to the general limit of €400, which is what almost everybody believes: the invoicing regulations put retail sales on the list of activities that can issue a simplified invoice up to €3,000 including VAT. That said: if the customer asks for one with their details so they can deduct it, you have to give it to them.
How it is done today, and how it looks with Cairos
In a shop the problem is not invoicing. It is knowing what you are left with after invoicing.
Without Cairos
- The recargo de equivalencia gets recorded as if it were deductible VAT.
- The margin is worked out on the base, without the VAT and the surcharge that you do in fact pay.
- Stock is kept in your head and January's inventory never adds up.
- You buy again what was already in the back store.
- Supplier invoices with fifty lines get typed in by hand.
With Cairos
- The expense goes in with its base, its VAT and its surcharge, and the cost used is the real one.
- The margin comes out of the full cost, so the number is good enough to set prices with.
- Every sale takes stock out and every delivery adds it.
- You see the stock by warehouse and it warns you when something drops below the minimum.
- Purchases come in by order and all you have to do is confirm what arrives.
The recargo de equivalencia, in one table
The surcharge always goes attached to the VAT rate of what you buy, and the supplier charges it on their invoice. These are the rates in force.
| VAT on the goods | Surcharge | Sample product |
|---|---|---|
| 21 % | 5,2 % | Clothing, footwear, electronics, cosmetics, hardware. And soft drinks with added sugars or sweeteners, which have gone at 21% since 2021. |
| 10 % | 1,4 % | General foodstuffs, bottled water, flowers and plants. |
| 4 % | 0,5 % | Ordinary bread, milk, cheese, eggs, fruit and vegetables, olive oil, books. |
| Tobacco products | 1,75 % | A regime of its own, different from the rest. |
They are the four rates in article 161 of the VAT Act; there is no other. The surcharge does not apply if you are a commercial company, if you process the product before selling it, or if sales to final consumers did not exceed 80% of your previous year's sales. And there are items excluded from the regime even when you sell them retail: vehicles and their parts, jewellery, luxury fur garments, works of art and antiques, industrial machinery, construction materials, minerals and unworked metals. Anyone on the recargo files no 303 for that activity, though they do file a 309 when they buy in the European Union or receive a reverse-charge invoice.
The modelos you end up filing
| Form | When | Why in your case |
|---|---|---|
| None for VAT | — | If you are on the recargo de equivalencia, that activity has no 303 and no 390. |
| 130 | Quarterly | The instalment payment of your IRPF, if you are on estimación directa. |
| 111 | Quarterly | The withholdings for the shop assistant or the staff. |
| 115 | Quarterly | The withholding on the rent for your premises, which there almost always is. |
| 347 | February | Suppliers above €3,005.06 a year. |
What you will actually use
The counter, the warehouse and the quarter, on the same screens.
Inventory and warehouses
Stock and minimum levels with alerts from the Ámbar plan; several locations, transfers and counts, from the Jade plan.
Purchases from suppliers
Orders, partial delivery and prices compared across suppliers.
Recargo de equivalencia
Set on the company record: expenses go in at the full cost.
A margin you can trust
Per item and per family, worked out on what you really pay.
Try it with your shop's invoices
Free plan with up to 30 documents a year, no card needed. And if it does not work for you, your data leaves with you.
Questions from retail and shops
Your shop invoices differently. So does the program.
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