From Compliance Mandate to Proprietary Platform: Afianza’s Approach to Verifactu

Few decisions define an advisory firm’s positioning as much as how it responds to a regulatory change. Verifactu, the requirement to digitize invoicing for hundreds of thousands of Spanish SMEs, has confronted every advisory firm with the same choice: refer clients to third-party software or build a response of their own. The first option is cheaper; the second determines who retains the client once the regulation takes effect.

Afianza arrived at that moment as an organization growing fast: close to €80 million in revenue, 1,200 employees, and 10,000 clients. But with less technological maturity than its size would suggest. Acquisitions had added dozens of legacy licenses and tools, a small technology team, and processes fragmented into “neighborhoods.”

To address this, we built MisFacturas, an invoicing SaaS adapted to Spanish regulations that went from concept to pre-production in under three months and, beyond solving Verifactu compliance, became the first piece of the group’s unified client portal.

The Challenge: A Large Advisory Firm with Fragmented Technology and a Regulatory Clock Working Against It

Afianza’s challenge wasn’t just complying with Verifactu itself. The main difficulty was doing so without forcing clients to learn a new third-party tool, without adding further fragmentation to an already fragmented internal ecosystem, and beating the competition to market.

Unlike smaller companies, Afianza’s problem couldn’t be solved by simply buying another license. Each client was invoiced through a different system—or directly on paper—and advisors had to reconstruct information coming from multiple systems and formats. Any new tool had to reach production compliance with the regulation from day one, integrate with the Spanish Tax Agency’s (AEAT) systems, and be simple enough for a freelancer with no technical background to use from the very first minute.

Obstacles blocking the path to scale

Beyond the functional complexity, several fronts were open at once:

1. A regulatory deadline working against them: the launch window was set by the law itself. There was no room for long discovery phases or “definitive” architectures from day one.
2. Diversity among end customers: SMEs and freelancers with very different profiles, most without prior digital habits. The tool had to be easy to use and support both regimes covered by the regulation: immediate submission to the AEAT (Verifactu) and standard issuance without immediate submission (non-Verifactu).
3. Legacy integrations with the AEAT: Verifactu’s protocols rely on XML and relatively old technologies, and the Tax Agency itself kept clarifying aspects of the system as development progressed.
4. Limited internal technical capacity: Afianza’s technology team, sized to sustain existing operations, had no room to take on a project of this scope without a partner to handle execution.
5. More functional than technical complexity: the main challenge wasn’t engineering but business understanding. Spanish invoicing regulations had to be interpreted and translated into an experience any freelancer or SME could use without prior training. It was the team’s grasp of the business, as much as the technology, that unlocked the project.
6. Risk of losing ground: without an in-house response, Afianza depended on pushing clients toward external software, losing control over the experience, client loyalty, and future data consolidation.

Without tackling these fronts simultaneously, Verifactu would turn into an operational cost: more invoices to chase across more formats, more clients adopting tools the advisory firm doesn’t control, and less team time spent on value-adding work. The challenge was to turn the regulatory change into a positioning opportunity.

The Solution: Building a Product from Scratch and Launching Before the Law Took Effect

Faced with the option of adapting an existing solution, we made a bold decision: build Mis Facturas from scratch. Two reasons were decisive: first, no solution on the market was adapted to the diversity of the group’s internal ERPs or to the volume of clients and advisors Afianza manages. Second, Mis Facturas wasn’t conceived as a tactical tool to comply with Verifactu, but as the first stone of a much broader client portal.

The initial mission was clear: have a simple invoicing SaaS in production before the new regulation took effect—free for the end customer and compatible with both Verifactu and non-Verifactu modes.

A squad-based working model, connected to the client from day one

We assembled a full squad (product, design, and engineering) working hand in hand with the client from the very first day. We trimmed the initial scope to the minimum viable product, approved the design as a single block to avoid slow rounds of revisions, and kept biweekly iterations going until reaching pre-production.

Once in production, the team moved into a continuous improvement cycle, shipping releases every two or three days based on real user feedback. That pace let us learn in production, not in a meeting room.

A tech stack built for speed

The stack was chosen to get the product to market and then evolve it safely afterward:

• React: an interface designed for non-technical users, with simple flows covering the entire invoicing lifecycle.
• Node.js: a backend that’s quick to iterate on, with a team already fluent in the stack.
• PostgreSQL: a relational database able to handle the documentary complexity of Spanish invoicing.
• Azure: Afianza’s corporate cloud infrastructure as the final destination, integrated with its identity and security governance.

A critical decision: time-to-market over the “perfect” solution

The most important technical decision of the project was not starting directly on the “definitive” cloud infrastructure in Azure. To reach production within the regulatory window, we launched on third-party managed services—managed hosting and a Supabase-type database—that let us deploy a solid, reliable product quickly. Once it had real traction, we planned a gradual migration to Afianza’s private Azure infrastructure.

We accepted the cost of a future migration in exchange for something more valuable: arriving on time. That’s the kind of trade-off you can only make when the team understands the business as well as the technology.

A product, not just compliance

Beyond the invoicing core, Mis Facturas includes, from the outset, features that make it a useful tool beyond Verifactu:

• A mini-CRM for managing the client portfolio.
• Reusable inventory of products, services, and line items.
• Collections and payments management, payment methods, series, and batch payment generation.
• Multi-currency support.
• Brand customization: logo, colors, and templates so each end customer can issue invoices under its own identity.
• Integrations with third-party storage services like OneDrive for document custody.

Unlike solutions limited to “issue an invoice and report it,” Mis Facturas was conceived as a product: it covers the real day-to-day operations of an SME, not just the paperwork for the tax authorities.

Speed Without Sacrificing Quality or Compliance

Building a product subject to tax regulation in under three months required decisions that only work when the team understands the business in depth.

Technical challenges overcome

1. Mastering Spanish invoicing regulations and translating them into simple UX: the main challenge wasn’t technical but conceptual. The team had to interpret the regulation, anticipate how the AEAT might interpret it, and design screens a freelancer could use without any prior training.
2. Living with changes to the AEAT’s own system: during development, the Tax Agency kept clarifying aspects of Verifactu as it went. Integrations had to be designed to absorb those changes without major rework.
3. Dual Verifactu / non-Verifactu mode: not every end customer is ready to share information with the Tax Agency in real time. Supporting both modes opens the product to a much larger universe of clients.
4. Sustained squad pace: maintaining biweekly client iterations and releases every two or three days post-launch, without sacrificing quality or traceability, requires team discipline more than tools.

Decisions that shaped the outcome

1. A firm two-to-three-week roadmap, tentative beyond that: when the administration postponed the new VAT law’s entry into force, we were able to reorder priorities without rewriting the plan, shifting from strict-compliance features to acquisition and growth features.
2. Provisional infrastructure plus a migration plan: accepting controlled infrastructure debt to avoid missing the launch window, with a clear path to Azure already planned.
3. A product from the start, not a “regulatory” MVP: including a mini-CRM, inventory, batch payments, and customization in the initial scope turned Mis Facturas into a tool end customers want to use, not one they’re forced to use.

The Results: An In-House Response, in Production, in Under a Quarter

While the project remains in active development, the results nearly a year after launch have already transformed how Afianza serves and understands its clients.

Immediate response to end-customer demand

Afianza can now offer a free, in-house tool to its entire client base. The conversation with SMEs has changed: Verifactu stopped being bad news and became a service lever.

Streamlining of internal processes

Advisors now work from a single source of data instead of chasing invoices across scattered formats. The friction generated by the previous fragmented ecosystem is dissolving, opening the door to a far more efficient operating model.

From a reactive to a proactive model

Invoices arrive in real time, not at quarter-end. This eliminates seasonal workload spikes and lets the advisory firm get ahead of client needs instead of reacting to an accumulated backlog.

Technological capability as a competitive advantage

Afianza moved from a “buy software off the market and adapt as best we can” model to one where it can build its own solutions, aligned with its processes and commercial strategy. It also proved that you don’t need the “perfect product” to launch: with a solid MVP in three months, you can learn in production and iterate on real feedback.

MisFacturas as the first piece of the client portal

The product became the first link in a much broader transformation. Nearly a year after launch, the following are already in development on this foundation:

• A financial advisory tool.
• A unified client portal and advisor portal.
• An AI-powered document management system.
• An internal AI system to make use of the group’s information without exposing data on public cloud environments.

Renewed trust in technology

Continuity is the best proof of delivered value. Nine months after launch, MisFacturas keeps evolving, investment has held steady, and the team dedicated to Afianza has grown from around 10 people to roughly 25—a direct sign that the commitment to an in-house product has become embedded in the group’s strategy

Technology Used

• React – Frontend
• Node.js – Backend
• PostgreSQL – Database
• Azure – Corporate cloud infrastructure
• Third-party managed services – Hosting and database in the initial phase to accelerate time-to-market
• AEAT (Verifactu) – Integration with the Spanish Tax Agency via XML protocols