Comment 11 for bug 523080

You got me wrong Ferdinand!

We (in Spain) have 20 days since the end of the accounting period to close it (all the invoices must have been filed before the 20th of the first month of the next period). But payments don't have to be filed on that period.

In fact, the average payment time in Spain is about 98 days!!! (second highest on Europe), small clients usually pay at 30 days, medium sized or big clients usually pay at 90, 120 or 180 days. I think is easy to gasp that you can't file a payment in the same period of the invoice if you receive the payment 6 months later! So is just the opposite of what you though :)

Just as reference, the 'usual' way to invoice in Spain is (as far as I know) like this:

   Small clients (though not P.O.S. clients) :
     - Invoiced monthly, on the last days of the month of the first days of the next month. Only an invoice is sent for all the goods supplied to them (or services) during that month. So you may have 6 sale orders during a month, but just one invoice per client.
     - The invoice has to be payed 15, 30 or 30/60 days later (the most common being end of the next month).
     - Most payment orders are dispatched directly to the bank ('our' bank). One (ASCII-text fixed-length record) file is sent to the bank with all the charges that must be performed to clients. Clients are then charged automatically by 'their' bank (though they might refuse the charge later) at the maturity date of the payment (the bank may advance the cash to us at the time the order is dispatched [yes, it's a kind of credit]).

   Medium/big clients:
     - Invoiced monthly (regular orders) or per order (big/single orders).
     - The invoice has to be payed 30/60, 90, 120, or 180 days later (there are more combinations, some even longer).
     - Some payment orders are dispatched directly to the bank (like before, but most use the credit/advanced cash option), the others are made by Check or Bank Transfer.

The VAT declarations are (currently, they are thinking of changing this on medium term) done based on the invoices, not the payments. That means that you have to pay the taxes to the treasury ("Hacienda") on the fiscal period you file the invoice, not on the fiscal period you file the payment. Yeah, that means that you pay the taxes in advance, usually several months before you get paid! (that's why Spanish companies depend a lot on banks).