What documents your accountant needs each quarter
Your accountant needs these documents to file your quarterly tax returns. Here's what to send, which form it's for, and where it comes from.
Your accountant needs these documents to file your quarterly tax returns. Here's what to send, which tax form it's for, and where each document comes from.
What to send your accountant (quick checklist)
Documents by tax form
Quarterly checklist
| Quarter | Period | Filing deadline | Send documents before |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 | January – March | April 1–20 | April 10 |
| Q2 | April – June | July 1–20 | July 10 |
| Q3 | July – September | October 1–20 | October 10 |
| Q4 | October – December | January 1–30 | January 20 |
If you already have your checklist, you can stop here. If you want to understand why each document matters — and what happens when one is missing — keep reading.
The scene that repeats four times a year
It's the 14th. Your accountant sends a message: "I need the quarter's invoices for the VAT filing. Deadline is the 20th." Six days. You have six days to find, organize, and send everything from the past three months.
You open your email. Search "invoice" — 47 results, half are newsletters. Check WhatsApp — there are three photos of invoices from suppliers, but one is from December. Look at the Drive folder — it's called "Invoices 2026" but has a 2024 Excel file inside.
This happens four times a year. Every time, the same stress. Every time, the accountant waits. Every time, something's missing.
The quarterly close doesn't fail because you don't know what to send. It fails because gathering it all depends on your memory — and your memory is elsewhere.
What your accountant files (and what they need from you)
Your accountant files between 2 and 5 tax forms each quarter. Each one needs different data from your invoices:
Form 303 (VAT). The most important one. Quarterly VAT return. Your accountant needs: all issued invoices — to calculate output VAT — and all supplier invoices received — to deduct input VAT. A missing invoice is a deduction that doesn't get applied — or VAT that gets overstated.
Form 130 (income tax for sole traders on direct estimation). Quarterly income tax prepayment. Needs: your quarterly income and deductible expenses. Same invoices, but the deduction criteria differ from VAT.
Form 111 (withholdings). If you have employees or pay professionals with withholding tax. Needs: payroll and invoices with income tax withholding.
Form 115 (rent). If you rent business premises. Needs: rent invoices with withholding.
A freelancer with regular activity handles dozens of documents each quarter between issued and received invoices, bank statements, and receipts. If three expense invoices are missing, the VAT doesn't add up — and you overpay.
What happens when something is missing
The consequences of "I didn't send everything" are more concrete than they seem.
Missing expense invoice. Your accountant doesn't include it in the return. You pay VAT you could have deducted. And income tax on a profit that was actually lower. It costs you — literally.
Issued invoice you don't declare. Direct tax risk. If the tax authority cross-references data — and they increasingly do with SII and Verifactu — the invoice shows up declared by your client but not by you. That's a discrepancy — and it can trigger an audit.
Bank statement you don't send. Your accountant can't reconcile. They don't know which payments match which invoices. The accounting stays "open" and rolls over to the next quarter.
Every invoice that doesn't arrive on time doesn't disappear. It becomes a problem your accountant has to solve later — and that costs you money.
The real problem isn't the list
Now you know what to send. But that wasn't the problem.
The pattern is always the same: the deadline arrives, you rummage, you send what you find, your accountant completes what they can. And next quarter, start over. Four times a year. It's a process that depends on your memory — and memory doesn't scale.
The problem isn't not knowing what documents your accountant needs. It's that sending them depends on you remembering, finding the documents, and doing it before the 10th. And when a critical process depends on the memory of someone whose job is something else, it fails. Not sometimes — always.
If invoices were recorded when they arrive — not when you search for them — your accountant would have access to everything without asking. No messages on the 14th. No digging through WhatsApp. Nothing missing.
The best quarterly close isn't the one you prepare better. It's the one you don't have to prepare.
That's not a futuristic vision. It's how companies that have their documents organized from day one already work. The tool doesn't matter — what matters is that recording happens in the moment, not in the panic.
That's what Naia does. When you forward an invoice — via WhatsApp or email — it records it, classifies it, archives the original document. When the payment appears in the bank, it matches it. Your accountant sees the result without asking you for anything. Their work shifts from collecting data to reviewing it.
Official documentation and AEAT tax forms
If you want to verify deadlines or requirements for each form, here are the official links from the Spanish Tax Agency.
| Source | What it is |
|---|---|
| Form 303 — AEAT | Quarterly VAT return |
| Form 130 — AEAT | Quarterly income tax prepayment (sole traders) |
| Form 111 — AEAT | Withholdings and payments on account |
| Form 115 — AEAT | Rent withholdings |
| Tax calendar — AEAT | Quarterly filing deadlines |