If your company provides services of a continuous nature over time (rentals of premises, recurring advice, security, cleaning...), it is common for you to have agreed with your clients a periodic fee for these services (weekly, monthly, every two months...). Therefore, when passing on the VAT for these successive tract operations and knowing in which tax return to include them, what matters is not the period in which the services have been provided, but the moment when their payment is due.

For example, if you own a cleaning company and started providing services to a client on May 1,2026, agreeing that the services for each month would be paid on the 5th of the following month, when filing the VAT return for the second quarter of 2026, your company will only have to declare the invoice for the services provided in May (which will be the only ones accrued in the second quarter). You must include the invoice for June in the VAT return for the third quarter, since the payment of said invoice is not due until July 5.

VAT must also be passed on on the date when the payment is due in the case of supplies of water, electricity, gas or telephone and even in the supplies of other tangible goods. Specifically, your company must apply this rule in those supply operations in which you have reached the following agreements with your clients:

• That, for a certain period of time, you will make continuous deliveries of your products and based on their demand . That is, without having defined exactly the quantity of product to be supplied.
• And that, for that period of time, the sales conditions must have been agreed in advance for the products (unit price, quality, deadlines and delivery method, etc.).

However, the rule of exigibility has two exceptions:

• If the payment is made before the due date, the VAT must be passed on on the payment date.
• When the period between the dates on which the payments are due exceeds one year, your company must issue an invoice on December 31 and pass on –and pay to the Tax Office– the VAT that has accrued during the year up to that point.