Since 5 October 2026, the control document that accompanies every road freight shipment in Spain must be electronic. There is no transitional period: the obligation took effect on that date and already applies to any company that contracts public road freight transport.
If your company ships goods and has until now been printing the control document, that way of working is no longer valid. And scanning the paper is not enough: DeCA must be a structured document, generated electronically, with its QR code.
This article explains what DeCA is, who it affects, how it resembles Verifactu —because both are part of the same regulatory shift— and how to generate it without adding yet another tool to your daily routine.
What DeCA is
DeCA stands for Documento Electrónico de Control Administrativo (Electronic Administrative Control Document). It is the digital version of the control document that must accompany every public road freight transport operation in Spain.
Its purpose is the same as always: to let inspectors verify three things about the shipment in front of them.
- Who contracts the transport
- Who carries it out
- What goods are being moved
What changes is not the information but the medium. Until now that document could travel on paper inside the cab. Since October 2026 it must be electronic and verifiable.
When it became mandatory and who it affects
The obligation started on 5 October 2026, with no transitional period. The legal basis is Law 9/2025 and the Resolution of 5 June 2026 of the Directorate-General for Road and Rail Transport.
It applies to:
- Public road freight transport within Spain
- Cabotage operations carried out on Spanish territory
International transport falls outside this particular obligation: it continues to use the documentation specific to those operations.
The mistake that will hurt most: scanning the paper
This is the most common misunderstanding, and it is worth clearing up straight away.
DeCA is not a digitised copy of a paper document. It must be a native PDF with a QR code, generated electronically from structured data.
A photo taken on a phone is not a DeCA. Neither is a scan of the signed paper. If the document started life on paper, it does not comply.
The QR code is what makes roadside verification possible. Without an electronically generated document behind it, that QR code does not exist.
What DeCA and Verifactu have in common
If your company has already been through the Verifactu adaptation, DeCA will feel very familiar.
They are different rules in different domains —one governs invoicing and falls under the Spanish tax agency, the other governs transport and falls under the Ministry of Transport— but they follow exactly the same pattern:
- A document that used to have a free format now has a mandatory format.
- That format is no longer paper but structured and machine-readable.
- The authorities gain the ability to verify the document directly.
- The deadline is short, and adapting falls on the company's management systems, not on its people.
The practical conclusion is the same in both cases: the closer compliance sits to where your data already lives, the less it costs. If complying with a rule means opening another application and retyping information that is already in your ERP, the real cost is not that application's licence. It is your team's time and the errors that creep in when data is copied by hand.
Where operations break down
DeCA does not ask for new information. Customer, carrier, goods and weight are already in your system by the time you prepare the shipment. The problem appears when the system holding the data and the system generating the document are two different things.
That is where the pattern worth avoiding creeps in: someone in admin generating documents by hand in a separate tool, at the last minute, with data copied from one screen to another, just as the lorry is waiting.
It works with three shipments a day. With thirty, it does not.
How DeCA is generated in ERPCloud
ERPCloud, our cloud ERP, already supports DeCA. The document is generated from the data you already have in the system: you prepare the shipment as usual and the DeCA comes out ready for the carrier.
The full flow is four steps:
What matters is that DeCA does not live apart: it is connected to sales, delivery notes, stock and invoicing. It is the same logic with which ERPCloud integrates Verifactu, SII and TicketBAI on the invoicing side. A single platform covers both tax compliance and transport compliance, without your team having to learn two more tools.
You can see the module in detail on the ERPCloud DeCA page.
Not using ERPCloud yet? There is DeCA Express
We have come across one situation again and again in recent weeks: companies that have not yet moved to ERPCloud and whose current system does not generate DeCA. The rule is already in force, switching ERP does not happen in a fortnight, and the lorry still leaves tomorrow.
For exactly that scenario we built DeCA Express: a standalone tool that generates the document from just customer, carrier and weight. No ERP change, no disruption to how you work today.
- You generate a valid DeCA, with its QR code
- Nothing to migrate or integrate
- €39/month
It is the fast route to compliance right now, while you decide calmly what you want to do with your management system.
What to review this week
If you move goods by road in Spain, these are the questions you should be able to answer today:
- Does my company contract public road freight transport on Spanish territory? If so, DeCA applies to you.
- Does my current system produce a native PDF with a QR code, or are we printing and scanning?
- Who is generating the document for each shipment today, and how long does it take them?
- What happens if there is a roadside inspection tomorrow and the carrier has no valid DeCA on their phone?
Conclusion
DeCA is not an isolated formality. It is the same shift that already brought Verifactu, SII and TicketBAI to invoicing, now applied to transport: structured, verifiable documents generated by systems rather than by people filling in forms.
The difference between complying with effort and complying without noticing comes down to one thing: whether the document is born where your data already lives, or whether someone has to copy that data somewhere else. With ERPCloud it is born on its own. And if you are not on ERPCloud yet, DeCA Express solves the urgent part in the meantime.