AI for the self-employed in Spain: 12 tasks to take off your plate

If you’re self-employed and wondering which AI to use, start with another question: which task annoys you most? The AI for the self-employed that is worth having is the one that takes the quote you finish at 11pm, or the email to the client who won’t pay, off your plate. And you don’t have to pay anything to start.

Here are twelve tasks you can hand off from tomorrow, with the tool I would use and, for five of them, the exact text to copy. They work just as well for a business with two or three people.

First, two settings in ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini: check the permission to train on your conversations and turn it off if enabled (in Claude it depends on your consent) and tell it what you do in the personal instructions. Then ask for things the way you would ask a very bright person who has just joined your business: who you are, what you want, what material to use and how you want it.

Clients and sales

1. A quote from your notes

Paste in the notes you took while talking to the client, or dictate them, along with your price list. The free version of any of them will do; for writing, I prefer Claude.

I'm a [trade] in [city]. Write a quote using these notes and my price list.
Notes: [what the client wants]
Prices: [your rates]
I want line items with quantity, price and amount, the net total, VAT at 21% and the total, plus timing, payment terms and 30 days' validity. If a price is missing, ask me. Don't make any up.

If the client is Spanish, ask for it in Spanish; if they are from elsewhere, in their language. Then check the figures haven’t moved. And watch the VAT (IVA): some jobs have a reduced rate, and a business in another country often isn’t charged Spanish VAT at all. If in doubt, ask your gestor.

2. The messages you get again and again

Write down the ten questions you get most (opening hours, prices, «have you got a slot on Thursday?») and ask for two-line answers in your tone. Save them as quick replies in WhatsApp Business, which is free: type «/» in the chat and pick one. You still send them yourself, but you stop typing them every time.

3. Chasing an unpaid invoice without losing the client

It’s the hardest email to write, so ask for two versions and keep the one that suits that client:

[Client] owes me invoice [number] for €[amount], which was due on [date]. They're a good client and I want to keep working with them.
Write an email in [Spanish or English] of under 120 words to chase it, with a clear subject line, a deadline and a gap for my bank details. Give me two versions: one friendly and one firmer, with no threats.

If the client is a business or another autónomo, Spain’s late payment law (in Spanish) lets you claim interest and €40 in collection costs; check with your gestor before you mention it. If they still don’t pay, that is no longer a job for AI.

Paperwork and money: invoices, VAT and the quarter

The most useful thing AI does with invoices is check and sort them. Issuing them is your invoicing software’s job, and the taxes are filed by you or your gestor.

4. Expense invoices into a spreadsheet

Upload the PDFs or photos of the receipts. For a handful of invoices the free version of any of them is enough; for a folder with dozens, an agent is better, and in AI for Excel I explain which one works best with each kind of sheet.

Pull a table out of these invoices with date, number, supplier, tax ID (NIF), net amount, VAT rate and amount, IRPF withholding if any, and total. One row per invoice.
If something is missing, write “missing” and do not invent it. Check amounts against each invoice and distinguish the document total from the amount still payable. Record VAT rates, withholding, surcharges and advances separately where present. Flag differences without changing data to make it balance.

5. Check an invoice before you send it

Hand it over so it checks what the Spanish invoicing rules (in Spanish) require and redoes the sums. If you are a professional billing businesses or other autónomos, have it check the IRPF withholding too: 15% as a rule, or 7% in the year you started and the two after.

Check this invoice before I send it: number and series, date (and the date of the transaction if it's different), name, NIF and address of both parties, description with the unit price before VAT and any discounts, net amount, VAT rate and amount, IRPF withholding if it applies, notes such as «inversión del sujeto pasivo» (reverse charge) if needed, and total. Redo the sums.
Don't change anything. Just tell me what is missing or doesn't add up.

According to the Agencia Tributaria, your invoicing software must comply with VeriFactu before 1 July 2027 if you are an autónomo (before 1 January 2027 if you have a company). It doesn’t apply if your tax address is in the Basque Country or Navarre, which have their own rules, such as TicketBAI in the Basque Country; if it’s anywhere else in Spain, it applies to you even if you work there. If you don’t issue many invoices, the tax agency has a free app to do it.

6. Get the quarter ready for your gestor

Every quarter there is modelo 303, the VAT return, and if it applies to you modelo 130, an advance payment of income tax (IRPF). For the third quarter, both are filed between 1 and 20 October 2026, or by the 15th if you pay by direct debit. AI doesn’t file anything, but it sorts out your paperwork and explains whatever you don’t understand, which helps a lot if Spanish tax forms aren’t your first language.

Here are my issued and received invoices for the third quarter of 2026. Prepare a summary for my gestor with total net amounts, VAT charged, VAT paid, the withholding deducted from my invoices and the invoices that are missing any details.
If you estimate what I'll have to pay, mark it as approximate. Finish with a short email to my gestor, in Spanish, with any questions you see.

The final figure is confirmed by your gestor, or by you with the Agencia Tributaria’s own forms. One detail many people don’t know: if you are a professional and at least 70% of last year’s income had withholding, you don’t have to file modelo 130.

7. Compare supplier quotes

Ask for a table with what matters to you (total price, timing, guarantee and payment terms) and have it cite the page for each figure. I go through it step by step in how to compare quotes with AI.

8. Understand the lease on your premises

Ask for a summary that cites the clause for each point: length, renewal, rent increases, deposit (fianza), who pays for works and IBI (the property tax) and how much notice you need to give to leave. Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM), which is free with usage limits, is very good for this. If the landlord is an individual, black out their DNI first; it isn’t needed here. If the lease is in Spanish, ask for the summary in English, but the Spanish original is the one that counts. And to negotiate or sign a renewal, get a lawyer.

Marketing: reviews and social media

9. Replying to Google reviews

Paste the review and ask for a short reply that thanks them, owns what went wrong without excuses and offers a fix, with no client details. It helps most with the bad ones, because it writes without the anger you feel at that moment. If you run a clinic, never confirm that the person is a patient.

Google has added a connection to your Business Profile in the Gemini app that drafts these replies, but it leaves out the European Economic Area and the UK. In Spain, for now, it’s copy and paste.

10. A social media post, with its image

Ask for three versions of the text, from more formal to more relaxed. ChatGPT or Gemini will make the image, on the free version too, with a limit. If it looks like a real photo and isn’t, say so in the post. EU law requires disclosure in cases such as deepfakes, with exceptions; the obligation is not the same for every use of AI.

Your own time

11. Prepare a meeting or a difficult call

Paste in your latest emails with that client and ask for one page on what they want, what you’ve offered and what they might ask you. If it’s a negotiation, rehearse it with ChatGPT’s or Gemini’s voice mode and ask it to play a demanding client.

12. Tidy up your documents folder

This is a job for an agent, a program that works with the files on your computer. Cowork, inside Claude, and Claude Code come with the Pro plan and above; you can try Codex with a free ChatGPT account, with little room to spare. Work on a copy and ask for a plan first: «propose subfolders and names, and don’t move anything until I say yes».

What I would never leave to AI

• Signing. Neither contracts nor accepting a quote.
• Paying. No transfers, no purchases, and never your card details.
• Sending a client something you haven’t read. Anything with your name on it, read it yourself first.
• Tax decisions. What you deduct, which regime you’re in, what you file and when: that’s for your gestor.
• Anything legal without a professional. A contract you’re about to sign, a claim that goes beyond an email, a dismissal.
• Your digital certificate and your Cl@ve. Don’t even show them, same as your passwords.

Give it as little client data as you can. For an email or an invoice you almost never need names, phone numbers or ID numbers: write «Client A». Changing the name does not anonymize the rest of the document. Before working with personal data, check that the tool and plan have a processing agreement and suitable terms for that data. ChatGPT Business and Claude Team need at least two users; if you work alone, Google Workspace Business Starter includes Gemini with enterprise protections. Not every Workspace edition includes these. Health data never goes into a consumer app.

How much AI for the self-employed costs

Prices in Spain in September 2026:

Business account prices are with annual billing. Month to month, Claude Team is €21.04 + VAT per user and ChatGPT Business €26. OpenAI doesn’t say whether the Business price includes VAT.

My advice: start free, and pay for one subscription, month to month, when you use it daily and it falls short. Measure net time saved after preparation, review and corrections; compare it with the full cost and quality. Saving two hours does not guarantee that you recover the money. All the plans are compared in which AI subscription is worth it.

If you pay for it for work, ask for the invoice with your NIF and ask your gestor how to record it: these companies bill from outside Spain and the VAT is trickier than it looks.

Your first week

• Monday. The two settings from the start. Ten minutes.
• Tuesday. The quote or the chasing email you’ve been putting off.
• Wednesday. This month’s expense invoices, into a table. Check three by hand.
• Thursday. The WhatsApp replies and two reviews.
• Friday. The quarterly summary for your gestor, because the deadline is 20 October 2026.

Keep the prompts that work best in a note, with your changes, and next week you won’t start from zero. And on Friday, do the maths. If you used it three days out of five and it really saved you time, you’ll know whether paying is worth it.

Review on 30 September 2026: usage limits and buying criteria. Price references retain their stated date; confirm the current total for your account before paying.

Sources, checked on 26 September 2026: from the Agencia Tributaria, VeriFactu deadlines, who it applies to, the free invoicing app, withholding for professionals, the October 2026 calendar and advance payments; from the BOE (in Spanish), the late payment law and the invoicing regulation; and ChatGPT pricing, Claude pricing, Google Workspace pricing and Business Profile in Gemini.

Privacy reviewed on 30 September 2026: Gemini protections by licence.