FUNDAE in Spain: The Training Credit and the 15-Day Consultation

Spain funds employer training through FUNDAE and a mechanism that works quite unlike a grant. Under formación programada, a company does not apply for money — it builds up an annual training credit and then recovers its spending as a bonificación against its Social Security contributions. The money is reclaimed rather than awarded, which changes both the timing and the paperwork.

How the credit is calculated

A company's annual training credit is 0.7% of the amount it paid for vocational training, derived from the Base otras Cotizaciones figure on the previous year's contribution receipts. The FUNDAE application calculates it automatically from Social Security (TGSS) data, so there is no negotiation about the figure — it is a function of last year's payroll.

That has an immediate consequence worth understanding before pitching into the Spanish market: a small employer attracts the most generous rate but the smallest pot. The credit scales with payroll, so a nine-person firm may be entitled to recover 100% of its training costs and still have very little credit to recover against.

The bonus rates, by headcount

The proportion of the credit a company can apply depends on average workforce size: 1 to 9 workers — 100%; 10 to 49 — 75%; 50 to 249 — 60%; more than 250 — 50%.

Separately, companies with more than 5 workers must co-finance part of the total cost. The application works that out as training costs plus the salary cost of employees trained during working hours, less the bonus applied — so salary time counts towards the total being assessed, not just invoices.

Firms with fewer than 50 workers can carry unused credit forward for two years, but only if they tick the relevant box in the application before 30 June. Miss that and the credit simply lapses.

The step most foreign providers do not expect

Before training starts, the company must give the employee representatives (RLPT) 15 working days to respond. That is a works-council consultation, not a notification, and three weeks of calendar time sits in front of any programme.

It matters commercially because it breaks the assumption that funded training can be sold and delivered inside a month. A provider proposing a start date four weeks out is proposing something the funding mechanism may not permit, and the consultation is the company's obligation rather than the provider's — which makes it exactly the sort of thing that derails a signed deal if nobody raises it early.

Notice periods are short and strict

Once consultation is done, the operational deadlines are tight: notify the start of each group at least 2 calendar days before the start date; cancel, or change the location or end date, at least 1 calendar day before; and where a change moves the start date, allow 2 calendar days between the notice and the new start. Other changes can be made up to the day the course begins.

The sequence for the whole year also has a hard end: the credit must be calculated, the training registered and communicated, and the bonus applied before the December contribution return is filed. Training delivered in good faith but communicated late does not convert into money.

What you must be able to produce afterwards

Documentation supporting the training and the bonuses must be kept for four years. For in-person delivery, the attendance control form is the required record. For online delivery, the platform itself must record participants' activity — a technical requirement on the learning system, not a paperwork one, and worth checking against your LMS before promising a Spanish client anything. Participants must also receive an evaluation questionnaire at the end, and a certificate of attendance or diploma within two months of the course finishing.

Where Spain sits among the funded routes

FUNDAE's formación programada route sets no provider accreditation requirement — the published guidance addresses the employer's obligations, not the trainer's. In that respect Spain resembles Malta's Investing in Skills, which also asks nothing of the provider, and contrasts with the accreditation-gated markets: Germany's AZAV approves provider and course, France requires Qualiopi before EDOF listing, and Poland requires a register entry. Note, though, that FUNDAE operates other routes — the state training offer and the individual training permit (PIF) — whose requirements differ, so "no accreditation needed" applies to this route rather than to FUNDAE generally.

The deeper contrast is in the mechanism. Malta, Germany and Poland pay out against an application. Spain lets the employer recover against contributions it has already made, which makes the credit feel like the company's own money and tends to make the conversation about using an entitlement rather than winning a grant. Singapore's IBF schemes sit somewhere between, tying the funding level to accreditation. Our CPD courses are accredited and delivered on a platform that records participant activity, which is the practical prerequisite for the online evidence rule above.