What is the Digital Kit? Aid for the digitization of SMEs and the Self-Employed

On November 24, 2021, the Digital Kit program was presented by Nadia Calviño, First Vice President and Minister of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, which seeks to boost the digitization of SMEs and self-employed workers, which will help modernize the Spanish productive sector and is part of the Recovery Plan promoted by the Government. 

The digital Kit has a budget of more than 3,000 million euros, subsidized by the European Union’s Next Generation funds, is part of the Digital Spain 2025 agenda, and consists of different calls for proposals that will target different segments of SMEs and self-employed workers.

Basic guide to the Digital Kit for the self-employed and SMEs

Here you can download our basic guide on the Digital Kit for free. In it you will find:

1. What is the Digital Kit?
2. Who is it for?
3. Details of the solutions subsidized by the Kit
4. How much money can you access, depending on your particular situation?
5. What is the application process like?
6. Other related details

What is the Digital Kit?

The Digital Kit or Digital Toolkit is a public financial aid program financed by Next Generation EU funds aimed at self-employed workers and SMEs in Spain that aims to subsidize the implementation of digital solutions available on the market to achieve significant progress in the level of digital maturity. It provides a wide number of digital services to help them boost their digital transition.

The Digital Kit program is key to the economic recovery of Spain in the coming years because it provides technology to the self-employed and SMEs in the country, which accounts for more than 95% of the business sector, and is committed to an improvement in productivity and increased competitiveness.

Who can benefit from the Digital Kit? 

The Government has segmented the businesses that can benefit from the Digital Kit, both in terms of the call for applications and the amounts destined for the aid, into three different groups:

• Segment I: Small companies, from 10 to 49 employees, which are estimated to be around 150,000 throughout Spain, with a digital bonus amount per company of €12,000.
• Segment II: Small companies or micro-companies, from 3 to 9 employees, which are estimated to be 1,100,000 in Spain, with a digital bonus amount per company of €6,000.
• Segment III: Small companies or micro-companies and the self-employed, with 1 to 2 employees, which are estimated to be 1,600,000 in Spain, with a digital bonus amount of €2,000.

This bonus contains an amount that allows you to choose one or more digital solutions offered by digital agents in the following fields:

• Website, up to €2,000
• e-Commerce, up to €2,000
• Management of social media, up to €2,500
• Business intelligence and analytics, up to €4,000
• Virtual office services and tools, up to €12,000
• Process management, up to €6,000
• Electronic invoicing, up to €1,000
• Safe communications, up to €6,000
• Online Cybersecurity, up to €6,000

Requirements and conditions to apply for the Digital Kit

A series of conditions have been established in order to be a beneficiary of the Digital Kit aid, so your company or business must comply with:

• Being a small business, a micro-enterprise, or self-employed.
• Not being considered a company in crisis.
• Being up to date with tax payments and Social Security contributions.
• Not incurring in any of the prohibitions provided for in the General Subsidies Law.
• Being registered in the Census of Entrepreneurs, Professionals and Retainers of the State Tax Administration Agency or in the equivalent census of the Foral Tax Administration.
• Not being subject to a pending recovery order after a previous decision of the European Commission.
• Not exceeding the minimum aid limit (€200,000).
• Having done the evaluation of the Digital Maturity Level according to the diagnostic test on the AceleraPyme platform.

Steps to apply for the Digital Kit

The steps to follow to request the Digital Kit bonus are the following:

• Sign up at www.acelerapyme.es and complete the self-diagnosis test.

• Keep in mind that these other 2 tests are optional: the Digital Transformation Self-Assessment test, in which more questions are asked and the program guides you towards the digital solutions that best suit you; and the Cybersecurity Self-Assessment, to find out the level of maturity regarding the cybersecurity of your business.
• Consult the digital solutions catalog, where you can choose one or more options of those offered by digital agents. The ones that best suit the needs of your business.
• Request Digital Kit help at the Electronic Headquarters of Red.es.

Remember that Entre Trámites can help you get the Digital Kit Program aid! If you need more information and want us to help you, enter our Digital Kit service webpage.

Digital Kit Solutions Categories 

You should know that you can choose as many digital solutions as you need to consume the amount of the Digital Kit aid, but you can only choose one digital solution per category. It is not a condition to entirely consume the received bonus, for example, if we have a digital bonus of €6,000 we can spend €3,000 on the digital solutions we need and return the rest of the aid.

These are the categories that appear in the Digital Kit marketplace:

• Website and Internet presence: this will include both the creation of webpages, as well as other positioning services (SEO) or visibility of the company on the main Internet webpages.
• e-Commerce: it is the creation of an online store for the sale of products and/or services that uses digital means for their exchange.
• Management of social media: it promotes your business on social media.
• Customer and/or supplier management: digitize and optimize the management of commercial relationships with customers.
• Business Intelligence and Analytics: exploitation of company data to improve the decision-making process.
• Virtual office services and tools: implement interactive and functional solutions that allow more efficient collaboration among SME employees.
• Process management: digitize and/or automate business processes related to the operational or productive aspects of the SME.
• Electronic invoicing: digitize the invoice issuance flow between the SME and its customers by implementing a billing software.
• Safe communications: provide SMEs with security in the connections between the devices of their employees and the company.
• Cybersecurity: it gives SMEs basic and advanced security measures for their employees’ devices.

How to use the digital bonus of the Digital Kit?

When you already have your user account in AceleraPymes, you have finished the Digital Maturity Test and you already have the “digital bonus”, you are already a “beneficiary” of this aid and all you have left to do is choose one or more solutions in the marketplace.

The steps at this point are as follows:

• The beneficiary and the Digital Agent negotiate, sign and formalize an Agreement for the Provision of Digitization Solutions.
• After formalizing the agreement, the Digital Agent implements the requirements pertaining to each phase of the digitization solution, that is, it offers the technological solution to the beneficiary (the implementation period in some cases is one day, in others, it may last several weeks).
• The Digital Agent issues a single invoice after the first phase of service provision, with the total amount (of the 12 months of service provision) indicating the subsidized amount.
• The beneficiary will make the payment of the non-eligible expenses (for example IVA, which can later be deducted) and will assign the right to collect the eligible amount in favor of the Digital Agent.
• The Digital Agent will provide the digitizing solution requested by the beneficiary for a period of 12 months from the start of implementation.

What is the amount of the Digital Kit aid?

The amounts that will be allocated to aid in the digitization of SMEs and the self-employed through the Digital Kit vary depending on the business segment and the type of technological solution to which we refer.

However, when we analyze each business segment by type of technological solution, the amounts of the subsidies fluctuate significantly.

What is a Digital Agent?

Digital or Digitizing Agents are the companies that offer their digital solutions, who are certified to sign a collaboration agreement with the beneficiaries of the Digital Kit aid or Digital Toolkit program and are in charge of accompanying them in their digital transformation process.

How to be a Digitizing Agent?

Companies that want to appear in the AceleraPymes marketplace must register on the website (the registration form has not yet been opened), enter their data, and specify which is their digital solution and which category (or categories) it belongs to.

Requirements to be a Digitizing Agent

• Have their tax address in Spain.
• Have a minimum seniority of 2 years in the development of their activity. In the case of self-employed workers, it is 1 year (but there are some specific conditions you may need to check on their website).
• Having reached a turnover of €100,000 in one of the last two closed years prior to the application. In the case of self-employed it is €35,000 in 1 year (again, you need to check the applicable conditions to your case).
• Be up-to-date with tax obligations and Social Security contributions.
• Not being considered a company in crisis.
• Have the status of a company, according to the definition that appears in Appendix I of Regulation (EU) No. 651/2014 of the Commission, of June 17, 2014.

When will the Digital Kit aid be granted?

The Government has given some clues about when these aids will be available, although we know that talking about deadlines and Public Administration in the same sentence can be considered a risky sport.

Even so, we are still going to establish the deadlines and calls (even if they are approximate) that are known so far:

• November 24, 2021: Presentation of the Digital Kit Program
  • The first bases are established and the different information websites are enabled.
  • Beneficiaries can access their Private Site and perform the different digital maturity tests.
• December 30, 2021: Publication of the regulatory bases of the Digital Kit in Provision 21873 of BOE no. 313 of 2021.
• January 11, 2022: Registration opens for Digitizing Agents so that they can offer their digital solutions.
• February 2022: First call for aid for SMEs with 10 to 49 employees
  • Grants will begin to be granted to Segment I (companies with 10 to 49 employees).
  • The amount that is foreseen in this first call of 500 million euros.
• For the year 2022 is expected the launching of the two remaining calls, aimed at small or micro-enterprises (which amount up to 6,000 euros) and the self-employed (who may receive a maximum of 2,000 euros), with the catalog of digital services adapted to their characteristics and their needs. different segments until the budget of 3 billion euros allocated to these subsidies is exhausted.

Don’t miss this opportunity!

If you are an SME or self-employed worker we help you to obtain up to €12,000 to digitize your business.

We want to listen to you and know what your questions are about the procedures you have to carry out to get your Digital Kit bonus. Count on the advice of our experts to clarify all your doubts. 

In Entre Trámites we also invite you to know about all our services. Fill in our contact form and we will call you to help you as soon as possible, schedule your free online consultation, or simply text our WhatsApp.