At a Glance
What it is | The Documento Electrónico de Control Administrativo (DeCA) — the electronic administrative control document for domestic road transport in Spain |
The big change | Nobody signs. No signature is collected from you, your carrier, your driver or the person receiving the goods |
Where it applies | Transports that both load and unload in Spain |
What the driver does | Two taps: Confirm pickup at loading, Complete delivery at unloading |
What the recipient does | Nothing. There is no recipient step at all |
What you do | Nothing to release the document. It is issued for you automatically |
Why there are no signatures
The DeCA is not a contract between the parties. It is an administrative control document: its purpose is to let an inspecting authority confirm, at the roadside, who is moving what and on whose behalf.
Spanish regulation does not require the document to be signed. It requires it to be present, complete and available for inspection during the journey. Because of that, the DeCA drops the signature steps entirely and keeps only the two moments that matter operationally: the goods were picked up, and the goods were delivered.
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From 5 October 2026, the digital DCA becomes mandatory for Spanish domestic road transport under the Ley de Movilidad Sostenible. The DeCA is how you meet that obligation without adding signature steps to your process.
Three documents, one country — which one am I looking at?
If your business also moves goods across borders, you will see more than one document type. They are not interchangeable.
Document | When it is used | Signatures |
eCMR | International road transport | Yes — shipper, driver and recipient |
Carta de Porte / DCA | Spanish domestic, signature-based set-up | Yes |
DeCA | Spanish domestic, signature-free set-up | None |
Once DeCA is switched on for your organisation, your Spanish domestic transports produce a DeCA. Your international transports continue to produce an eCMR exactly as before, with signatures. Nothing about your existing international process changes.
What you gain
A faster handover. No waiting for a signature at the loading bay or the delivery dock. The driver confirms and drives.
No disputed or missing signatures. A signature that was never collected cannot be illegible, missing, or captured by the wrong person.
Nothing to chase with recipients. Your consignees are not asked to do anything, so there is no follow-up when they do not respond.
Documents close themselves. If a driver forgets to complete a delivery, the document is closed automatically rather than sitting open indefinitely.
Compliance without process change. You meet the Spanish requirement using the same platform and the same transport data you already send.
The journey of a DeCA
A DeCA moves through four states. You will see these in the document list and on the document itself.
State | What it means | Who moved it there |
New | The document has been created from your transport data | The system |
Loading | The document has been issued and is ready for the driver | The system, automatically |
In transit | The driver has confirmed pickup and the goods are on the road | The driver |
Completed | The delivery is complete and the document is closed | The driver, or automatically |
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If you already use eCMR, these are the same four states you know. What has changed is how a document moves between them — not the states themselves.
In your document list, DeCA documents appear alongside your eCMR documents, with the type shown in the column. Filters, search and export work exactly as they do today.
DeCA documents sit in the same list as your other document types
Step by step
1. The document is issued — you do nothing
When your transport data arrives, the DeCA is created and issued automatically. There is no "Sign" button to press and no release step for your office team. The document moves straight to Loading and is ready for the driver.
If your organisation uses automatic sharing, the driver receives the link by SMS at this moment, with no action from you.
2. The driver opens the document
The driver opens the link on a phone. No app installation and no account are needed. The link is protected by a one-time code sent to the driver's phone.
3. The driver confirms pickup
Instead of signing, the driver taps Confirm pickup. This is the moment the goods are formally taken over. The document moves to In transit.
If your set-up asks drivers to check goods or record seal numbers, those steps still happen here exactly as before. Only the signature is gone.
The driver's loading screen — the main action is Confirm pickup, and there is no signature pad
The driver gets an immediate confirmation that the pickup was recorded.
Several documents on one transport
Where a transport carries several DeCAs, the driver does not open each one separately. A single Confirm pickup applies to every document on that transport, so a multi-stop load is handled in one action.
4. Showing the document to an authority
If the vehicle is stopped, the driver shows the document from the phone. The inspecting officer can scan the QR code to open the document directly, without needing an account or the driver's phone to be unlocked further.
This is the reason the document exists, so it is worth making sure drivers know where to find it before their first DeCA trip.
The QR code screen the driver presents to police or customs for instant verification
5. The delivery is completed
At the unloading point the driver taps Complete delivery. The document moves to Completed and is closed.
The person receiving the goods is not asked to sign, confirm, or check anything. There is no recipient screen and no recipient notification in this flow.
The driver's unloading screen — Complete delivery closes the document
If the driver forgets to complete the delivery
Drivers get busy and documents get left open. Rather than leaving them in transit forever, the platform closes them for you.
A DeCA that is still in transit is closed automatically once a set period has passed after the delivery date recorded on the document. That period is currently two days. It is a platform-wide setting rather than a per-customer one, so if two days does not suit your operation, raise it with your Trimble contact.
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Automatic closure needs a date to count from. It uses the delivery or loading dates carried on the document. If a document reaches us with none of those dates, there is nothing to measure against and it will stay in transit until a driver closes it. If you see documents lingering, missing dates in the source data are the first thing to check.
Automatic closure produces exactly the same result as a driver closing the document: the same notifications, and the same final PDF.
What happens when a document closes
The shipper and the carrier receive the delivery confirmation by email.
The final PDF is stored against the document, so the complete record is available whenever you need it.
The document appears as Completed in your lists and reports.
What stays the same
The DeCA changes who does what at handover. It does not change the rest of the product. You keep:
The same document list, filters, search and export in your office view.
The ability to share a document by link or send the PDF by email.
Irregularity reporting from the driver.
Goods checks and seal handling, where your organisation uses them.
The archived PDF for every completed document.
Practical notes for your team
Situation | What happens |
A transport loads in Spain and unloads in France | It is international, so it produces an eCMR with signatures, not a DeCA |
Recipient details are incomplete | The DeCA is still created. Because there is no recipient step, recipient data is not required for the document to work |
A driver reports damaged goods | Irregularity reporting works as it always has. The delivery can still be completed |
A driver loses the link | Re-share the document from your office view. A new one-time code is sent |
You need proof of delivery for a dispute | Use the archived PDF and the document history, which records who confirmed each step and when |