REV Spain

Technical Architecture
See the  Diagrams page for the deployment diagram. See the Functional Overview for goals, context, and users. 

 1. Building Block View 

 REV Spain is a monolith. Main internal modules: 

 

 Intake module — claimant onboarding and document/data submission entry point 

 Extraction engine — parses ITA and RNT documents (fixed-structure official Spanish government PDFs) using direct PDF text extraction (no OCR, since layout is standardized) 

 Unified.to adapter — alternative ingestion path fetching employee/salary data directly from client HR/payroll systems 

 Project & employee allocation module — gathers project information and maps employees to projects 

 Eligibility rules engine — evaluates R&D tax credit eligibility criteria 

 Report generator — produces both financial and technical claim reports 

 Access control — role-based access for claimants, reviewers, and admins 

 

 2. Deployment View 

 Stack 

 

 Frontend: Vue.js 3 SPA 

 Backend: Node.js / Express API 

 Data & document storage: MongoDB, including GridFS for document storage (no separate object storage service) 

 

 Topology 

 

 VM 1 — runs the full application stack via Docker Compose (frontend, API, MongoDB) 

 VM 2 — reverse proxy handling the domain name and TLS termination, forwarding to VM 1 

 

 This is a single-server deployment: no horizontal scaling or failover across app instances currently exists. 

 3. Risks & Technical Debt 

 

 Single point of failure — the entire application stack (including the database) runs on one VM; no redundancy or failover. 

 No documented scaling path — current architecture sits in tension with quality goals like fast data gathering and claims centralization at higher volume. 

 Shared storage engine — MongoDB serves both transactional data and GridFS document storage; document I/O could contend with regular query load as usage grows. 

 External dependency — the Unified.to ingestion path introduces availability dependency on a third party for one of the two data-gathering flows. 

 PII handling — sensitive employee/salary data is processed directly by the core system in both ingestion paths; encryption, access control, and retention policies should be explicitly reviewed and documented.

Diagrams
Workflow — Claim Generation Flow 

 Upload ITA/RNT or connect Unified.to Extraction / Normalization Project Info + Employee Allocation Eligibility Evaluation Report Generation (Fin. + Tech.) 

 Technical Architecture — Deployment 

 Internet VM 2 — Reverse Proxy (domain name, TLS) VM 1 — Docker Compose Host Vue.js 3 SPA (frontend) Node/Express API (backend) MongoDB + GridFS (documents)

Functional Overview
See the  Diagrams page for the visual workflow. 

 1. Introduction & Goals 

 REV Spain lets companies self-manage the process of claiming Spanish R&D tax credits end to end: intake, eligibility check, extraction of employee/salary data from official documents, project information gathering, employee-to-project allocation, and generation of both financial and technical claim reports. 

 Quality Goals 

 

 Self-service — minimal need for manual handling by internal teams 

 Ease of use for non-technical claimants 

 Fast data gathering (short time-to-claim) 

 Centralization of claims across the organization 

 

 Stakeholders 

 

 Top Management 

 Head of Business Unit 

 R&D Consultants 

 

 2. System Scope & Context 

 User Types 

 

 Self-service claimants 

 Internal reviewers 

 Admins 

 

 External Systems 

 

 Unified.to — third-party integration used as an alternative ingestion path when a client does not want to upload sensitive employee/salary data directly (e.g. pulls HR/payroll data from the client's own systems). 

 

 Sensitive Data Boundary 

 REV Spain handles sensitive employee and salary data directly in both ingestion paths: either after extraction from uploaded ITA/RNT documents, or via the Unified.to integration. There is no path that avoids the core system processing PII — this should be treated as a compliance-relevant boundary (encryption at rest/in transit, access control, retention policy). 

 3. Claim Generation Flow (Functional) 

 

 Claimant submits ITA/RNT documents, or connects via Unified.to 

 Employee & salary data is normalized 

 Claimant/reviewer provides project information 

 Employees are mapped to projects 

 Eligibility criteria are evaluated 

 Financial and technical reports are generated 

 Internal reviewer validates the claim before export/submission