Electronic Invoice in France

• Simplifying the lives of businesses and strengthening their competitiveness by reducing administrative burdens, shortening payment times and increasing productivity as a result of digitalisation.
• Simplify your VAT reporting obligations in the long term by pre-filling returns.
• Improving fraud detection for the benefit of bona fide traders
• Improve real-time knowledge of business activities.

France follows a Y-scheme for electronic invoicing 

Building on the submission of the November 2020 Report “VAT in the Digital Age“, the Decree of 15 September 2021 provides that, in order to fulfil their obligations, companies are free to choose:

• either to a partner platform for electronic invoicing
  PDP (Plateforme de Dématérialisation Partenaire) of the administration
• or directly to the public invoice portal based on the Chorus Pro platform, which already ensures the digitised exchange of public sector invoices.
• The Chorus Pro platform accepts basic structured formats in Peppol BIS Billing 3.0

The system thus takes into account the digital maturity level of companies.

A phased rollout schedule between 2024 and 2026

To ensure proper functioning, the system will be phased in between 2024 and 2026. The introduction will take into account the size of the companies so that each company can fulfil these new obligations under the best conditions.

Electronic invoicing obligations are imposed:

• From 1 July 2024, all businesses must be able to receive e-invoices.
• From 1 July 2024, large companies will have to issue e-invoices
• From 1 January 2025, medium-sized companies must create e-invoices
• From 1 January 2026, small and medium-sized enterprises and micro-enterprises must be able to create e-invoices

The introduction of the e-reporting obligations follows the same timetable.

Your suppliers’ bills are sent to you electronically via the platform(s) you have chosen. This platform can be the same as your supplier, a separate platform or the public billing portal. Similarly, you must use the services of a platform to issue your invoices to your customers. Each company is free to choose the partner platform for electronic invoicing PDP of its choice, and/or the public billing portal according to its needs.

If you have questions about electronic invoicing in France