France has its baguettes and its champagne and now comes the next mandatory element under the waving tricolor. The e-invoice.
On September 1, all companies in France will be required by law to accept e-invoices. The reform also affects foreign companies doing business within the borders of the French Republic, as several new conditions must be met.
But if you want to be flexible, you can get a pre-packaged version. Inexchange offers a complete solution to handle the French requirements.
"One of the changes brought about by the new legislation is that the invoice must be received by a domestic service provider certified by the French tax authority. We have established and ensured that link. This means that we can deliver invoices directly into the French system, without any detours, and ensure that the format requirements are met," explains Per Löfving, Key Account Manager at Inexchange.
As far as Inexchange is concerned, the electronic boulevard of the French is ready and waiting. For a Swedish company that needs to invoice French companies, that knowledge is really enough. In other words, there is an established, ready-to-use communication service available.
See our international summary on e-invoicing - this applies country by country : EUROPE GUIDE
The main content of the reform
But a few facts about the new French invoicing landscape won't get in the way.
Here's the broad outline of the reform:
The e-invoicing law:
September 1, 2026: All businesses will be able to receive e-invoices. Large companies, with more than 250 employees and a turnover of €50 million or a balance sheet of €43 million, must also start issuing e-invoices.
September 1, 2027: Medium and small businesses are also subject to the same legislation and must issue e-invoices.
Invoice model:
In the original plan, the tax authority's digital portal, the PPF, was to be the free exchange platform for invoices, following a Y model, but that structure was abandoned. It has become a five-cornered model instead, in which sellers and buyers are linked via their respective service providers and the tax authority's PPF serves as the fifth corner, but only receives reporting data and not the invoice file itself from the service provider.
Invoice format:
The three mandatory structured formats for the B2B mandate in France are
Factur-X (hybrid PDF with embedded XML), UBL 2.1 (pure XML) and UN/CEFACT CII - Cross Industry Invoice (pure XML). All three must comply with the European standard EN 16931 plus the addition of specific French fields.
The service Inexchange offers includes format conversion, secure distribution, status feedback and standardization.
Per Löfving is happy to elaborate on what that means in detail:
"In the conversion stage, we take the customer's invoice data and convert it into one of the mandatory French formats. Then the invoice is distributed directly to the recipient's service provider. We then feed back and pass on mandatory status updates from the French system to the customer. For example, notifications such as "received" and "integrated".
In terms of standardization, this refers to incoming invoices. Inexchange maps the French data to a uniform format - primarily Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 - in order to simplify the customer's handling.
Flexible service
This fall's major transformation in France will be something of a paradigm shift. It is the biggest change to the country's administrative sector in decades. Paper invoices and standard PDFs will no longer be valid for B2B transactions. At the same time, the journey has been long, with recurring delays. There has been a lot of dispute along the way, leading to repeated adjustments to the plan set out in 2024.
But now implementation is close. The French tax authority will not tolerate any more delays. It has even created a penalty model, to be approved in this year's Finance Bill, to ensure compliance. The penalties are steep - up to €50 per incorrect invoice with an annual cap of €15,000 and fines of €500 per transaction for incorrect e-filing.
French e-invoice lexicon:
DGFiP (Direction Générale des Finances Publiques) is the French tax authority.
PPF (Portail Public de Facturation) is the central platform of the tax authority and it serves as an address book (Annuaire) and a repository for tax reporting.
PA (Plateforme Agréée) is a private service provider certified by the French tax authority. Formerly called PDP (Plateforme de Dématérialisation Partenaire), it changed its name in February this year.