Electronic invoicing guide
France
Digital reporting requirements
B2G: Centralized
B2B: Post-Audit
Obligatory
B2G: Mandatory
B2B: Voluntary
Authority
Ministère de l’Economie, des finances et de la relance DGFIP (Direction Générale des Finances Publiques) and AIFE (Agence pour l’informatique financière de l’Etat).
Platform
Chorus Pro
Format
The DGFiP has determined that all electronic invoices, both B2G and B2B, can be issued in UBL, CII or Factur-X formats.
Storage time
If the obligation is to store the invoice for 6 years it is common that issuers and recipients store them for 10 years. This is because of the many different interpretations that can be made of the specifications established in different French legal codes.
Reporting and processes
This country does not require reporting.
Upcoming legislative changes
France is moving from a hybrid invoicing model with a central platform and decentralized certified service providers (PDPs) towards a pure 5-Corner model only using the PDPs for invoice distribution and data extraction.
The current timeline for the introduction of the French mandate is:
- 1 September 2026 – obligation for all companies to be able to receive e-invoices and for large companies and mid-sized companies to issue e-invoices;
- 1 September 2027 – obligation for small and medium-sized enterprises and microenterprises to issue e-invoices.
The public invoicing platform (PPF) will no longer have a central role in the distribution of invoices between buyers and suppliers, and will focus on data collection and aggregation instead.
Peppol is expected to be the main framework and infrastructure used to ensure interoperability between the PDPs for the mandate. It is filling the gap for the PDPs on what protocols and communication channels should be used for sending and receiving e-documents between themselves.
Links of Interest and documents
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