France Regulations
France is replacing paper and PDF invoicing between businesses with structured electronic invoices, and adding a reporting duty for the transactions that fall outside that exchange. The rules come from ordonnance n° 2021-1190 of 15 September 2021, as amended by the 2024 and 2025 finance laws.
Two separate obligations are involved:
- E-invoicing (facturation électronique): you send and receive invoices as structured files through an approved platform. This covers domestic business to business trade.
- E-reporting: you report transaction and payment data to the tax administration. This covers everything else, mainly sales to consumers and to foreign businesses.
Deadlines
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1 January 2017 to 1 January 2020 | B2G e-invoicing became mandatory, phased by company size |
| 1 September 2026 | All companies must be able to receive structured e-invoices |
| 1 September 2026 | Large companies and ETI must issue e-invoices and start e-reporting |
| 1 September 2027 | SMEs and micro-enterprises must issue e-invoices and start e-reporting |
Company size categories follow the standard French definitions:
| Category | Threshold |
|---|---|
| Grande entreprise | 5,000 employees or more, or turnover above 1.5 billion euros |
| ETI (mid-sized) | Fewer than 5,000 employees, and turnover up to 1.5 billion euros |
| PME (SME) | Fewer than 250 employees, and turnover up to 50 million euros |
| Micro-entreprise | Fewer than 10 employees, and turnover up to 2 million euros |
What each type of transaction requires
B2G: selling to public bodies
Already mandatory. These invoices go through Chorus Pro.
Nothing changes in 2026 for the obligation itself, but Chorus Pro is being aligned with the wider reform, so the same platform and formats used for B2B can carry B2G invoices.
B2B domestic: selling to another French business
An invoice between two companies established in France and subject to French VAT must be issued as a structured file and transmitted through an approved platform. A PDF sent by email no longer counts as a valid invoice.
B2C: selling to consumers
No e-invoicing obligation. You do not send a structured invoice to a private individual, and your receipts and consumer invoices stay as they are.
Instead, these sales fall under e-reporting. You transmit the transaction data, generally aggregated per period rather than invoice by invoice, through your platform.
B2Bi: selling to or buying from a foreign business
No e-invoicing obligation either, because the French platform network has no jurisdiction over a counterparty abroad. Cross-border business transactions are also covered by e-reporting:
You keep issuing the invoice as you do today, and you report the data.
How invoices are transmitted
Every company therefore needs a Plateforme Agréée (PA), the registered platform previously called Plateforme de Dématérialisation Partenaire (PDP). The platform is registered by the tax administration. It handles:
- Sending your invoices to your customer’s platform
- Receiving invoices addressed to you
- Converting between accepted formats
- Reporting the required data to the administration
- Returning lifecycle statuses
You can keep an ordinary service provider or software vendor in between, an opérateur de dématérialisation (OD), but it must connect to an approved platform. It cannot deliver invoices on its own.
Formats
The minimum set every platform must support is based on the European standard EN 16931:
- Factur-X (PDF/A-3 file with a CII XML file embedded inside)
- UBL (EN 16931 form)
- CII (EN 16931 form)
See E-Invoice Formats.
New mandatory invoice content
Four items become compulsory on invoices in addition to the existing legal mentions:
- The SIREN of the buyer, alongside that of the seller
- The delivery address of the goods, when it differs from the buyer’s address
- Whether the invoice covers goods, services, or both
- A statement that the seller has opted to pay VAT on debits, where that option applies
What this means for a PrestaShop shop
- If you sell to consumers only, you have no invoices to send electronically, but you have e-reporting to file from your deadline, and you must still be able to receive supplier invoices from 1 September 2026.
- If you sell to French businesses, those invoices must be structured and sent through a Plateforme Agréée from 1 September 2026 or 1 September 2027, depending on your size.
- If you sell abroad, those sales are e-reported, not e-invoiced.
See also: