Since 1 September 2026, every French company must be able to receive electronic invoices, and large and mid-sized companies must already issue all of their invoices in electronic form. If you run a French société par actions simplifiée (SAS, the flexible joint-stock company most foreign founders choose) or a société à responsabilité limitée (SARL, the limited liability company) while living in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, this reform reaches you directly: your Paris company is subject to the same obligations as a company run from Paris, with the same deadlines and the same penalties, even though you manage everything from abroad. The good news is that the administration has announced a tolerant start-up phase with no sanctions for any company in 2026, and the practical steps can all be taken remotely through an accredited platform, your accountant and a few mandatory details to add on every invoice. This guide explains, in plain English, what the reform requires of a foreign-held French company, how invoices must now travel, which four new details your invoices must carry, how French payment deadlines interact with your cash flow, and what it costs if you ignore the new rules.
I. Your French company must receive e-invoices now and issue them on a fixed schedule: who is concerned and how invoices travel
A. Since 1 September 2026 all companies receive, large companies already issue, and small companies follow on 1 September 2027
According to the official Ministry of the Economy guidance page on the reform, the business-to-business electronic invoicing reform entered into force on 1 September 2026. From that date, companies have the obligation to receive electronic invoices (e-invoicing), whatever their size, and, for large companies and intermediate-sized companies (abbreviated GE and ETI in French administrative language), the obligation to issue electronic invoices and to transmit transaction and payment data to the tax administration (e-reporting). The administration counts more than ten million economic operators concerned.
For a foreign founder, three questions matter immediately. First, does the reform apply to a company whose shareholder or director lives abroad? Yes, without any exception linked to the residence of the owner. The legal trigger is that the issuer and the recipient are taxable persons (assujettis, meaning persons liable for value added tax, TVA) established in France. Article 289 bis, I of the French General Tax Code (Code général des impôts, CGI) provides, verbatim: “l’émission, la transmission et la réception des factures relatives aux opérations mentionnées aux a et d du 1 du I dudit article 289 ainsi qu’aux acomptes s’y rapportant s’opèrent sous une forme électronique, selon des normes de facturation électronique définies par arrêté du ministre chargé du budget, lorsque l’émetteur de la facture et son destinataire sont des assujettis qui sont établis ou ont leur domicile ou leur résidence habituelle en France.” In other words, issuance, transmission and reception of invoices for the standard domestic business-to-business operations covered by Article 289, I, 1, a and d, plus related deposits, must take electronic form following standards set by the budget minister, whenever both parties are VAT taxable persons established, domiciled or usually resident in France. Your SAS registered in Paris with a SIREN number (the unique nine-digit identification number issued by INSEE, the national statistics institute, when the company is entered on the National Register of Companies, Registre national des entreprises) and a French intra-Community VAT number meets that test even if you sign everything from another continent.
Second, what is the exact calendar for a small foreign-held company? The official calendar distinguishes two waves. On 1 September 2026, all companies whatever their size had to be able to receive electronic invoices, while large and intermediate-sized companies had to issue all of their invoices in electronic form and transmit their e-reporting data. On 1 September 2027, small and micro companies must in turn be able to issue electronically and transmit their e-reporting data. In practice, if your French subsidiary or SAS is a small company, you must already be able to receive electronic invoices today, and you have until 1 September 2027 to be ready to issue them. Do not read that extra year as a holiday: suppliers who are large companies already send you electronic invoices through platforms, and your own accounting chain, your expert-comptable (the French chartered accountant, who alone is entitled to keep and supervise company accounts) and your customers will expect you to be connected well before the final deadline.
Third, what happens when your customer is outside France or is a private individual? The reform is domestic business-to-business only. The guidance answers this case directly: if the client is a private individual or established abroad, the supplier keeps sending the invoice through the usual channel and only transmits the corresponding payment or transaction data to its accredited platform, which forwards it to the administration. That second mechanism is called e-reporting (e-reporting or transmission of transaction data): it covers export supplies, intra-Community supplies, sales to private individuals and services to foreign clients. Article 290, I of the General Tax Code states the legal basis: “Les assujettis qui sont établis ou ont leur domicile ou leur résidence habituelle en France communiquent à l’administration sous forme électronique, selon des normes de transmission définies par arrêté du ministre chargé du budget, les données relatives aux opérations suivantes lorsqu’elles ne sont pas exonérées en application des articles 261 à 261 E” — taxable persons established, domiciled or usually resident in France communicate to the administration in electronic form, under transmission standards set by the budget minister, the data on the listed operations that are not exempt under Articles 261 to 261 E. So a Paris SAS billing a client in Dubai keeps its PDF or paper habit for the document itself, but the data must still flow to the administration through the platform. Many foreign founders miss this point and believe that an export-oriented company sits outside the reform; it does not.
Two further points complete the picture for groups. If your French company belongs to a foreign group, each French entity connects individually: there is no group-level exemption for small French subsidiaries of large foreign groups, and the size test for the 2026 or 2027 wave follows the French definitions of large and intermediate-sized companies, linked to the decree on company categories. If your French entity is only a branch (succursale, a secondary establishment of a foreign company without its own legal personality, registered with the local commercial court registry, the greffe du tribunal de commerce), the branch is established in France and falls into the same obligations for its French operations. The related question of whether to operate through a branch or a subsidiary, with its consequences on liability, taxation and closure, is examined in our companion analysis of branches versus subsidiaries in France for foreign companies; whichever vehicle you chose, the invoicing calendar described here applies.
B. How a compliant invoice travels from your supplier to your company: accredited platform, central directory and standard formats
Under the reform, an electronic invoice is not simply a PDF sent by email. Article 289 bis, I states the channel rule in one sentence: “L’émission, la transmission et la réception des factures électroniques s’effectuent en recourant à une plateforme agréée.” Issuance, transmission and reception of electronic invoices go through an accredited platform (plateforme agréée, abbreviated PA: a private invoicing platform registered by the tax administration after meeting security, interoperability and data-protection requirements). The administration publishes and regularly updates the list of registered platforms on the impots.gouv.fr website (the official portal of the French tax administration, Direction générale des Finances publiques). More than a hundred platforms were already listed at launch, and your expert-comptable, your chambers of commerce networks or your management software vendor can help you choose one.
Concretely, the circuit works as follows. Once issued, the supplier sends its electronic invoice through the accredited platform it has chosen, directly or via a compatible solution, and the invoice is routed to the recipient’s accredited platform; in parallel, some data from the invoice is transmitted to the administration, which will no longer need to ask for it. The Ministry describes the benefit for day-to-day management: when a supplier invoice arrives on your platform, you are quickly informed by a notification, and invoice statuses (statuts de la facture) let you follow in real time, thanks to timestamping (horodatage), at which stage of the transmission circuit the invoice stands. For a founder living abroad, this is a genuine improvement over piles of PDFs in an inbox: every invoice addressed to your SIREN number is centralised, timestamped and traceable, and your accountant sees the same statuses you see.
Addressing between platforms relies on a central directory (annuaire central). Article 289 bis, III provides: “Par dérogation à l’article L. 151-1 du code de commerce, l’Etat met un annuaire central à la disposition des plateformes agréées. Cet annuaire est constitué et mis à jour à partir des informations transmises par ces plateformes et recense les informations nécessaires à l’adressage des factures électroniques aux plateformes agréées des destinataires de ces factures.” By derogation from business secrecy rules, the State places a central directory at the disposal of accredited platforms, built and updated from information transmitted by those platforms, listing the data needed to route electronic invoices to the recipients’ platforms. A decree in Council of State (décret en Conseil d’Etat) specifies the information collected, the arrangements for changing platform and the minimum services the former platform must keep providing for at least one year after a change. In plain terms: each company designates its platform, the directory records that choice, and suppliers’ platforms consult the directory to deliver invoices to the right place. If you change platform, the switch is supervised and the old platform must keep minimum services running, so no invoice is lost in transit.
The invoice itself must use one of the standard structured formats recognised by the reform (Factur-X, UBL or CII in their compliant profiles), because the electronic invoice contains data in structured form: for the same tag, every software program reads the same information, which is what makes automatic controls and pre-filling possible. If you do not use any software, the official guidance confirms that you can create your invoices directly on the accredited platform you have chosen. And the administration stresses one reassuring point for founders worried about re-learning how to bill: the reform changes only the transmission process, not the billing rules themselves — what must be billed, when and with which VAT treatment follows the existing law, starting with Article 289 of the General Tax Code, under which “Tout assujetti est tenu de s’assurer qu’une facture est émise, par lui-même, ou en son nom et pour son compte, par son client ou par un tiers” for supplies of goods and services to another taxable person or to a non-taxable legal person that are not exempt: “Pour les livraisons de biens ou les prestations de services qu’il effectue pour un autre assujetti, ou pour une personne morale non assujettie, et qui ne sont pas exonérées en application des articles 261 à 261 E”. Self-billing by the client or third-party billing under mandate remain possible, but the resulting invoice must still travel through the platforms.
One public-sector detail matters if your company sells to French public bodies: invoices to the State, local authorities and public hospitals already had to pass through Chorus Pro (the public invoicing portal, Chorus Pro), and that obligation continues alongside the new private circuit. Article 289 bis expressly reserves the public procurement rule (“Sans préjudice de l’article L. 2392-1 du code de la commande publique”), and operations subject to a defence classification measure are excluded (“le présent article n’est pas applicable aux opérations faisant l’objet d’une mesure de classification au sens de l’article 413-9 du code pénal”). If you bid for French public contracts from abroad, keep both circuits in mind: Chorus Pro for the public buyer, your accredited platform for everything else.
II. Act from abroad before the invoice blocks your business: four new mandatory details, French payment deadlines and penalties
A. The four new details every invoice must carry and the French payment deadline machine your cash depends on
From 1 September 2026, four new mandatory details (mentions obligatoires) must appear on invoices, and they apply to every company, including small ones that will only start issuing electronically in 2027. The official list reads: the customer’s SIREN number; the category of the invoiced operation (sale of goods, provision of services, or both); where relevant, the option for VAT payment on debits (an option allowing service providers to pay VAT when they issue the invoice rather than when they receive payment); and the full delivery address of the goods, only when it differs from the customer’s billing address. These join the existing mandatory details of Article 289 (names and addresses of the parties, individual invoice number based on a continuous chronological sequence, date of issue and date of the supply, quantity and precise description, price, VAT rate and amount, intra-Community VAT numbers) and of the Commercial Code. For a founder abroad, the operational lesson is immediate: your invoicing template, whether in your software or on your platform, must collect the customer’s SIREN number and the operation category for every French business client, and your sales team must ask for the delivery address whenever goods go somewhere other than the billing address. Invoices missing these details are non-compliant, and non-compliant invoices slow down payment and complicate recovery before the commercial court (tribunal de commerce or the newer tribunal des activités économiques).
That payment question is governed by a strict French regime that surprises many foreign businesses. The Commercial Code (Code de commerce) starts with a blunt principle in Article L441-9, I: “Tout achat de produits ou toute prestation de service pour une activité professionnelle fait l’objet d’une facturation.” Every purchase of products or provision of services for a professional activity must be invoiced. Then: “Le vendeur est tenu de délivrer la facture dès la réalisation de la livraison ou de la prestation de services” — the seller must issue the invoice as soon as the supply or service is performed — and symmetrically “L’acheteur est tenu de la réclamer”, the buyer must claim it. Each party keeps a copy of every invoice within the retention period set by tax law. Against that background of mandatory invoicing, Article L441-10, I caps payment periods. The default rule: “le délai de règlement des sommes dues ne peut dépasser trente jours après la date de réception des marchandises ou d’exécution de la prestation demandée” — the payment period may not exceed thirty days after receipt of the goods or performance of the service, unless otherwise agreed. Where the parties agree a period, “Le délai convenu entre les parties pour régler les sommes dues ne peut dépasser soixante jours après la date d’émission de la facture” — it may not exceed sixty days after the invoice date — with a narrow derogation allowing forty-five days end of month from the invoice date, provided that period is expressly stipulated in the contract and does not constitute a manifest abuse towards the creditor. Late payment automatically triggers late penalties (pénalités de retard) at a rate at least equal to three times the French legal interest rate (taux d’intérêt légal, set by order twice a year), plus a fixed recovery indemnity (indemnité forfaitaire pour frais de recouvrement) of 40 euros per unpaid invoice, and the creditor may claim additional documented recovery costs. Your general terms of sale (conditions générales de vente, CGV) must state the penalty rate and the indemnity; if they are silent, the statutory rate applies by default and your claim is weaker in practice.
Why does the e-invoicing reform change this payment game? Because timestamps, statuses and structured data make the invoice date, the receipt date and the due date provable on both sides. A customer who used to argue that the invoice never arrived will face a platform record showing delivery and consultation. Conversely, a supplier whose invoice lacks the SIREN number or the operation category gives the customer a ready-made reason to suspend payment while requesting a corrected invoice (facture rectificative or avoir). Our detailed analysis of recovering unpaid French invoices from abroad, with penalties and fast-track orders shows how these details feed directly into the injonction de payer (the European-style order-for-payment procedure before the commercial court) and the référé-provision (urgent application for an interim payment where the debt is not seriously disputable). The practical rule for a founder abroad is therefore to treat invoicing hygiene as a collection strategy: compliant invoice, correct SIREN, stated penalty rate, platform timestamp — and the French fast-track procedures become available instead of a two-year case on the merits.
A final detail on VAT mechanics for invoices to foreign clients. When a non-French-established supplier provides services covered by Article 259A to a French taxable customer, or goods under the reverse-charge rules, Article 283 of the General Tax Code shifts the VAT: VAT is in principle paid by the person carrying out the taxable transaction, but for supplies covered by Article 259A made by a supplier not established in France, the French taxable customer self-assesses it. The French customer self-assesses (autoliquidation) the VAT and reports it on the return mentioned in Article 287. Your French company will therefore both receive reverse-charge invoices from foreign suppliers (with no French VAT charged) and issue its own invoices with or without French VAT depending on the place-of-supply rules; the broader VAT registration, thresholds and return mechanics are explained in our guide to French VAT for foreign companies: registration, thresholds, returns and reassessment defence. Getting the VAT line right on each invoice matters because the platform data now feeds the administration’s cross-checks automatically.
B. Penalties for missing or false invoices, declaration consistency and the remote founder’s checklist before the platform blocks you
French law punishes invoicing failures heavily, and the amounts should concentrate any founder’s mind. Article 1737, I of the General Tax Code provides that a fine of 50% applies: “Entraîne l’application d’une amende égale à 50 % du montant”, including, for the amount of the transaction, “le fait de ne pas délivrer une facture ou la note prévue à l’article 290 quinquies et de ne pas comptabiliser la transaction” — failure to issue an invoice and failure to record the transaction — as well as disguising the identity or address of suppliers or customers and issuing invoices for fictitious supplies. The professional customer is jointly liable (solidairement tenu) for that fine, capped at 375,000 euros per financial year (exercice), although the fine is reduced when the transaction was properly recorded. Alongside tax fines, the Commercial Code punishes breaches of invoicing rules with administrative fines, and the criminal courts punish false invoicing as forgery (faux) and tax fraud (fraude fiscale). None of these texts distinguishes between a founder living in Paris and one living abroad: the dirigeant (the legal manager — président of a SAS or gérant of a SARL) answers for the company’s compliance wherever the laptop sits.
For the launch phase, however, the administration has chosen pedagogy over punishment. The Ministry confirms that the start-up phase of the reform follows an approach of goodwill and tolerance towards companies facing difficulties at launch — and the government’s launch communication states plainly that no sanction will hit any company in 2026 while support is prioritised. A national helpline, 0 806 807 807, answers reform questions, and a practical guide from the tax administration plus your expert-comptable, consular chambers and software vendors form the support network. Treat this tolerance as a window, not a waiver: connect your company, test the circuit and correct your templates now, because the tolerance announced for 2026 will not last forever, and the 50% fine for missing invoices under Article 1737 never went away.
Declaration consistency is the second trap. Your company files periodic VAT returns (déclarations de TVA, usually monthly under the normal real regime via Form CA3, or quarterly if the annual VAT due stays below the regulatory threshold). Article 287, 1 requires: “Tout redevable de la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée identifié conformément aux dispositions combinées des articles 286 ter et 286 ter A est tenu de remettre au service des impôts dont il dépend et dans le délai fixé par arrêté une déclaration conforme au modèle prescrit par l’administration.” Every identified VAT payer must file with its tax office, within the regulatory deadline, a return on the prescribed form. Platform data (e-invoicing for domestic business-to-business, e-reporting for the rest) will now be cross-checked against those returns and against your customers’ and suppliers’ data. Gaps between declared turnover and platform flows trigger automated requests and, eventually, reassessments (redressements) with late interest (intérêt de retard, 0.20% per month) and penalties. Registration itself starts with the declaration duty of Article 286: “Toute personne assujettie à la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée doit : 1° Dans les quinze jours du commencement de ses opérations, souscrire au bureau désigné par un arrêté une déclaration conforme au modèle fourni par l’administration.” Since the 2023 reform of business formalities, that declaration passes through the Single Window (Guichet unique operated by INPI, the National Institute of Industrial Property) rather than the old trade formalities centres — one more acronym to master, but the fifteen-day logic remains.
Here is the remote founder’s checklist, in the order that avoids a last-minute block. First, designate your accredited platform now and register your company in the central directory, even if you only need to receive in 2026; test reception of a real supplier invoice and confirm that your expert-comptable sees it. Second, verify that your management or billing software is compatible with your platform or plan to create invoices directly on the platform. Third, update every invoice template with the four new details — customer SIREN, operation category, VAT-on-debits option where used, delivery address where different — and have your accountant validate one sample invoice before mass issuance. Fourth, align your general terms of sale with Article L441-10: agreed period capped at sixty days from issue (or forty-five days end of month if expressly stipulated and not abusive), stated late-penalty rate, 40-euro recovery indemnity, and no clause your customer’s lawyers could attack as a manifest abuse. Fifth, organise e-reporting for your non-French and private-individual turnover so that data flows even where no electronic invoice travels. Sixth, keep every invoice and supporting document for the full retention period (ten years on the commercial side, with the tax administration’s own review periods running in parallel), because platform transmission does not replace your archiving duty. Seventh, calendar the 1 September 2027 issuance deadline with a mid-2027 dry run, and assign one person — you, your office manager or your accountant — to monitor platform notifications weekly so that a rejected or unreceived invoice never sits unnoticed for months.
If something goes wrong — a platform rejects your invoices, a customer claims never to have received them, or the administration notifies a gap between your returns and your platform data — answer in writing, keep the platform timestamps and status logs, and have your position checked against the exact texts before any meeting or settlement. French commercial and tax disputes reward the party whose documents are complete, dated and consistent; they punish approximation. That discipline, applied from abroad with the right platform and the right accountant, turns a reform that looks like a burden into a cleaner ledger, faster collection and fewer disputes.
Conclusion
France’s electronic invoicing reform is now live: every company must receive electronic invoices since 1 September 2026, large and intermediate-sized companies must already issue them, and small companies must be ready to issue by 1 September 2027, with e-reporting covering foreign and private-individual turnover in the meantime. For a founder running a French company from abroad, compliance passes through one accredited platform, four new mandatory invoice details, payment terms capped by the Commercial Code, and VAT returns consistent with platform data — backed by a 50% fine for missing invoices and a stated but temporary administrative tolerance in 2026. Connect the platform, fix the templates, align the general terms of sale and calendar the 2027 deadline now: the companies that treat this reform as an accounting upgrade rather than a paperwork chore will collect faster, dispute less and face the administration with clean, timestamped records.