You run your French company from London, New York, Dubai or Singapore. Sales are starting, your French accountant (expert-comptable) asks for your invoices, and the answer comes back like a cold shower: your invoices are missing mandatory mentions, your payment terms are unenforceable, and one client already refuses to pay an invoice that does not show its purchase order number. Meanwhile the French tax administration (Direction générale des Finances publiques, DGFiP) can fine each defective invoice, and since 1 September 2026 every company in France must at least be able to receive electronic invoices. This article explains, in plain English, what a French business-to-business invoice must contain, what each missing line really costs, how French late-payment interest and the flat recovery fee work, and how you fix everything from abroad before a small paperwork problem turns into fines, blocked payments and litigation before the commercial courts.

French invoice law looks technical, but it follows a simple logic: the invoice is the document that proves the sale, carries the value-added tax (VAT, taxe sur la valeur ajoutée, TVA), sets the payment deadline, and triggers automatic penalties when the client pays late. Get the mentions right once, with a compliant template and an invoicing tool that handles electronic invoicing (facturation électronique), and the whole chain — accounting, VAT returns, debt collection, tax audits — becomes far easier. The rules below apply to any company registered in France (société immatriculée au Registre national des entreprises, RNE, formerly the trade and companies register, RCS): société par actions simplifiée (SAS, simplified joint-stock company), société à responsabilité limitée (SARL, limited liability company) and branches of foreign companies alike. Every French acronym is explained the first time it appears.

I. What your French invoices must show and what each missing line costs you

A. How to write a French invoice your accountant, your client and the tax office will accept

Every purchase of goods or provision of services for a professional activity must be invoiced, and the seller must issue the invoice as soon as the sale or service is performed. Article L. 441-9 of the French Commercial Code (Code de commerce) states: “Le vendeur est tenu de délivrer la facture dès la réalisation de la livraison ou de la prestation de services au sens du 3 du I de l’article 289 du code général des impôts” (Article L. 441-9, Code de commerce, on Légifrance). The buyer is required to claim the invoice, and both sides keep a copy. Tax law says the same thing in its own words: “La facture est, en principe, émise dès la réalisation de la livraison ou de la prestation de services.” (Article 289, I, 3, Code général des impôts, on Légifrance). In practice, this means backdating invoices weeks later, invoicing from memory at quarter-end, or letting a foreign parent company bill French clients directly without a French invoice is not compliant. Issue the invoice at delivery, or within days, with sequential numbering and no gaps.

The same Article L. 441-9 lists the mentions every invoice must carry: the names and addresses of both parties (plus the billing address when it differs), the date of the sale or service, the quantity, the precise description and the unit price excluding VAT (prix hors taxe) of the goods sold and services provided, any price reduction acquired at the date of the sale and directly linked to the transaction, the payment date shown on the invoice, the late-payment penalty rate and the flat recovery fee (Article L. 441-9, Code de commerce, on Légifrance). Where the buyer has issued a purchase order (bon de commande), the invoice must state its number. Large French buyers systematically reject invoices without their order number, and your contract may make that number a condition of payment — so collect it before you deliver, not after.

On top of commercial law, VAT law adds its own layer of mandatory mentions under Article 289 of the General Tax Code (Code général des impôts, CGI): consecutive invoice number, date of issue, supplier and customer identification including the intra-Community VAT number (numéro de TVA intracommunautaire) for EU cross-border sales, quantity and nature of goods or extent of services, unit price excluding tax, applicable VAT rate, amount of VAT due, and, where relevant, the legal wording for VAT exemption (exonération), reverse charge (autoliquidation) or the margin scheme (Article 289, Code général des impôts, on Légifrance). A foreign founder’s classic mistakes are easy to list: showing prices including VAT only, forgetting the intra-Community VAT number, writing VAT 0% on an intra-EU supply instead of the correct exemption wording with both VAT numbers, or omitting the Système d’identification du répertoire des entreprises (SIRENE) number — the SIREN (9 digits, the company) and SIRET (14 digits, the establishment) identifiers issued by the statistics institute Insee. Your SIREN and SIRET appear on your extrait Kbis, the official registration certificate issued by the clerk of the commercial court (greffe du tribunal de commerce), and clients use them to check that your company exists. Display the SIREN, the address of the registered office (siège social), the share capital (capital social) for companies, and the intra-Community VAT number on every invoice template.

Two mentions deserve special attention because foreign templates almost never include them. First, the payment date (date de règlement): French law requires the invoice to state when payment is due, and the whole late-payment machinery runs from that date. An invoice that says payable on receipt without a clear date, or that states no date at all, deprives you of automatic penalties and invites disputes about when the clock started. Second, the late-payment penalties and recovery fee wording: the invoice and your general terms must state the penalty rate and the flat fee, as explained in section II.A below. Copy the exact statutory formulas into your template and your general terms of sale (conditions générales de vente, CGV): ECB refinancing rate plus ten points, plus the 40 euro flat fee. The public guidance on service-public.fr and impots.gouv.fr repeats these requirements for small businesses, and your expert-comptable will reconcile each invoice against your VAT return (déclaration de TVA, form CA3): an invoice without VAT number, without rate, or with the wrong exemption wording cannot be booked cleanly and will come back to you for correction.

Keep every invoice and supporting document for ten years. Article L. 123-22 of the Commercial Code provides: “Les documents comptables et les pièces justificatives sont conservés pendant dix ans.” (Article L. 123-22, Code de commerce, on Légifrance). Invoices count as supporting documents (pièces justificatives), in paper or electronic form, and the tax auditor (vérificateur) during a tax audit (vérification de comptabilité) will ask for them. A foreign founder who stores invoices in a personal mailbox, on a laptop, or in a foreign parent’s system that the French company cannot access is taking a real risk: if the documents cannot be produced in France within the audit deadlines, the administration can draw adverse inferences and reassess VAT. Centralise invoicing in one tool, archive PDFs with their electronic data, and make sure your French accountant has permanent access.

B. What each error really costs: 15 euros per omission, up to 375,000 euros, and clients who refuse to pay

The most mechanical sanction is the tax fine for defective invoices. Article 1737, II of the General Tax Code provides: “Toute omission ou inexactitude constatée dans les factures ou documents en tenant lieu mentionnés aux articles 289 et 290 quinquies donne lieu à l’application d’une amende de 15 €.” (Article 1737, II, Code général des impôts, on Légifrance). Each missing or inaccurate mention costs 15 euros, with the total per invoice capped at one quarter of the invoice amount. Fifteen euros sounds harmless until you multiply: five missing mentions on two hundred invoices is 15,000 euros of fines in a single audit, and the cap per invoice rarely protects small invoices because the administration counts every omission. The heaviest version of Article 1737 targets fraud — missing trader identity, invoices for fictitious transactions, failure to issue invoices at all — with fines of 50% of the amounts involved, capped at 375,000 euros per financial year, for which the professional client is jointly liable (Article 1737, I, Code général des impôts, on Légifrance). Ordinary founders will never face the fraud scale, but the message is clear: systematic invoicing without invoices, or cash sales never invoiced, is treated as concealment, not informality.

Commercial law adds administrative fines of its own. Any breach of the invoicing duties in Article L. 441-9 “est passible d’une amende administrative dont le montant ne peut excéder 75 000 € pour une personne physique et 375 000 € pour une personne morale” — in the words of the statute: “Tout manquement au I est passible d’une amende administrative dont le montant ne peut excéder 75 000 € pour une personne physique et 375 000 € pour une personne morale.” (Article L. 441-9, II, Code de commerce, on Légifrance). The ceiling doubles for a repeated breach within two years of the first sanction becoming final. These fines are imposed by the consumer and competition authority (Direction générale de la concurrence, de la consommation et de la répression des fraudes, DGCCRF) after an inspection, typically following a complaint by a client or a control of your general terms. The DGCCRF publishes its sanctions: payment-delay and invoicing fines against named companies appear in its public reports, which means a fine also costs reputation with French buyers who check suppliers before signing.

The commercial cost often arrives before any fine. A French buyer that receives a non-compliant invoice has practical and legal reasons not to pay it: its own accountant cannot book an invoice without SIREN, VAT number or order reference; its VAT deduction (droit à déduction) requires a valid invoice under Article 289; and its internal controls flag invoices that do not match the purchase order. The result is the classic foreign-founder dispute: the service was performed, the client does not contest the work, but payment stays blocked in accounts payable until a corrected invoice arrives. Every week of correction is a week of cash-flow gap for a young company, and if the invoice also lacks a payment date and penalty wording, you cannot even charge automatic late interest for the waiting period. Between merchants, proof is free — Article L. 110-3 of the Commercial Code states: “A l’égard des commerçants, les actes de commerce peuvent se prouver par tous moyens à moins qu’il n’en soit autrement disposé par la loi.” (Article L. 110-3, Code de commerce, on Légifrance) — but a missing or defective invoice still weakens your file before the judge, because the accepted invoice is the standard proof of the claim and its amount. Issue clean invoices first; litigate from a complete file rather than from emails and memory.

Correct a defective invoice with a credit note (avoir), never by editing the original. French practice requires sequential, unalterable numbering: you cancel or correct by issuing a new numbered document that refers to the original invoice number and date, states the correction, and carries the same mandatory mentions. Send the credit note and the corrected invoice together to the client and to your accountant, keep both for ten years, and check the VAT treatment with your expert-comptable before re-filing anything: a corrected invoice that changes the VAT amount may require a corrective VAT return for the period concerned. From abroad, this is a one-hour task if your template is compliant and your numbering is centralised — and a weeks-long reconstruction if invoices live in scattered spreadsheets.

II. Getting paid on time and switching to e-invoicing without leaving your desk abroad

A. How French late-payment interest and the 40 euro fee force slow payers to pay

French law caps payment periods strictly. Unless otherwise agreed, the payment period cannot exceed thirty days from receipt of the goods or performance of the service. Where the parties agree on a period, it cannot exceed sixty days from the invoice date, or forty-five days end-of-month (45 jours fin de mois) where that longer formula is expressly stipulated and is not manifestly abusive toward the creditor (Article L. 441-10, I, Code de commerce, on Légifrance). Clauses that push the starting point back — such as payment 60 days after our validation of the invoice or payment at the end of the quarter following delivery — are prohibited and punished. Foreign founders should read their big clients’ general purchasing terms (conditions générales d’achat, CGA) line by line: a 90-day term imposed by a French buyer is void, and you can claim the statutory rate even if you signed the buyer’s terms without noticing.

When the deadline passes, penalties apply automatically. Your general terms and the invoice must state the penalty rate and the flat fee; failing that, the statute fills the gap. The default rate is severe by design: “ce taux est égal au taux d’intérêt appliqué par la Banque centrale européenne à son opération de refinancement la plus récente majoré de 10 points de pourcentage” (Article L. 441-10, II, Code de commerce, on Légifrance). With an ECB refinancing rate around 2%, the French penalty rate stands near 12% per year — far above English or American contract rates — and it runs from the day after the payment date shown on the invoice. Crucially: “Les pénalités de retard sont exigibles sans qu’un rappel soit nécessaire.” (Article L. 441-10, II, Code de commerce, on Légifrance). No formal demand (mise en demeure) is needed; the interest accrues by operation of law. Add the flat recovery fee: “Le montant de l’indemnité forfaitaire pour frais de recouvrement prévue au II de l’article L. 441-10 est fixé à 40 euros.” (Article D. 441-5, Code de commerce, on Légifrance). Every late professional payment owes you, automatically, the interest plus 40 euros — and where your proven recovery costs exceed 40 euros, you can claim the documented surplus on top, with receipts.

The Cour de cassation (France’s supreme court for civil and commercial matters) enforces this machinery even when the contract says nothing. In a 18 January 2023 ruling (pourvoi no. D 21-18.809), the Commercial Chamber recalled that general terms of sale must include payment terms, “lesquelles doivent obligatoirement préciser les conditions d’application et le taux d’intérêt des pénalités de retard exigibles le jour suivant la date de règlement figurant sur la facture” (Cass. com., 18 January 2023, no. 21-18.809, on courdecassation.fr). The lower court had refused ECB-plus-ten penalties on the ground that the management contract was not a sale and did not mention the rate; the Cour de cassation quashed that reasoning, holding the services were covered and the statutory rate applied. For a foreign owner, the lesson is direct: put the ECB-plus-ten formula and the 40 euro fee in your CGV and on every invoice, and a French judge will apply them even against a large client whose purchasing department claims it never agreed to penalties. Our related guide on recovering unpaid invoices explains the next steps — formal demand, injonction de payer (order for payment) before the commercial court, and enforcement — which run far more smoothly from a compliant invoice than from a defective one.

Payment delays are also punished by the administration. Breaching the statutory payment periods, omitting the required penalty mentions from payment terms, or applying a non-compliant rate exposes the debtor to an administrative fine: “Est passible d’une amende administrative dont le montant ne peut excéder 75 000 € pour une personne physique et deux millions d’euros pour une personne morale” (Article L. 441-16, Code de commerce, on Légifrance), doubled for repetition within two years. In practice the DGCCRF fines late payers, not creditors — but the provision matters to you twice. As a creditor, you can report a systematically late buyer to the DGCCRF, which concentrates minds in settlement talks. As a debtor, your young French company must itself respect supplier deadlines: a startup that pays its French suppliers at 90 days because group habits imported from abroad risk both supplier penalty claims and an administrative fine. Mirror the discipline you demand from clients.

B. How to fix your invoicing from abroad and meet the e-invoicing calendar

Start with a one-page self-audit you can run from abroad this week. Pull your last ten invoices and check: sequential numbers with no gaps; issue date at or just after delivery; your SIREN, SIRET, registered office, share capital and intra-Community VAT number; client name, address and VAT number; order number where the client uses one; quantity, precise description, unit price excluding VAT; VAT rate and amount or exact exemption wording; total excluding and including VAT; payment date; penalty rate (ECB plus ten points) and 40 euro fee wording. Then check your CGV carry the same payment terms, because Article L. 441-10 requires the penalty mentions in the payment terms themselves. Send the sample to your expert-comptable with one question: whether these ten invoices would survive a DGFiP audit and a client accounts-payable control The answer tells you whether you need a template fix (one day) or a reconstruction (several weeks of credit notes).

Then move to electronic invoicing, which is now mandatory in stages. Since 1 September 2026, every company in France — including your French subsidiary — must be able to receive electronic invoices, and large companies and mid-sized companies (entreprises de taille intermédiaire) must also issue all their invoices electronically and transmit transaction data to the administration (e-reporting); small and micro-enterprises must be able to issue electronically and transmit e-reporting data at the next stage of the calendar (see the official presentation on economie.gouv.fr: everything about e-invoicing for companies and the professional portal on impots.gouv.fr: e-invoicing, what changes for me). Concretely, invoices between French VAT-registered companies must pass through a registered platform (plateforme agréée, PA) or the public portal in structured format (Factur-X, UBL or CII), which also feeds the administration’s data. A PDF sent by email no longer counts as an electronic invoice in this scheme. For a foreign-run company, the practical choice is simple: adopt now an invoicing tool connected to a registered platform, configure your company data and VAT numbers once, and let the platform handle format, transmission and archiving. Our pillar guide on French e-invoicing from 1 September 2026 and e-reporting duties details the calendar and cross-border cases; read it together with this article before you choose software.

Two cross-border traps need explicit attention. First, the reverse charge: where your French company supplies services to a VAT-registered client in another EU member state, you generally invoice without French VAT with the wording autoliquidation plus both intra-Community VAT numbers, and the client self-assesses VAT at home — but the invoice must still carry every other Article 289 mention, and the 15 euro fine applies to omissions there too. Second, the official bulletin of announcements (Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, BODACC) and the extrait Kbis are how French clients verify you: a client that cannot match your invoice header (company name, SIREN, registered office) with your Kbis will suspect a shell and delay payment. After any change — new registered office, new company name, new president (président of a SAS) — update the registry via the single online desk (Guichet unique run by the INPI, the national industrial property institute) and refresh your invoice template the same day. Consistency between Kbis, VAT number, bank account holder name and invoice header is what gets invoices paid without questions.

If you operate from Paris or Île-de-France, three local points matter. First, jurisdiction: unpaid-invoice claims for your Paris-registered company go to the commercial court of Paris — now the Tribunal des activités économiques de Paris — for the fast injonction de payer procedure, and Paris judges apply the ECB-plus-ten rate routinely where the invoice states it. Second, timing: Paris accounts-payable departments of large groups close payment runs early in August and December; send compliant invoices with order numbers before those cut-offs or face two months of automatic delay. Third, paperwork: Paris-domiciled companies (sociétés domiciliées) using a domiciliation agent (société de domiciliation) must show the registered-office address plus, where applicable, the domiciliation details exactly as registered — a mismatch between the invoice header and the Kbis is the most common reason Parisian clients freeze a first payment. A short visit or video call with your Paris accountant to align Kbis, VAT certificate, bank details (relevé d’identité bancaire, RIB) and template pays for itself in the first month.

Conclusion

French invoices reward founders who treat them as legal instruments, not as paperwork. One compliant template — SIREN and VAT numbers, order number, precise description, VAT wording, payment date, ECB-plus-ten penalties and the 40 euro fee — protects you on four fronts at once: the DGFiP auditor finds no 15 euro omissions, the DGCCRF finds no missing mentions, the client’s accounts department pays without asking questions, and the commercial court awards automatic interest from a clear start date. The Cour de cassation applies the statutory penalty rate even where the contract is silent, which means the founder who writes the right clause once collects interest that the founder with a foreign template never sees. Add electronic invoicing through a registered platform, keep every document for ten years, and correct mistakes by credit note rather than by editing history.

If your invoices are already under challenge — a client refusing payment, an accountant warning of fines, a tax audit requesting your invoice files — do not wait for the deadlines to harden. Gather your last twelve months of invoices, your CGV, your Kbis and your VAT numbers, list the missing mentions using the self-audit in section II.B, and have a lawyer check the penalty clauses and the correction plan before you reissue anything. From abroad, most fixes take days when they are planned and months when they are improvised under audit pressure. A compliant invoicing chain is the cheapest legal investment a foreign-owned French company can make: it secures cash flow, VAT deductions and enforcement rights in a single document.

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