Since 1 September 2026, every company established in France must be able to receive electronic invoices, even if its owner lives in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore. If your French société par actions simplifiée (SAS, the flexible joint-stock company most foreign founders choose) or société à responsabilité limitée (SARL, the limited-liability company) is small, you have until 1 September 2027 to issue electronic invoices, but the obligation to receive them already applies to you today. A founder who discovers this reform only when a supplier asks for the company’s receiving platform, or when the tax office (Direction générale des Finances publiques, DGFIP, the French tax administration) asks for transaction data, is already late. This guide explains, entirely from the founder-abroad point of view, what the calendar requires, how to designate a platform without travelling to France, which new invoice mentions to add, which fines apply when an invoice is wrong, late or missing, and how French courts treat unpaid invoices owed by or to a foreign company.
French acronyms appear everywhere below, so here is the short glossary you need: SIREN (the nine-digit company identification number), Kbis (the official company registration certificate issued by the greffe, the clerk’s office of the commercial court), TVA (the French VAT), ETI (entreprise de taille intermédiaire, a mid-sized company with 250 to 4,999 employees), PME (petite et moyenne entreprise, a small or medium-sized company), BODACC (the official bulletin publishing company registrations and insolvency openings), URSSAF (the social-security collection agency), and e-reporting (the periodic transmission of transaction data to the tax administration for operations outside electronic invoicing, such as sales to consumers or cross-border sales).
The reform covers all transactions between VAT-registered businesses established in France. The official business portal states that L’émission et la réception des factures électroniques concerneront l’ensemble des opérations réalisées entre les entreprises assujetties à la TVA, établies en France, and gives the calendar verified for this article: L’obligation de recevoir des factures électroniques s’appliquera pour l’ensemble des entreprises dès le 1er septembre 2026, while L’obligation d’émettre des factures électroniques prendra effet : le 1er septembre 2026 pour les grandes entreprises et les entreprises de taille intermédiaire (ETI) ; le 1er septembre 2027 pour les petites et moyennes entreprises (PME) et les micro-entreprises. If you are reading this in October 2026 from abroad and your French company has not yet designated its receiving solution, the first section tells you what to do this week; the second section tells you what an incorrect or unpaid invoice costs, with the exact statutory fines and three recent court decisions, two of them involving foreign companies. For the broader picture of running the company from abroad, see the companion guide on choosing between a SAS, a SARL, a branch or a subsidiary when you live outside France.
I. Your French company must receive electronic invoices since 1 September 2026: what calendar and what setup from abroad?
A. Which deadlines apply to your company: receive now, issue in 2026 or 2027, report everything?
The starting point is the general invoicing duty in the French Tax Code (Code général des impôts, CGI). Article 289 provides that 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. The electronic-invoicing reform does not remove that duty; it changes the authorised channel. From the dates above, an invoice that must legally exist must also travel through the state’s system: directly through an approved platform (plateforme agréée, a private invoicing platform registered by the tax administration), or through compatible software connected to one. The administration’s guidance is explicit: À partir du 1er septembre 2026, les entreprises devront transmettre leurs factures par l’intermédiaire d’une plateforme agréée par l’État, directement ou au travers d’une solution compatible. Chaque entreprise doit désigner sa plateforme pour émettre et recevoir ses factures électroniques ou déclarer ses données.
Three practical consequences follow for a founder living abroad. First, the reception duty is immediate and universal: since 1 September 2026, your French company must be reachable in the national directory (annuaire, the central directory listing each company’s chosen platform) so that any French supplier can send it a compliant electronic invoice. A company that never designated a platform can find its suppliers’ invoices rejected or delayed, which in turn delays the deduction of input VAT and poisons commercial relations. Second, the issuing duty depends on size: if your French structure is a large company or an ETI, it must already issue electronically; if it is a PME or micro-enterprise, which covers almost every newly created subsidiary of a foreign group, issuing becomes mandatory on 1 September 2027, but preparing now avoids a last-minute migration of your accounting software. Third, transactions outside electronic invoicing do not escape reporting: Ce calendrier sera également utilisé pour la mise en place de la transmission à l’administration des données de transaction de l’entreprise (e-reporting). Sales to private consumers, cross-border intra-Community supplies and exports must be reported electronically to the DGFIP on the same timetable, so a foreign-owned webshop selling from France to French consumers and abroad must organise both flows.
The scope follows the territoriality of French VAT. Only operations between taxable persons established in France fall inside electronic invoicing: domestic business-to-business supplies, related advance payments (acomptes), and public auction sales of second-hand goods, artworks, collectibles and antiques. When the supplier is established outside France, a different mechanism applies instead: article 283 of the Tax Code provides that lorsqu’une livraison de biens ou une prestation de services mentionnée à l’article 259 A est effectuée par un assujetti établi hors de France, la taxe est acquittée par l’acquéreur, le destinataire ou le preneur qui agit en tant qu’assujetti et qui dispose d’un numéro d’identification à la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée en France. This is the reverse charge (autoliquidation): your French company self-assesses the VAT on purchases from its foreign parent or foreign suppliers. Invoices from abroad therefore stay outside the French electronic-invoicing circuit but inside e-reporting and inside the reverse-charge declaration. Many foreign groups get this wrong by asking their foreign parent to send a “French-format” invoice through the platform; the correct treatment is a foreign invoice plus reverse charge by the French recipient, declared on the French VAT return.
The administration’s stated objectives confirm that controls will follow: lutter plus efficacement contre la fraude à la TVA ; améliorer la compétitivité des entreprises grâce à la dématérialisation ; simplifier, à terme, les obligations déclaratives de TVA grâce au pré-remplissage des déclarations ; améliorer la connaissance de l’activité des entreprises en temps réel. Pre-filled VAT returns fed by real-time invoice data mean that discrepancies between issued invoices, received invoices and declared turnover will be detected automatically. A founder abroad who keeps French accounting on spreadsheets and sends PDF invoices by email should treat October 2026 as the moment to migrate, not September 2027.
B. How do you choose a platform, update your mentions and keep proof without boarding a plane?
Everything can be done remotely if the company’s legal representation is in order. The person who designates the platform is the company’s legal representative (président of a SAS, gérant of a SARL) or a person holding a written delegation. If you, the foreign founder, are yourself the président, you sign the platform contract electronically with a qualified electronic signature; your physical location is irrelevant. If the président is a French resident manager, have the shareholders’ decision or a delegation of powers recorded in writing before the designation, and keep it with the company’s registers. Platforms verify identity against the SIREN and the Kbis, both obtainable online, and enrolment requires the company’s VAT identification number and the professional email address that will receive invoices. The national directory then publishes the routing choice, which is how suppliers find you. From abroad, the operational checklist is: confirm the company’s size category and therefore its issuing deadline; sign with an approved platform or confirm that the current accounting software is connected to one; register the routing in the directory; test reception with one real supplier invoice; and organise archiving.
Archiving deserves emphasis because a tax audit (contrôle fiscal) reaches a foreign-based founder exactly as it reaches a Parisian one, through the French company. Article 286 of the Tax Code requires every VAT-registered person to keep books and supporting documents, providing that les pièces justificatives des opérations effectuées par les redevables, notamment les factures d’achat, doivent être conservés selon les modalités prévues aux I et I bis de l’article L. 102 B du livre des procédures fiscales. The administration’s guidance adds that les documents (dont les factures) établis ou reçus sur support informatique doivent être conservés sous cette forme pendant un délai de 6 ans. Ce délai court à compter de la date à laquelle la facture a été établie. A qualified electronic seal (cachet électronique qualifié) may be used to guarantee authenticity of origin, integrity of content and legibility, and the technical conditions were set by the decree of 16 May 2023 (décret n° 2023-377 du 16 mai 2023, available at decree no. 2023-377 of 16 May 2023 on electronic invoicing, published in the Journal officiel). Concretely: keep invoices in their original electronic form for six years, do not print-and-delete, and ensure the platform contract guarantees export of the archive if you change providers.
At the same time, four new mandatory mentions (mentions obligatoires) must appear on issued invoices: le numéro SIREN du client ; l’adresse de livraison des biens, lorsqu’elle est différente de l’adresse de facturation ; l’information selon laquelle les opérations donnant lieu à une facture sont constituées exclusivement de livraisons de biens ou de prestations de services ou sont constituées de ces deux catégories d’opérations ; le paiement de la TVA sur les débits, lorsque le prestataire a opté pour celui-ci. They apply from 1 September 2026 for large companies and ETI, and from 1 September 2027 for PME and micro-enterprises. A foreign-owned French company should update its invoice template now, because the client’s SIREN is the key that routes the invoice through the directory: an invoice without the client’s SIREN cannot circulate properly in the new system. Ask every new French client for its SIREN at onboarding, display your own SIREN, VAT number, trade name, registered-office address, RCS registration line (Registre du commerce et des sociétés, the company register held by the greffe) and share capital where applicable, and distinguish goods from services line by line. If the company opted to pay VAT on debits (TVA sur les débits, VAT due when invoiced rather than when paid) instead of on receipts, state it expressly.
Two traps specific to foreign founders close this section. The first is the foreign director without a French-qualified signature: some platforms require identity verification that fails with a foreign passport number alone; solve it by combining the passport, the Kbis showing your appointment, and where needed a certified translation. The second is the group that centralises accounting abroad: French invoices, including electronic ones, must remain available to the French tax administration in France within its access deadlines, in French or with translation on request, since article 289 recalls that Lorsqu’elle est rédigée dans une langue étrangère, le service des impôts peut, à des fins de contrôle, exiger une traduction en français. Centralise if you wish, but keep a complete, exportable French-accessible archive.
II. What does a wrong, late or unpaid invoice cost your French company, and how do courts decide?
A. How much do missing mentions, late payment and late issuing cost: which fines apply?
Commercial law punishes the invoice itself, before any tax consequence. Article L. 441-9 of the Commercial Code (Code de commerce) opens with the principle that Tout achat de produits ou toute prestation de service pour une activité professionnelle fait l’objet d’une facturation, imposes delivery of the invoice upon performance, lists the mandatory content (names and addresses of the parties, date of sale or service, quantity, precise description, unit price excluding VAT, price reductions, payment date, discount terms, late-penalty rate, fixed recovery indemnity, order number where applicable), and provides that 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, doubled on repeat offending within two years. These fines are administrative, imposed after an inspection by the competition and consumer authority (DGCCRF, Direction générale de la concurrence, de la consommation et de la répression des fraudes), and they strike the company, not only its director. A foreign shareholder who treats invoicing as back-office paperwork discovers the amounts only at the inspection report stage.
Payment deadlines carry even heavier fines. Article L. 441-10 provides that 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, that the agreed period may not exceed sixty days from invoice issue (or forty-five days end-of-month where expressly agreed and not manifestly abusive), and that Les pénalités de retard sont exigibles sans qu’un rappel soit nécessaire, at a rate equal to the European Central Bank refinancing rate plus ten points unless otherwise agreed within the legal floor, plus a fixed recovery indemnity set by decree (40 euros). Article L. 441-16 then punishes breach: 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, le fait de : a) Ne pas respecter les délais de paiement prévus au I de l’article L. 441-10, again doubled on repeat offending, reaching 150,000 and four million euros. For a foreign-owned French company that pays its French suppliers late because validation circuits run through headquarters abroad, these amounts dwarf the invoice: centralise approvals if needed, but pay within the French deadline, print the penalty rate and the 40-euro indemnity on every invoice template, and never delete them to “stay commercial”.
The electronic format adds its own layer rather than replacing these rules. An invoice that circulates outside the approved circuit after the applicable deadline is an invoice that does not legally exist in the expected form: the VAT deduction can be challenged, the 75,000/375,000-euro fine for missing or non-compliant invoicing remains available, and the company’s returns, soon pre-filled from platform data, will show the gap. The prudent sequence for a founder abroad is therefore: compliant content first (L. 441-9 mentions including the four new ones), compliant deadlines second (L. 441-10 payment terms printed and applied), compliant channel third (approved platform, directory registration, six-year electronic archive). Each layer has its own inspector — DGCCRF for commercial mentions and deadlines, DGFIP for VAT and archiving — and neither accepts “our head office is abroad” as an excuse.
B. Who wins when a French invoice goes to court: what three recent decisions teach foreign companies?
Courts decide invoice disputes on documents, not on explanations, and distance changes nothing about that. The first lesson comes from the judicial court of Metz (tribunal judiciaire), commercial chamber, order of 9 December 2025 (RG 25/00746, https://www.courdecassation.fr/decision/697a2b93cdc6046d47fe63c1). A subcontractor had performed energy-efficiency works, issued invoice TDR-2024767-T of 13 June 2024 for 41,393.52 euros, sent reminders, then a formal demand (mise en demeure) by registered letter of 20 August 2024, and obtained written payment promises that were never honoured. The principal was finally paid during the proceedings, but interest, the fixed indemnity and costs remained. The court ordered provisionally: CONDAMNONS à titre provisionnel la SAS APONERGY à payer à la SAS IBS TECHNOLOGIES la somme de 40 euros au titre de l’indemnité forfaitaire pour frais de recouvrement and CONDAMNONS à titre provisionnel la SAS APONERGY à payer à la SAS IBS TECHNOLOGIES les intérêts de retard au taux de trois fois celui de l’intérêt légal entre le 20 août 2024 et le 25 septembre 2025 au titre du retard de paiement de la facture n° TDR-2024767-T du 13 juin 2024 établie pour un montant de 41 393,52 euros, plus 1,000 euros under article 700 of the Code of Civil Procedure. Three teachings for a founder abroad: a written record (accepted quote, acceptance report without reservation, dated invoice, registered demand) wins even against an absent defendant; late interest at three times the legal rate plus 40 euros applies automatically once the payment date passes; and paying the principal late does not erase interest, indemnity or costs. Keep every proof in the company’s French file, because the judge reads the file, not your memory of phone calls.
The second lesson involves a foreign company directly. On 29 January 2026, the Paris Court of Appeal (Pôle 1, chamber 3, RG 25/06673, https://www.courdecassation.fr/decision/697c58d3cdc6046d4738c4be) decided a dispute between SY International, a company governed by Tunisian law, and Esprit Maille, a French SAS trading in fabrics. Between June 2023 and May 2024 the Tunisian company had placed several orders; the French supplier sued for summary (référé) payment, asking the court to condamner la société SY International à payer, à titre provisionnel, à la société Esprit Maille la somme de 611 930,88 euros, au titre des factures impayées, plus la somme de 1 560 euros, au titre des indemnités forfaitaires pour frais de recouvrement. The first judge granted 75,000 euros plus 536,930.88 euros, and autorisé la société SY International à payer la somme de 536 930,68 euros en 6 échéances consécutives, les cinq premières de 90 000 euros, la sixième du solde, la première le 15 du mois suivant la signification de la présente ordonnance, les suivantes chaque 15 du mois, with acceleration on any missed instalment. On appeal, the foreign buyer lost entirely: Confirme l’ordonnance entreprise en toutes ses dispositions soumises à la cour, Rejette les demandes de la société SY International, Condamne la société SY International aux dépens d’appel and to pay la somme de cinq mille (5 000) euros sur le fondement de l’article 700 du code de procédure civile. For a foreign founder, the message is symmetrical: French summary proceedings (référé-provision under article 873 of the Code of Civil Procedure) order payment of undisputed invoices within months, foreign domicile does not slow them,instalment plans remain exceptional and conditional, and contesting without a documented defence (non-conformity proven by bailiff’s report, quantified set-off, timely protest of the invoice) adds article 700 costs to the debt. If your French company is the creditor, the same weapon works for you from abroad, provided the invoice file is complete; the detailed procedure is described in the guide to recovering unpaid invoices from abroad through the French payment-order and European procedures.
The third lesson concerns guarantees over invoices. On 5 May 2025, the Paris Court of Appeal (Pôle 5, chamber 10, RG 24/05556, https://www.courdecassation.fr/decision/681997b26a65bd051c5d6d52), deciding on remand after the Court of Cassation’s ruling of 7 February 2024 (appeal V 22-18.828), examined contracts under which a service company had agreed to réaliser une étude garantie de la société GMS meunerie et à garantir le règlement des factures émises par la société Eurepi à un taux d’indemnisation de 90 % hors taxe, dans les limites respectives de 2 000 000 euros pendant une période de 12 mois, 350 000 euros pendant une durée de 7 mois et 2 000 000 euros pendant une période de 12 mois, before the customer entered judicial recovery (redressement judiciaire) then liquidation. The litigation turned on whether the guarantor owed the guaranteed percentage once the underlying debtor collapsed. Foreign founders meet this pattern whenever a factor, credit insurer or parent guarantee covers French receivables: the guarantee’s caps, periods and triggering documents decide everything, and insolvency of the customer does not automatically release a properly drafted guarantor. Read the guarantee’s wording before the default, declare the claim in the customer’s insolvency on time, and keep the guaranteed invoices enforceable separately against the guarantor.
Taken together, the three decisions draw the proof discipline your French company needs while you live abroad: issue complete invoices through the right channel, protest a wrong invoice immediately in writing, demand payment by registered letter, preserve the contract, the order, the delivery note, the acceptance report and the full correspondence, and sue early in référé rather than letting the limitation period or the debtor’s insolvency decide for you. Electronic invoicing helps this discipline, because platform-stamped dispatch and reception dates, the directory trail and the six-year archive give the judge exactly the dated documents courts prefer.
Conclusion
Since 1 September 2026, your French company must be able to receive electronic invoices through an approved platform, whatever country you live in; issuing follows on 1 September 2026 for large and mid-sized companies and on 1 September 2027 for small, medium and micro-enterprises, with e-reporting covering the rest of the turnover on the same timetable. Content comes first with the L. 441-9 mentions plus the four new items including the client’s SIREN, deadlines second with the thirty-day, sixty-day and forty-five-day end-of-month limits of L. 441-10 backed by fines up to two and four million euros under L. 441-16, channel and archiving third with directory registration and six-year electronic conservation. Foreign invoices stay on reverse charge under article 283 but enter e-reporting, and every document must be producible to the French administration with translation on request. Courts, as the Metz, Paris-Tunisian and Paris-guarantee decisions show, reward the creditor whose file is complete and punish late or silent debtors with automatic interest, the 40-euro indemnity, article 700 awards and instalment plans that accelerate on first default. Designate the platform this week, fix the template, shorten the approval circuit so French suppliers are paid on French time, and archive everything: run from abroad, your company invoices like a Parisian.