On 1 September 2026, France switched its domestic business-to-business invoicing to a fully electronic system. If you run a French SAS or SARL from London, New York, Berlin, Dubai or Singapore, this reform reached your company on that date even if nobody told you. Since that day, every French company must be able to receive electronic invoices through an approved platform, and large and mid-sized companies must also issue their invoices in that electronic circuit. Smaller companies get one extra year for issuing, but they must receive now. The tax administration applies automatic fines per invoice, so a founder who keeps sending PDF invoices by email from abroad is building up penalties month after month without knowing it. This article explains, in plain business English, what the reform requires of a foreign-run French company, which invoices stay outside it, how to move your company onto an approved platform without travelling to France, and what a missing or wrong electronic invoice costs.
French administration uses acronyms everywhere, so let us fix the vocabulary first. The CGI (Code général des impôts, the French tax code) carries the core obligation in its article 289 bis. A PDP (plateforme agréée, approved platform) is a private invoicing provider accredited by the tax administration; your invoices must travel through one. An OD (opérateur de dématérialisation, dematerialisation operator) is a service provider that helps you without being accredited itself. The annuaire is the central directory the State maintains so that platforms can route an invoice to the right recipient platform. DGFIP (Direction générale des finances publiques) is the French tax administration. ETI (entreprise de taille intermédiaire) means a mid-sized company, PME (petites et moyennes entreprises) small and medium businesses. Your SIREN number is your nine-digit company identifier, shown on every invoice next to your RCS (Registre du commerce et des sociétés) registration, and the Kbis is the official company identity extract issued by the greffe, the registry office of the commercial court. With these terms in hand, the reform becomes readable.
I. Which French companies must receive and issue electronic invoices since 1 September 2026
A. Every French company must receive electronic invoices now, while the duty to issue depends on company size
The starting point is simple and it surprises many foreign founders: since 1 September 2026, all companies in France must be able to receive electronic invoices. The official business portal of the French administration states it in one sentence: since 1 September 2026, all companies must be able to receive electronic invoices, and it adds that the obligation to issue is progressive, applying from 1 September 2026 to large companies and to mid-sized companies (ETI), then from 1 September 2027 to micro-companies and to PME. That means your one-person SASU in Paris must already be reachable in the electronic circuit as a recipient, even if your duty to send electronic invoices only starts on 1 September 2027. A supplier who sends you a compliant electronic invoice today must find your company in the directory and deliver to your approved platform or operator; if you never chose one, the invoice cannot reach you properly and your accounts, your VAT recovery and your supplier relationships suffer first.
The legal anchor of this two-speed calendar sits in article 289 bis of the CGI, which provides that, and I quote, “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 plain English: whenever the seller and the buyer are both VAT-registered persons (assujettis) established in France, the invoice must be electronic and must follow the official technical standards. The same article then designates the only lawful channel, and I quote again: “L’émission, la transmission et la réception des factures électroniques s’effectuent en recourant à une plateforme agréée.” Sending a PDF by ordinary email no longer counts as electronic invoicing in this sense, and receiving invoices only in your mailbox no longer counts as being able to receive. Your company needs a platform, chosen and connected, and that is true from September 2026 whatever your size.
For issuing, the calendar then splits companies by size, and the administration applies the standard French company categories: large companies and ETI issue since 1 September 2026, while micro-businesses and PME issue from 1 September 2027. Most foreign founders reading this run a small SAS or SARL, so their issuing deadline is 1 September 2027, but three warnings matter immediately. First, the receiving obligation already applies to them, with its own fine scheme described below. Second, their large French customers already issue only electronic invoices, so their internal process must digest that flow now, approve it, pay on time and archive it. Third, a company that grows across a threshold changes category, and the category is assessed on the standard headcount and turnover tests, so a founder planning hires in France should ask the accountant each year which deadline applies rather than assuming the 2027 date lasts forever. The DGFIP published a practical guide for starting on 1 September 2026, hosted on impots.gouv.fr, and it walks through exactly this mapping of flows, which is the first document your accountant should work from. If your company was formed recently, the pillar guide that explains the whole setup sequence, bank account, Kbis extract, VAT number and first hire, remains the companion to read alongside this reform: Setting Up a Company in France as a Foreign Founder: Bank Account, Kbis, VAT and Your First Hire.
A practical consequence follows for founders who live abroad: none of this requires your physical presence in France. Choosing a platform, signing its contract online, giving your accountant a mandate (a written power of attorney), updating your company directory data and reconfiguring your billing software are all acts you can do remotely with qualified electronic signature. What requires discipline instead is timing, because the receiving obligation is already in force as you read this in October 2026. A founder who discovers the reform through this article should treat platform selection as a matter of days, not of quarters, since every week without a reception channel is a week in which suppliers cannot invoice you correctly and in which your own VAT position weakens.
B. Which invoices stay outside the reform: foreign customers, sales to individuals, and classified operations
The reform is wide but it is not universal, and misunderstanding its boundary is the second most common mistake after ignoring it entirely. Article 289 bis applies, by its own terms, only when the issuer and the recipient are both VAT-registered persons established, domiciled or habitually resident in France. Three large families of your invoices therefore stay outside the electronic-invoicing circuit, but each of them carries its own parallel reporting duty, so none of them means you can simply do nothing.
The first family is cross-border trade. Invoices to customers in another European Union member state or outside the Union do not travel through the French approved-platform circuit, because the foreign customer has no French platform to receive them. They remain subject to the classic intra-Community reporting instead. Article 289 B of the CGI requires every VAT-identified business to file summary statements of customers, with their VAT numbers, to whom it delivered goods under the intra-Community supply rules or supplied services taxed at the customer in another member state, and I quote the opening of that duty: “Tout assujetti identifié à la taxe sur la valeur ajoutée doit déposer, dans un délai et selon des modalités fixés par décret, un état récapitulatif des clients”. For a foreign founder this matters twice: your French company selling to your own foreign group or to international clients keeps the existing DEB and DES style declarations, and your accountant must keep that channel alive even after you migrate domestic invoicing to a platform, because the platform does not replace it. Conversely, purchases from foreign suppliers never arrive through your platform, so your internal process must keep a second intake path for those, with translation available on tax audit request, since article 289 of the CGI allows the tax office to demand a French translation of a foreign-language invoice for control purposes.
The second family is sales to private individuals and, more broadly, to non-VAT-registered buyers in France. A restaurant bill, a coaching session sold to a consumer, a software subscription sold to a household: these are not covered by article 289 bis, which speaks only of invoices between assujettis. But the reform catches them through the back door of e-reporting, the duty to transmit transaction data to the administration. Article 289 E of the CGI states the mechanism plainly, and I quote: “Les données des factures électroniques émises en application du I de l’article 289 bis sont transmises à l’administration par la plateforme agréée choisie par l’assujetti.” In practice your platform also forwards to the tax office the data on your non-covered sales, either invoice by invoice or aggregated, on a schedule set by decree. A founder whose French company sells mainly to consumers, for example an online shop run from abroad, must therefore still connect to a platform and still feed it sales data, even though no electronic invoice travels to the consumer. Tell your platform provider on day one what share of your turnover is business-to-consumer, business-to-business domestic and export, because the configuration differs for each flow and a platform set up only for domestic business-to-business will under-report the rest.
The third family is narrow but worth knowing: operations covered by a classification measure within the meaning of article 413-9 of the penal code, essentially defence and security secrecy, are expressly excluded by article 289 bis itself. Few foreign founders meet this case, but companies selling to public bodies meet a neighbouring system that already exists: public contracts have used Chorus Pro, the State invoicing portal, for years, and that channel continues for your invoices to ministries, hospitals and local authorities. If your French company bids for public work from abroad, register on Chorus Pro in parallel with choosing your commercial platform, because a town hall cannot pay an invoice it never receives, and the payment clock only runs from proper electronic filing.
One more boundary question comes up constantly: deposits and advance payments. Article 289 bis expressly includes acomptes, advance payments relating to covered operations, in the electronic circuit. If your French company takes a 30 percent deposit on a domestic business order, that deposit invoice must be electronic too, through the platform, with the same format and the same data transmission. Founders who invoice deposits by simple email while their main invoices go through the platform split their audit trail in two and create exactly the kind of gap a tax audit exploits. The rule of thumb is therefore simple: once your company is connected, every domestic business-to-business invoice and every related deposit invoice goes through the platform, with no parallel paper or email circuit surviving alongside it.
II. How a foreign founder puts a French company on electronic invoicing from abroad without blocking payments
A. Choose an approved platform, feed the central directory, and use the right format
Moving your company onto the new circuit takes five concrete steps, and each of them can be done from abroad. The founders who struggle are not the ones who live far away; they are the ones who treat the platform as a mere software purchase instead of a legal connection with duties attached.
Step one is mapping your invoice flows before signing anything. List, with your accountant, every type of outgoing and incoming invoice: domestic business sales, deposits taken, credit notes, purchases from French suppliers, intra-Community supplies and purchases, export sales, consumer sales and invoices to public bodies. This map decides which platform functions you actually need, because a company with heavy consumer sales needs reliable e-reporting aggregation, a company with intra-Community trade needs the summary-statement channel kept open under article 289 B, and a company selling to the public sector needs Chorus Pro alongside the commercial platform. The DGFIP practical guide for the 1 September 2026 start, available on impots.gouv.fr, follows exactly this mapping logic, and asking your accountant to fill it in with your real customer list turns an abstract reform into a one-page action plan. Most accountants in France now run a standard onboarding questionnaire for this; if yours does not, that silence is itself information about whether your current firm follows the reform.
Step two is choosing the platform itself: an accredited PDP or a non-accredited OD working through a PDP. The legal difference matters. Only a plateforme agréée carries your invoices in the lawful circuit described by article 289 bis and transmits your data to the administration under article 289 E. An OD can prepare, check and route your invoices, but behind it a PDP must do the accredited acts. For a founder abroad, the practical test when comparing providers is therefore a short list of questions: are you accredited or do you pass through an accredited partner, and which one; do you cover issuing, receiving and e-reporting data for all three of my flows; do you keep the intra-Community statement channel or must my accountant file it separately; how do you handle deposits and credit notes; what happens to my archive if I leave you. The administration publishes the list of registered accredited platforms, and the official business portal announced that list in 2026, so verify any provider claim against that public list rather than against its brochure. Sign the contract remotely; French law accepts electronic contracts and qualified electronic signatures for this, and no greffe or tax office requires your physical visit.
Step three is feeding the annuaire, the central directory, with correct routing data. The directory rule sits in article 289 bis of the CGI, which states, and I quote: “Par dérogation à l’article L. 151-1 du code de commerce, l’Etat met un annuaire central à la disposition des plateformes agréées.” This directory tells every sender platform where to deliver your invoices, which means your SIREN number, your company name exactly as registered, your address and your platform choice must be current and consistent. Foreign founders change address, platform or accountant more often than they think, and each change must propagate to the directory through the new platform, with the former platform legally bound to keep minimum services running for a transitional period of at least one year when you switch. Practically, check with your new provider that the switch, including directory update and the minimum-service handover from the old one, is written into the contract with dates. A company whose directory entry points to a terminated platform stops receiving invoices overnight while believing it complies, which is the electronic equivalent of moving offices without forwarding the mail.
Step four is format and mentions. The technical standards are set by ministerial order, as article 289 bis announces, and in practice they mean three structured formats: Factur-X, a readable PDF carrying structured data, and the pure structured formats UBL and CII. Your platform converts or produces them, but the legal content of the invoice remains your responsibility, and that content is far richer in France than a mere amount. Article L441-9 of the commercial code opens with the principle, and I quote: “Tout achat de produits ou toute prestation de service pour une activité professionnelle fait l’objet d’une facturation.” The same article then lists the mandatory mentions: names and addresses of the parties, billing address if different, date of sale or service, quantity, precise description, unit price excluding VAT, reductions granted, payment date, discount terms, the late-penalty rate and the fixed recovery fee, plus the order number when the buyer issued one. Moving to electronic invoicing does not reduce this list; it makes errors machine-readable and therefore machine-punished, as the fine section below shows. Ask your platform to validate mentions before sending, keep your general terms of sale aligned with what the invoice states, and make sure the SIREN, RCS city and registration number, VAT number and registered office shown on the invoice match the Kbis exactly. Foreign founders often show an old address after a transfer of the registered office, and that single mismatch can cascade into directory errors, rejected invoices and audit questions. The companion article on moving the registered office from abroad explains that update sequence: Transferring the Registered Office of Your French Company From Abroad: Kbis, Bank and Contracts.
Step five is archiving and access. An electronic invoice must remain authentic, intact and readable from issue until the end of its retention period, and article 286 of the CGI ties that duty to the tax procedure book by requiring that books, accounts and supporting documents, including purchase invoices, and I quote, “doivent être conservés selon les modalités prévues aux I et I bis de l’article L. 102 B du livre des procédures fiscales”. In practice that means six years of guaranteed readability in France, on systems the audit can inspect. A founder storing invoices only in a foreign parent server with no guaranteed access for the French entity takes a double risk: the platform archive ends when the contract ends unless continuity is secured, and the tax auditor asks the French company, not the foreign shareholder, to produce the records. Contractually, require your platform to guarantee archive portability and readability after termination, keep a second local backup under your accountant control, and make sure access rights survive a change of director, because a revoked president whose login was the only access is a classic foreign-company failure.
B. What a missing or wrong electronic invoice costs, and what changes in Paris and Ile-de-France
The reform bites through money, on three distinct levels, and a founder abroad should read them as a pricing of inaction. The first level is the specific electronic-invoicing fine. Article 1737 of the CGI provides, and I quote: “Le non-respect par l’assujetti de l’obligation d’émission d’une facture sous une forme électronique dans les conditions prévues à l’article 289 bis donne lieu à l’application d’une amende de 50 € par facture, sans que le total des amendes appliquées au titre d’une même année civile puisse être supérieur à 15 000 €.” Fifty euros per invoice sounds small until you multiply: a company issuing forty domestic business invoices a month outside the circuit accumulates 2,000 euros of fines monthly and hits the 15,000 euro annual ceiling before year end. The second level targets reception. When the administration finds that a business does not use an accredited platform for receiving electronic invoices as article 289 bis requires, and I quote, “elle le met en demeure de s’y conformer dans un délai de trois mois”, and persistence after that formal notice draws a 500 euro fine, then a fresh notice and a 1,000 euro fine, with further 1,000 euro fines while the breach continues. Receiving nothing properly is therefore not a passive gap; it is a breach the administration formally orders you to cure, then fines. The third level is the platform own duty: failures by an accredited platform to transmit data draw 50 euros per invoice against the platform itself, capped at 45,000 euros per calendar year, which is why serious providers invest in compliance and why the cheapest unverified intermediary is a false economy.
Above these specific fines sits the older, heavier layer that the reform makes easier to trigger: wrong mentions on an invoice. The defects fine sits in article 1737 of the CGI, which punishes, and I quote, “Toute omission ou inexactitude constatée dans les factures”, with a 15 euro fine per defect, capped per invoice at one quarter of the invoiced amount. And article L441-9 of the commercial code adds administrative fines for missing mandatory mentions, and I quote: “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. In the paper world, a missing penalty rate or a forgotten order number often passed unnoticed; in the structured-data world, the same omission is detected systematically. The compliance dividend runs both ways: clean structured invoices protect you against both the 15 euro tax defects and the DGCCRF commercial fines, while sloppy ones cumulate both.
The same invoices also govern when you get paid, and here the commercial code gives the foreign founder weapons to use from abroad. Article L441-10 caps payment time, and I quote its two key sentences: “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”, while an agreed term, and I quote, “ne peut dépasser soixante jours après la date d’émission de la facture”, with a stricter forty-five-day rule for periodic invoices. Late penalties, and I quote, “sont exigibles sans qu’un rappel soit nécessaire”, at a rate that defaults to the European Central Bank refinancing rate plus ten points, plus a fixed recovery fee set by decree, plus proven extra recovery costs. Because electronic invoices carry a certain date of issue and delivery, they prove the starting point of these deadlines better than any email thread, which is exactly why a compliant circuit strengthens debt collection instead of burdening it. If a French customer does not pay despite proper electronic invoicing, the recovery path from abroad, formal notice, injunction to pay before the commercial court, enforcement through a commissioner of justice, is described step by step in the companion guide: Your French Customer Does Not Pay While You Live Abroad: Formal Notice, Injunction and Enforcement.
Founders based in Paris and Ile-de-France face the same national rules with three local practical notes. First, the company business tax office (SIE, service des impôts des entreprises) that audits your invoicing is the one of your registered office district, and in Paris each arrondissement group has its own SIE, so after any office move within Paris, check which SIE your company now belongs to and direct all replies, claims and platform questions there; a letter sent to the former district SIE buys delay but never wins a case. Second, the greffe of the Paris commercial court issues your Kbis, and the RCS Paris registration details printed on every invoice must match that Kbis to the letter, including after capital, director or address changes, because Paris auditors cross-check invoice headers against the trade register as a matter of routine. Third, penalty disputes split by nature: tax fines under article 1737 are challenged first by written claim to the SIE and then before the administrative court, the Tribunal administratif de Paris for Paris-registered companies, while DGCCRF commercial fines under article L441-9 follow their own administrative challenge path, and the two tracks have different deadlines that your counsel must diary separately. None of this requires living in Paris, but all of it requires knowing which Paris office holds your file, which is another reason to keep a French accountant or counsel who answers correspondence while you sleep in another time zone.
Two calculation examples close the picture. Take a small Paris SAS selling consulting to French business clients, thirty invoices a month, that never connected to a platform and kept emailing PDFs from September 2026 to March 2027. Seven months at thirty invoices is 210 invoices outside article 289 bis, at 50 euros each, capped at 15,000 euros for the calendar year: the 2026 slice alone approaches the ceiling, and the 2027 slice opens a fresh 15,000 euro ceiling. Add the reception breach, formal notice ignored, 500 then 1,000 euro fines, plus any mention defects at 15 euros each, and inaction costs more than several years of platform subscription and accounting. Take now the same company connected but careless, omitting the late-penalty rate on every invoice: each invoice carries a 15 euro defect fine and exposes the company to DGCCRF action up to 375,000 euros for a legal entity, while the missing rate also weakens every late-payment claim against slow customers. Connection without content discipline is only half a compliance.
Conclusion
Since 1 September 2026, every French company, including the smallest SAS run entirely from abroad, must receive invoices through an accredited platform, and large and mid-sized companies must issue through it too, with smaller companies following for issuing on 1 September 2027. The boundary runs between domestic business-to-business invoices, which travel through the platform with their deposits, and the parallel duties that survive outside it: intra-Community statements for cross-border trade, data transmission for consumer sales, and Chorus Pro for public contracts. The price of staying outside is written in article 1737, 50 euros per missing electronic invoice within a 15,000 euro annual ceiling, formal notice then 500 and 1,000 euro fines for missing reception, 15 euros per mention defect, plus the commercial-code fines and the weakened payment deadlines. The Paris founder and the provincial founder play by identical rules but answer to different offices, and the registered details on the invoice must mirror the Kbis at all times. None of this demands a flight to France; it demands a platform chosen against the public accredited list, a directory entry kept current, an accountant mandated and briefed on all three flows, mentions validated before sending, and an archive that survives the end of every contract. Done in that order, electronic invoicing stops being a foreign founder handicap and becomes what it was designed to be: dated, structured, payable invoices that prove themselves.