You did the work, you sent the invoice from your company run from abroad, and the French client simply does not pay. No discussion about quality, no counterclaim, just silence, then vague promises, then nothing. When you manage your French business from London, New York, Montreal, Singapore or Dubai, this feels like a dead end: you picture expensive travel, a lawyer you cannot meet, and a court system in a language you do not read. The reality is far more encouraging. French law hands the foreign-based creditor a complete recovery chain that works at a distance, starting with money that accrues on the invoice by itself, continuing with a formal demand you can send from your desk, and ending with a fast paper procedure before the French commercial court that produces an enforceable order without you ever boarding a plane.<\/p>\n
This guide follows the order in which you will actually use these tools. First, what your unpaid invoice already earns while the debtor stays silent: the legal payment deadlines, the automatic late interest and the flat recovery fee. Second, how to build a file that no French judge can turn away: the mandatory invoice details, the proof of the debt, the formal notice and the time limits. Third, the two fast court routes that convert the file into cash: the payment-order procedure and the interim provision, with the exact courts, costs and deadlines. Fourth, how the money is actually seized in France by the enforcement officer while you stay abroad. Every French acronym is explained, every decisive statement is tied to the statute or decision that supports it, and the references link to the official text so you can verify each point yourself.<\/p>\n
The starting point is the payment deadline itself, because interest only starts running once that deadline has expired. Under Article L. 441-10 of the French Commercial Code<\/a>, the default rule is simple: unless the parties agreed otherwise, the sums due must be paid no later than thirty days after the goods were received or the service was performed. The parties are free to agree a longer term, but the statute caps their freedom: the agreed term cannot exceed sixty days from the date the invoice is issued, and a forty-five days end-of-month term is possible only if it is expressly written into the contract and does not constitute a manifest abuse toward the creditor. For periodic invoices within the meaning of the VAT rules, the cap is forty-five days from issue. Any clause that pushes payment beyond these ceilings is unenforceable and exposes the debtor company to an administrative fine, so the first task with your file is to read your general terms and conditions, known in France as the CGV (conditions generales de vente), and your contract: whatever they say, the statutory caps override them.<\/p>\n The statute also organises the acceptance or verification procedure that some clients invoke to delay payment, for example a formal sign-off of delivered equipment or a conformity check of a service. That procedure must follow honest commercial practice and cannot exceed thirty days from delivery or performance, unless the contract expressly says otherwise without creating an abusive clause, and it can neither extend the maximum payment term nor postpone its starting point. In practice, a French client who tells you from abroad that the invoice cannot be paid because the internal validation is still pending is raising an argument the statute strictly frames: beyond thirty days of verification, the clock keeps running. The official entreprendre.service-public.fr guide to payment terms between professionals describes the same architecture, and your first reminder letter should cite the article, restate the deadline stated on your invoice, and show the computation of the days elapsed since. Debtors pay faster when they see that the creditor knows the exact rule, and judges notice when the creditor does not.<\/p>\n Two companion texts complete the picture. Your CGV themselves are regulated: Article L. 441-1 of the Commercial Code<\/a> requires any producer, distributor or service provider that sets general terms to communicate them to any professional buyer who asks, on a durable medium, and it punishes failure to communicate them with an administrative fine of up to 15,000 euros for an individual and 75,000 euros for a company. A foreign founder who never sent CGV to the French client therefore starts the dispute one step behind, and the lesson for the future is to attach the CGV to every quote and every contract. The second companion is time: Article L. 110-4 of the Commercial Code<\/a> provides that obligations arising in the course of trade between merchants, or between merchants and non-merchants, are barred after five years unless a shorter special limitation applies, while Article 2224 of the Civil Code<\/a> sets the general five-year limitation for personal and movable actions from the day the holder knew or should have known the facts allowing exercise of the right. An unpaid invoice from 2021 is therefore still actionable in late 2026, but the file should not sleep: every month of delay weakens proof, disperses contacts and lets the debtor organise insolvency, so the deadline analysis and the limitation calendar belong on the first page of your recovery plan.<\/p>\n One structural point matters for founders who hesitated between legal vehicles before entering France. Whether you invoice through a French SAS (societe par actions simplifiee, the flexible joint-stock company most foreign founders choose), a SARL (societe a responsabilite limitee, the limited liability company with heavier statutory framing), a French branch (succursale) of your foreign company or a liaison presence, the payment-deadline and penalty regime is identical: it attaches to the commercial nature of the transaction, not to your corporate form. If you are still choosing the vehicle, our pillar guide to choosing between a French SAS, SARL, branch or subsidiary when running the business from abroad<\/a> sets out the tax, liability and registration consequences of each option. For the recovery itself, what counts is that the invoice was issued for a professional transaction connected with France, which gives the French courts their jurisdiction and gives you access to the fast procedures described below.<\/p>\n Once the deadline has passed, three layers of money accrue in your favour, and the first two require no prior step from you. The core rule sits in paragraph II of the article cited above: the terms of payment must state the conditions of application and the rate of the late penalties due on the day after the payment date shown on the invoice, plus the amount of the flat-rate compensation for recovery costs due when payment arrives late. The statute then fixes the default rate: unless otherwise agreed, and the agreed rate can never fall below three times the French legal interest rate, the rate equals the interest rate applied by the European Central Bank, the ECB, to its most recent refinancing operation, plus ten percentage points. The rate applicable during the first half of the year is the rate in force on 1 January, and for the second half the rate in force on 1 July. And the sentence that makes this regime so creditor-friendly reads: Les penalites de retard sont exigibles sans qu’un rappel soit necessaire.<\/a> Late penalties are due without any reminder being necessary. You do not need to have sent a warning, you do not need a contract clause restating the rule, and you do not need to wait for a judge: the interest meters starts on the day after the invoice deadline by operation of law.<\/p>\n The French Court of Cassation, the Cour de cassation, has given this automatic character its full force. In a commercial-chamber decision of 21 October 2020, appeal number 18-25.749, concerning unpaid instalments under a building contract, the Court held that Les penalites de retard prevues par ce texte, qui sont dues de plein droit, sans rappel et sans avoir a etre mentionnees dans le contrat<\/a>, meaning that the late penalties provided for by the commercial statute are due as of right, without any reminder and without needing to appear in the contract. The Court added that they apply to relations between any producer, service provider, wholesaler or importer on one side and any buyer of products or any purchaser of services contracting for its professional activity on the other, and it quashed the appeal judgment that had refused them on the ground that the debtor was not a merchant. For a foreign company billing a French client, the message is direct: your penalties do not depend on the debtor’s legal form, on a reminder letter or on a penalty clause you forgot to insert. They depend on the professional nature of the deal, which an invoice between two businesses establishes on its face.<\/p>\n The second automatic layer is the flat recovery fee. Article D. 441-5 of the Commercial Code<\/a> states: Le montant de l’indemnite forfaitaire pour frais de recouvrement prevue au II de l’article L. 441-10 est fixe a 40 euros.<\/a> Forty euros per late invoice between professionals, due as of right alongside the penalties, and it must be mentioned in your CGV and on the invoice to be claimed without discussion. Where your documented recovery costs exceed the flat amount, for instance the fee of the enforcement officer or the cost of a formal service, the statute lets you claim the documented surplus on top, with receipts. The third layer is contractual: if your terms provide a higher penalty rate or a reinforced clause, it applies within the limits of judicial review of unfair terms, and any such clause should be invoked expressly in the demand letter. On a 40,000 euro invoice six months overdue at an ECB-based rate above twelve percent, the interest alone exceeds 2,400 euros before the 40 euro fee and costs, which is why the computation table belongs in every demand: principal, deadline date, rate with its half-year reference, days of delay, interest, flat fee, total. A debtor who receives that table understands that each additional month of silence increases the bill, and a judge who receives it sees a creditor who kept rigorous accounts.<\/p>\n A practical warning closes this section. The automatic penalties and the flat fee are unavailable where a safeguard, judicial reorganisation or liquidation proceeding freezes payment of the claim at its due date: the statute expressly suspends them in that case. Before computing, check the debtor on the BODACC (Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, the official gazette where French insolvency openings, company formations and similar events are published) and on the Kbis extract (the official registration certificate issued by the greffe, the clerk’s office of the commercial court, which identifies the company, its officers and its status). If a collective proceeding is open, the recovery path changes completely toward declaration of the claim to the appointed administrator within the statutory deadline, and individual enforcement is stayed. That check takes minutes online and conditions everything that follows: interest against a healthy debtor, declaration against a debtor under proceedings.<\/p>\n French judges grant fast payment orders to creditors who arrive with complete files and send back those who arrive with approximations, so the file-building stage decides the outcome before any court is contacted. The file has five components. First, the contract and its proof: signed quote, purchase order, framework agreement, email acceptances, and your CGV with evidence they were communicated, since the communication of CGV is itself a legal duty under the article cited above. Second, the performance proof: delivery slips signed or tracked, service reports, acceptance minutes, timesheets, login records, tickets closed, photographs, anything showing the French client received what was invoiced. Third, the invoice itself with the mandatory mentions French law requires on business invoices: issue date and number, supplier and customer identities with registration numbers, VAT numbers where applicable, precise description, price, VAT rate and amount, and the payment deadline with the penalty rate and the 40 euro fee. An invoice missing the deadline or the fee mention does not destroy the claim, because the statute supplies the default, but a compliant invoice removes the debtor’s easiest objections, so reissue a corrected invoice now if the original omitted them.<\/p>\n Fourth, the correspondence history: every reminder, every promise to pay, every partial payment, every acknowledgement of the debt in writing. French courts give decisive weight to a debtor who wrote that the invoice is correct and will be paid next month, because that writing neutralises later claims that the service was defective. Preserve the originals with their dates, keep the email headers, and never discard the polite first reminders: they prove both the claim and your good faith. Fifth, the corporate intelligence: a recent Kbis of the debtor showing it is still active, the identity of its legal representative, its registered office (siege social) for service of process, and the BODACC check confirming no insolvency proceeding. Service of court papers at the wrong address is the most common cause of annulled procedures, and the registered office stated on the Kbis is the address the enforcement officer, the commissaire de justice (the regulated ministerial officer formerly called huissier de justice, who serves court documents and enforces judgments), will use.<\/p>\n With the file assembled, the formal notice, the mise en demeure, converts the waiting period into a litigation-ready claim. Article 1344 of the Civil Code<\/a> provides: Le debiteur est mis en demeure de payer soit par une sommation ou un acte portant interpellation suffisante, soit, si le contrat le prevoit, par la seule exigibilite de l’obligation.<\/a> In practice, the mise en demeure is a firm written demand sent by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt (lettre recommandee avec accuse de reception, abbreviated RAR), or served by the commissaire de justice, stating the exact sums with principal, interest, flat fee and costs, setting a final deadline, commonly eight to fifteen days, and warning of court action. Remember the Commercial Code subtlety: the late penalties themselves run without any reminder, but the mise en demeure remains indispensable for three reasons. It starts the clock for court interest under Article 1231-7 of the Civil Code<\/a>, it demonstrates good faith and seriousness to the judge seized later, and a service by commissaire de justice carries an official date that no debtor can contest. From abroad, the sequence is fully remote: your French counsel or the officer drafts the notice from your file, sends or serves it, and the acknowledgement comes back to your email. Set the deadline, diarise it, and prepare the court petition in parallel so the expiry of the deadline triggers filing the next morning rather than a new round of waiting.<\/p>\n Two strategic points complete the file. First, do not let the debtor convert your claim into a disputed one by manufacturing a quality complaint after months of silence: answer any late grievance in writing immediately, point by point, attaching the delivery proofs, and restate that the invoice was never contested within a reasonable time after performance. Judges distinguish genuine disputes raised promptly from tactical disputes raised after the demand letter, and only the first kind blocks the fast procedures. Second, where several invoices are unpaid, treat each invoice as its own claim with its own deadline, interest computation and 40 euro fee, while presenting them as one coherent account: the flat fee is per invoice, the interest runs per deadline, and grouping them in a single petition is permitted and cheaper. Keep the originals of everything, because the court will ask for them, and keep a simple limitation table with the five-year horizon so no invoice ages out while the procedure runs.<\/p>\n The main fast track is the injonction de payer, the payment-order procedure, designed exactly for your situation: a contractual claim for a fixed sum that the debtor simply does not pay. Article 1405 of the Code of Civil Procedure<\/a> opens it where the claim has a contractual cause or results from a statutory obligation and stands at a determined amount, including any contractual penalty clause. Your unpaid invoice with its computed interest and fee fits this definition perfectly. Jurisdiction follows the debtor: for a commercial debt between businesses, the petition goes to the president of the commercial court (tribunal de commerce<\/a>) of the debtor’s registered office; the official service-public.fr procedure guide confirms the forms, the supporting documents and the circuit of the petition. The petition (requete) is filed with the greffe, the clerk’s office, together with the contract, invoices, demands and proof of delivery. The creditor currently pays registry fees of 33.47 euros within fifteen days of filing for a commercial claim outside Alsace-Moselle, as stated on the official service-public.fr page describing the injonction de payer procedure<\/a>, and the judge rules on the papers without a hearing, usually within weeks. No travel, no hearing, no confrontation at this stage: the procedure is deliberately non-adversarial, which is what makes it fast and cheap.<\/p>\n If the file is in order, the judge issues the ordonnance portant injonction de payer, the payment order, which the commissaire de justice then serves on the debtor. Service starts a one-month opposition period. If the debtor does nothing, you ask the greffe for the formule executoire, the enforcement formula, and the order becomes an enforceable title equivalent to a judgment: the officer can seize on its basis. If the debtor files opposition, Article 1415 of the Code of Civil Procedure<\/a> sends the case before the court that issued the order, opposition being lodged at the greffe by the debtor or a duly empowered representative, by declaration against receipt or by registered letter, and the official guide notes that the judgment on opposition replaces the payment order, with appeal available above 5,000 euros. Opposition is therefore not a defeat: it converts the fast track into an ordinary hearing where your complete file usually wins, because the debtor who had nothing to say for months rarely has much to show the court. Representation by a lawyer (avocat) is required in higher-stakes hearings before the commercial court, and your avocat appears while you follow from abroad with translated updates: physical presence of the foreign director is almost never needed.<\/p>\n Alongside or instead of the payment order, the interim route offers speed with a hearing. Article 835 of the Code of Civil Procedure<\/a> provides that the president of the judicial court, and in commercial matters the president of the commercial court ruling in interim proceedings, may always order protective or restoration measures to prevent imminent harm or stop a manifestly unlawful disturbance, and that Dans les cas ou l’existence de l’obligation n’est pas serieusement contestable, ils peuvent accorder une provision au creancier<\/a>: where the existence of the obligation is not seriously contestable, they may grant the creditor an advance payment. This refere-provision (interim payment order) is obtained at a hearing within weeks, on documentary evidence, and it is provisionally enforceable even on appeal. The Court of Cassation polices the standard from both sides: in a second civil chamber decision of 31 March 2022, appeal number 21-12.296, it recalled that the interim judge grants a provision only within the limit of the uncontested amount and left intact the appeal court’s sovereign finding of l’existence d’une obligation non serieusement contestable<\/a> at the level it retained. For an invoiced, delivered, never-contested performance, that standard is met on the papers, and the provision order forces the debtor to choose between paying now and funding an appeal with the meter running.<\/p>\n Enforcement is where distance finally stops mattering, because it belongs to the commissaire de justice alone. Armed with your enforceable title, whether the final payment order, the judgment on opposition or the provision, the officer serves a commandement de payer<\/a>, the formal order to pay, then seizes: saisie-attribution on the debtor’s bank accounts, which transfers the seized sum directly to you up to the amount owed; saisie-vente on equipment, vehicles or stock; seizure of receivables owed to the debtor by its own clients. Each measure follows strict notices and deadlines, and defective service can annul it, which is why instructing a competent local officer matters more than being present. Where the money may vanish before judgment, French law also allows protective seizure (saisie conservatoire) with the enforcement judge’s authorisation on a showing of a claim appearing well founded and circumstances threatening recovery, followed by proceedings on the merits within one month. For cross-border debtors with assets in several EU Member States, the European payment order and the European account preservation order extend the same logic beyond France, and a French enforceable title circulates under the European enforcement framework. The economics usually favour action as soon as the claim exceeds a few thousand euros: the losing debtor generally bears the court and service costs, while your interest, flat fees and documented surplus accumulate against it. Coordinate with your accountant on booking the recovered principal, interest and fees in the French entity, since our companion analysis of corporate tax instalments and timing for companies run from abroad<\/a> shows how recoveries land in the French taxable result.<\/p>\n A French client who does not pay is a commercial problem with a legal solution, not a cost of distance. Start this week: verify each invoice deadline against the thirty-day default and the sixty-day and forty-five-day caps, compute the penalties at the ECB refinancing rate plus ten points with the 40 euro fee per invoice, and check the debtor on the BODACC before spending anything. Assemble the five-part file with the contract, the performance proofs, the compliant invoices, the correspondence and the fresh Kbis, then send the mise en demeure with a short final deadline. When it expires, file the injonction de payer before the commercial court of the debtor’s registered office, keep the refere-provision ready if the debtor raises a smokescreen, and let the commissaire de justice serve and seize in France on your instructions. Every step works from abroad, every deadline is counted in days and weeks rather than years, and the case law confirms that judges reward creditors who arrive with complete files while debtors who sleep on their rights pay the interest on their silence. The invoice you recover this quarter is the growth budget you planned when you chose France.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Your French client ignores your invoices while you run the company from abroad? French law adds automatic late interest at the ECB rate plus 10 points and a 40-euro fee per invoice, and the payment-order procedure before the commercial court turns your file into an enforceable order without travelling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":251031309,"featured_media":16421,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kj_source_type":"","_kj_official_id":"","_kj_official_url":"","_kj_judilibre_id":"","_kj_jur":"","_kj_lieu":"","_kj_chambre":"","_kj_rg":"","_kj_date":"","activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":""},"categories":[80314,80313],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2139763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-decryptage","category-doing-business-in-france"],"yoast_head":"\nB. What late interest, flat fee and extra compensation does French law add to your unpaid invoice?<\/h3>\n
II. How Do You Actually Force a French Client to Pay While You Live Abroad: Formal Notice, Fast Court Orders and Seizure<\/h2>\n
A. How do you build a recovery file that no French judge can reject from abroad?<\/h3>\n
B. Which fast French court procedure turns your file into an enforceable order without travelling?<\/h3>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n