You formed your French company from London, New York or Dubai, you delivered the goods or the service, you sent the invoice \u2014 and nothing comes back. Emails go unanswered, the client promises payment next month, and your French subsidiary’s cash flow starts to suffer while you are thousands of kilometres away. This is one of the most common shocks for foreign founders doing business in France, and it has a reassuring side: French commercial law is unusually creditor-friendly. Interest for late payment runs automatically, a fixed recovery fee applies without any reminder, and a fast paper-based court procedure can turn your invoice into an enforceable order without a full trial. This guide explains, for a non-French business reader, how to draft invoices that create money by themselves, how to calculate what your debtor really owes you, and how to obtain a court order quickly \u2014 including when the debtor sits outside France and when the clock is running. It assumes your business runs through a French vehicle such as a SAS (soci\u00e9t\u00e9 par actions simplifi\u00e9e, the flexible joint-stock company most foreign founders choose) or a SARL (soci\u00e9t\u00e9 \u00e0 responsabilit\u00e9 limit\u00e9e, the limited liability company with stricter statutory rules), selling to other businesses. Every French acronym is explained, and every decisive rule is quoted from the statute or decision that states it, with an official link.<\/p>\n
Under French law, a sale of goods or a provision of services between professionals must be invoiced, and the invoice is a regulated document. Article L441-9 of the Commercial Code lists what it must contain: the names and addresses of both parties, the date of the sale or service, the quantity, the precise description and the unit price excluding VAT of what was sold or provided, any price reduction acquired at the date of the transaction, and \u2014 decisive for you \u2014 three payment lines. The statute states that<\/a> “La facture mentionne la date \u00e0 laquelle le r\u00e8glement doit intervenir.” The same article requires the invoice to show the discount terms for early payment, the rate of the penalties due from the day after the payment date printed on the invoice, and the amount of the flat-rate indemnity for recovery costs due if payment arrives late. In practice, many invoices issued by young foreign-owned companies omit the penalty rate or the flat-fee line because their home-country template does not include them. Add all three lines to your French template now: without a payment date on the invoice, the automatic machinery described below has no starting point, and an incomplete invoice exposes your own company to an administrative fine, since the same text provides that<\/a> “Tout manquement au I est passible d’une amende administrative dont le montant ne peut exc\u00e9der 75 000 \u20ac pour une personne physique et 375 000 \u20ac pour une personne morale.”<\/p>\n Once the invoice is compliant, French law caps payment periods strictly and punishes overruns automatically. Article L441-10 of the Commercial Code<\/a>, the provision foreign founders should know by heart, organises the whole regime. Unless your sales terms or a negotiated agreement say otherwise, the payment period cannot exceed thirty days after 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. One agreed alternative exists: a maximum of forty-five days end of month from the invoice date, but only if it is expressly stipulated in the contract and is not a manifest abuse towards the creditor. For periodic invoices within the meaning of fiscal rules, the agreed period cannot exceed forty-five days from the invoice date. These ceilings are a matter of public economic order in business relations: a French customer cannot validly impose ninety-day terms on your subsidiary simply because it is the larger party. Check your general terms of sale (conditions g\u00e9n\u00e9rales de vente) today and renegotiate any customer contract that exceeds sixty days, because the penalty rate below applies by reference to the lawful due date, not to whatever excessive period the debtor claims.<\/p>\n The penalty rate itself is where foreign founders often underestimate their rights. Your contract may set a rate, but it can never fall below three times the legal interest rate. Failing such a clause, the statutory rate applies, and Article L441-10 fixes it as follows<\/a>: “ce taux est \u00e9gal au taux d’int\u00e9r\u00eat appliqu\u00e9 par la Banque centrale europ\u00e9enne \u00e0 son op\u00e9ration de refinancement la plus r\u00e9cente major\u00e9 de 10 points de pourcentage.” The European Central Bank refinancing rate plus ten points is a deliberately dissuasive rate: with a refinancing rate of two per cent, late penalties accrue at twelve per cent per year. The applicable rate is frozen per half-year \u2014 the rate in force on 1 January for the first half of the year, the rate in force on 1 July for the second half \u2014 so you always know which figure to apply to a given overdue period. Two features make this regime formidable. First, the penalties are due<\/a> “exigibles le jour suivant la date de r\u00e8glement figurant sur la facture”, from the day after the due date on the invoice. Second, “Les p\u00e9nalit\u00e9s de retard sont exigibles sans qu’un rappel soit n\u00e9cessaire.”<\/a> No reminder letter, no formal notice, no phone call is needed for interest to start running: the day after the due date, the meter is on, by operation of law.<\/p>\n On top of interest, every late-paying professional owes your company a flat recovery indemnity automatically. The statute provides that<\/a> “Tout professionnel en situation de retard de paiement est de plein droit d\u00e9biteur, \u00e0 l’\u00e9gard du cr\u00e9ancier, d’une indemnit\u00e9 forfaitaire pour frais de recouvrement, dont le montant est fix\u00e9 par d\u00e9cret.” The implementing decree sets the figure every founder should memorise: “Le montant de l’indemnit\u00e9 forfaitaire pour frais de recouvrement pr\u00e9vue au II de l’article L. 441-10 est fix\u00e9 \u00e0 40 euros.”<\/a> Forty euros per overdue invoice, due automatically, and if your actual recovery costs exceed that sum you may claim additional compensation with supporting documents. One boundary matters: you cannot claim these indemnities where insolvency proceedings \u2014 sauvegarde, redressement or liquidation judiciaire \u2014 forbid payment of your claim at its due date; a customer placed under court protection follows the collective-proceedings regime, not the late-payment regime. For every solvent customer, however, the arithmetic of an unpaid invoice is: principal, plus ECB-plus-ten-points interest from the day after the due date with no reminder, plus forty euros, plus proven extra costs.<\/p>\n Courts apply this machinery exactly as written, as a decision of the Commercial Chamber of the Cour de cassation confirms. On 3 October 2018, in case number 16-28.075, the Court rejected an appeal against a judgment that had awarded late penalties at the ECB refinancing rate plus ten points running from the sixty-first day after each invoice, holding in clarified terms that “les p\u00e9nalit\u00e9s de retard seront \u00e9gales au minimum au taux de refinancement principal de la BCE major\u00e9 de 10 points. Selon l’article L441-6 du code de commerce, ces p\u00e9nalit\u00e9s sont exigibles sans qu’un rappel soit n\u00e9cessaire”<\/a> \u2014 Article L441-6 being the former numbering of the rule now found in Article L441-10. The same judgment ordered capitalisation of the interest. Take the lesson for your ledger: on a 50,000 euro invoice overdue by six months at a twelve per cent penalty rate, interest alone exceeds 3,000 euros, plus forty euros, all without you having sent a single reminder \u2014 provided your invoice carried a due date and a penalty rate.<\/p>\n The statutory regime is only a floor. Your sales terms and customer contracts may add a negotiated penalty clause (clause p\u00e9nale): a fixed sum the failing party agrees in advance to pay as damages. French contract law honours such clauses seriously. Article 1231-5 of the Civil Code opens with the principle that where the contract stipulates that the party who fails to perform will pay a certain sum as damages, no greater or lesser sum may be awarded to the other party. A clause that doubles the invoice for any delay, however, will not survive contact with a judge. The same article continues<\/a>: “le juge peut, m\u00eame d’office, mod\u00e9rer ou augmenter la p\u00e9nalit\u00e9 ainsi convenue si elle est manifestement excessive ou d\u00e9risoire.” The court may reduce \u2014 or increase \u2014 the agreed penalty on its own motion where it is manifestly excessive or derisory, and any contractual term attempting to remove that power is deemed unwritten. Where the obligation has been partly performed, the judge may also reduce the penalty in proportion to the benefit the partial performance brought the creditor. The practical consequence for a foreign founder is straightforward: draft penalty clauses that approximate your real loss \u2014 reminder costs, overdraft interest, administrative time, margin erosion \u2014 and keep the evidence of that loss, because a clause aligned with reality survives while a punitive multiple falls.<\/p>\n A recent appeal decision shows how courts perform that comparison. On 6 November 2025, the Court of Appeal of Aix-en-Provence, case number 21\/05974, examined a supply contract under which a customer that broke an exclusivity commitment owed a flat indemnity of 40 euros excluding tax per hectolitre remaining to be delivered, with 20,517.20 euros claimed as the termination indemnity. The creditor produced a certificate from its chartered accountant showing a lost gross margin of 63,326.33 euros on the volumes never ordered. Comparing the two figures, the court held that<\/a> “La somme de 20.517,20 euros r\u00e9clam\u00e9e au titre de l’indemnit\u00e9 de rupture du contrat n’appara\u00eet donc pas excessive, motif pour lequel elle sera admise sans mod\u00e9ration”. The claim was admitted in full, without moderation, because the agreed sum sat well below the proven loss. Mirror this method in your own contracts: have your accountant attest the margin or costs behind your penalty figures, keep that certificate with the contract file, and set liquidated sums at or below the documented harm. A clause drafted this way does double duty, because penalty clauses feed directly into the fast court procedure below: the payment-order judge determines the claim by reference to the contract terms including, where relevant, the penalty clause.<\/p>\n One procedural trap conditions penalty clauses, and foreign founders miss it regularly. Article 1231-5 ends with the rule that<\/a> “Sauf inex\u00e9cution d\u00e9finitive, la p\u00e9nalit\u00e9 n’est encourue que lorsque le d\u00e9biteur est mis en demeure.” Except where non-performance is final, the penalty is only incurred once the debtor has been put on formal notice. The mise en demeure \u2014 the formal notice demanding performance, sent in a provable form such as registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt \u2014 is therefore not a courtesy but a trigger. Send it as soon as the due date passes: it starts no interest (interest already runs automatically), but it unlocks your contractual penalty and creates the paper trail every judge wants to see. Your notice should identify each unpaid invoice by number, date and amount, state the total with penalties and the forty-euro indemnity, and set a short final deadline before court action. From abroad, instruct your French counsel or your local team to send it in French, by lettre recommand\u00e9e avec accus\u00e9 de r\u00e9ception, and archive the receipt: this single letter often produces payment by itself, and where it does not, it becomes exhibit number one.<\/p>\n Two further instruments deserve a place in a founder’s toolbox. First, negotiable payment papers: where your customer has accepted a bill of exchange (lettre de change) or subscribed a promissory note (billet \u00e0 ordre), or endorsed or guaranteed one of these instruments, recovery follows the same fast track as contractual claims, as the procedural rules expressly list these undertakings alongside ordinary contracts. If a doubtful customer offers a billet \u00e0 ordre to obtain longer terms, accept it in due form: you gain an additional enforcement route. Second, agreed verification procedures: where your contract provides an acceptance or verification procedure to certify that goods or services conform, that procedure must as a rule close within thirty days of delivery<\/a>, and it cannot be used to push back the maximum payment period unless expressly stipulated and not abusive. A customer that invents endless quality checks to delay the due date is moving the goalposts unlawfully \u2014 diary the thirty days and treat the invoice as due when the statute says so.<\/p>\n When reminders and formal notice fail, French law offers a streamlined procedure that avoids a full trial: the injonction de payer, the order to pay. A judge examines your file on paper \u2014 no hearing, no summons to the debtor at this stage \u2014 and, if the claim qualifies, issues an ordonnance, a court order enjoining the debtor to pay. The gateway conditions are set by Article 1405 of the Code of Civil Procedure: recovery may be sought through this procedure where the claim has a contractual cause or results from a statutory obligation and stands at a determined amount. The text specifies that<\/a> “La cr\u00e9ance a une cause contractuelle ou r\u00e9sulte d’une obligation de caract\u00e8re statutaire et s’\u00e9l\u00e8ve \u00e0 un montant d\u00e9termin\u00e9 ; en mati\u00e8re contractuelle, la d\u00e9termination est faite en vertu des stipulations du contrat y compris, le cas \u00e9ch\u00e9ant, la clause p\u00e9nale”. Your file should therefore contain the contract or accepted order, the compliant invoices, proof of delivery or performance, the formal notice and its receipt, and a computation sheet showing principal, ECB-plus-ten interest per half-year rate, the forty-euro indemnity per invoice and any contractual penalty. The more arithmetic the judge can verify without interpretation, the smoother the order. Claims that are seriously disputed on their merits do not belong here; the judge who doubts refers you to the ordinary courts, which is why the documentary discipline described in part I pays off at this exact moment.<\/p>\n Filing in the right court matters, and the rule protects you against fine-print surprises. Article 1406 of the Code of Civil Procedure sends the petition, depending on the nature of the case, to the judge for protection disputes or to the president of the judicial court or the commercial court, within each court’s subject-matter jurisdiction. For a foreign-owned SAS or SARL suing a business customer, that is in practice the commercial court. Territorially, the statute designates<\/a> “Le juge territorialement comp\u00e9tent est celui du lieu o\u00f9 demeure le ou l’un des d\u00e9biteurs poursuivis.” You file where your debtor is based \u2014 the Paris courts for a Paris customer, the Lyon courts for a Lyon customer \u2014 even if your general terms point elsewhere, because these jurisdictional rules<\/a> “sont d’ordre public. Toute clause contraire est r\u00e9put\u00e9e non \u00e9crite.” Jurisdiction clauses to the contrary are deemed unwritten, and the judge must raise lack of jurisdiction on his own motion. From abroad, the petition (requ\u00eate) is lodged at the greffe \u2014 the court’s clerk office that receives filings \u2014 through French counsel: a founder in New York or Singapore does not need to fly in, but does need a representative who knows which president’s greffe receives the file and in what form.<\/p>\n Once granted, the order must be served on the debtor, and service starts the only deadline that counts. Service is effected by a commissaire de justice, the judicial enforcement officer who delivers court papers and later carries out enforcement. Personal service \u2014 remise \u00e0 personne, delivery into the debtor’s own hands \u2014 is the gold standard, because the debtor’s right to object runs from it. Article 1416 of the Code of Civil Procedure states the rule plainly: “L’opposition est form\u00e9e dans le mois qui suit la signification de l’ordonnance.”<\/a> Opposition \u2014 the debtor’s objection that reopens the case \u2014 must be lodged within one month of service of the order. Where service was not made personally, the objection remains admissible until one month after the first document served personally or, failing that, after the first enforcement measure freezing the debtor’s assets in whole or in part. Instruct your commissaire de justice to pursue personal service diligently: every week gained on proper service is a week cut from the debtor’s delaying tactics.<\/p>\n A 2026 judgment shows what happens when the debtor sleeps through that month. On 3 August 2026, the Judicial Court of Bordeaux, case number 26\/00337, ruled on an opposition to a payment order of 26 February 2025 for a 1,697.30 euro invoice, served personally on 26 May 2025 by act of commissaire de justice. The debtor objected only in October 2025. The court recalled that the debtor had one month from service, noting that “il disposait, donc, d’un d\u00e9lai d’un mois \u00e0 compter de cette date pour former opposition”<\/a>, declared the late opposition inadmissible, and held that “L’ordonnance d’injonction de payer rendue par le juge du tribunal judiciaire de BORDEAUX le 26 f\u00e9vrier 2025, r\u00e9guli\u00e8rement signifi\u00e9e \u00e0 Monsieur [J] [F], le 26 mai 2025, retrouve son plein et entier effet.”<\/a> The order regained its full effect, the losing debtor bore the court costs, and the judgment carried enforcement as of right. For a creditor, the message is that a properly served order which meets no timely opposition becomes an enforceable title without any hearing on the merits.<\/p>\n Where the debtor does object in time, the procedure converts into an ordinary hearing \u2014 and your documentary discipline decides the outcome. On 6 May 2026, the Court of Appeal of Riom, case number 25\/01562, admitted a 29,204.07 euro claim against a company in collective proceedings precisely because the debtor’s own correspondence proved the debt: in an email, the debtor had listed the missing invoices by number and amount after checking with its accountant, “sans pour autant contester ou \u00e9mettre des r\u00e9serves sur lesdites factures”<\/a> \u2014 without disputing them or entering any reservation. The court concluded that “la cour estime que les documents produits par la SAS Pega constituent un faisceau d’indices faisant ressortir l’existence d’une cr\u00e9ance \u00e0 son b\u00e9n\u00e9fice \u00e0 hauteur de 29 204,07 euros TTC.”<\/a> A bundle of consistent presumptions \u2014 invoices, delivery records, unanswered reminders, the debtor’s own unreserved references \u2014 established the claim. Keep every email in which the customer discusses your invoices without disputing them; silence plus paperwork wins cases. Conversely, answer every substantive complaint about quality in writing and cure or credit what is justified, so that no genuine dispute festers into a defence.<\/p>\n Foreign founders often face the mirror situation: the French subsidiary is the creditor, but the customer sits in another European country \u2014 or the founder wonders whether a French order helps against assets abroad. European law provides a dedicated answer alongside the domestic procedure: the European order for payment, created by Regulation (EC) No 1896\/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council, whose official text is published on EUR-Lex. French courts participate fully in this system: the Code of Civil Procedure expressly provides for the European payment order in its domestic chapters, since Article 1424-3 states that<\/a> “Le juge peut d\u00e9livrer une injonction de payer europ\u00e9enne pour partie de la demande, apr\u00e8s que le demandeur a accept\u00e9 la proposition en ce sens qu’il lui a faite.” In practice, where your claim is cross-border within Europe, discuss with your counsel at the outset whether to seek a domestic injonction de payer or a European order: the European instrument travels under its regulation’s recognition regime, while the domestic order may suit debtors and assets located in France. The choice depends on where the debtor lives, where its bank accounts and goods are, and how quickly each track moves in the competent court \u2014 a case-by-case calibration, not a reflex. Founders still structuring their French presence should also read our companion guide on setting up a company in France, from bank account and Kbis registration to VAT and the first hire<\/a>, because the vehicle you bill through determines which court is yours and which rules protect you.<\/p>\nB. Your contract can go further than the statute \u2014 but the judge rewrites excess: penalty clauses, agreed interest and payment papers<\/h3>\n
II. From the unpaid bill to an enforceable order: the fast track and the cross-border toolbox<\/h2>\n
A. The payment order on paper: where to file, how service works, and the one-month deadline that decides everything<\/h3>\n
B. Your debtor is abroad, or the years are passing: the European order and the five-year guillotine<\/h3>\n