France e-invoicing and e-reporting requirements with Anrok

Overview

France's B2B e-invoicing mandate replaces direct invoice delivery between French businesses with a platform-based model. Invoices must now be issued, transmitted, and received in a structured format through an accredited Partner Dematerialization Platform (PDP) or the public portal (PPF), rather than sent as PDFs or paper directly to your customer.

The mandate introduces two obligations for businesses established in France:

• E-invoicing — If you and your customer are both established in France for VAT purposes, you must send and receive domestic B2B invoices as structured e-invoices through an accredited platform, not directly between businesses.
• E-reporting — For transactions that e-invoicing doesn't cover, such as B2C sales and cross-border transactions, you must report transaction and payment data to the tax authority.

France also introduced requirements for the invoices that French-established businesses receive. If you're integrated with Anrok for invoicing, Anrok handles all of these requirements for you automatically, and there's nothing separate for you to build:

• Anrok sends your qualifying B2B transaction data as e-invoices.
• Anrok submits all other transactions as e-reports.
• Anrok provides mailbox support for received invoices.

Deadlines and business size definitions

Large and intermediate-sized enterprises must begin issuing e-invoices from September 1, 2026. All remaining businesses, including SMEs and micro-businesses, must begin from September 1, 2027. Transactions that don't qualify for e-invoicing still need to be e-reported to the tax authority. All businesses must be able to receive e-invoices starting September 1, 2026.

Business size is defined as follows:

• Large enterprise — You have 5,000 or more employees, and either at least EUR 1.5 billion in realized annual revenue globally or a balance sheet of at least EUR 2 billion.
• Intermediate enterprise — You have 250 or more employees, and either at least EUR 50 million in domestic turnover or a balance sheet of at least EUR 43 million.

E-invoicing registration process

E-invoicing registration is a separate process from a local French VAT registration. Anrok supports it end to end, so you don't need to register with a PDP yourself.

1. You'll sign a proof of authorization that grants Anrok permission to send, receive, and report invoices on your behalf.
2. Anrok's tax operations team collects the required details, such as your VAT ID, SIREN and SIRET numbers, VAT regime, and filing frequency.
3. Anrok submits those details to the French tax authority.
4. Once French authorities confirm your registration, you're set up to issue and receive e-invoices.

How Anrok handles e-invoicing and e-reporting

Once you're registered, Anrok manages e-invoicing and e-reporting on an ongoing basis. The flow works as follows:

1. You issue an invoice from your billing system, such as Stripe. Anrok transforms the transaction data into the fields and format France requires.
2. Anrok submits the e-invoice to our French PDP.
3. At the same time, the PDP sends the e-invoice to the buyer's PDP and to the PPF for e-reporting.
4. The buyer's PDP accepts the e-invoice, validates the information, such as the VAT ID, and agrees to pay.
5. You verify that payment was made. For services, France requires proof of actual payment (cash accounting). For goods, receipt of the e-invoice is sufficient (accrual accounting).
6. The PPF verifies the e-invoice and returns a submission status to you.
7. If you're on a cash accounting basis for VAT purposes, update the payment status in your billing system.

For received invoices, Anrok provides mailbox forwarding support.

You can see the status of each e-invoice on the Transactions page, under the e-Invoice column. A status confirms the transaction e-invoiced. A status means it didn't — hover over the icon to see more detail on the failure reason.

Transaction changes and corrections

France prohibits editing or deleting an e-invoice that has already been transmitted. Instead, it requires a secondary, formal corrective document called an "avoir," which works like a credit note.

Anrok ingests the credit notes that already come from your billing system and processes them into allowance notes, the corrective document France requires. Allowance notes are reported to the French tax authority as their own transaction, so the original e-invoice record stays accurate.

To adjust transaction details compliantly, follow these best practices in your billing system:

• Changes to an already-submitted invoice — Issue a secondary, separate credit note to make any changes to an invoice.
• Negative line items — Represent discounts and any other negative line item as a secondary, separate credit note.
• Voiding credit notes — To void or reverse a credit note, issue a new invoice for the same amount.
• Retroactive VAT ID or exemption additions — Add VAT IDs to transactions before they're e-invoiced. If you add a VAT ID retroactively, issue a credit note for the total amount (including tax) of the original e-invoice, then issue a new invoice with the correct amount.