What is the B2B E-Invoicing Mandate?
France's e-invoicing mandate replaces direct invoice delivery between French businesses with a platform-based model. Invoices now must 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 PDF or paper directly to the customer.
This 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 everything e-invoicing doesn't cover (B2C sales, cross-border transactions), you must report transaction and payment data to the tax authority.
In addition to requirements around sending invoices, France introduced requirements for invoices that French established businesses receive. Anrok handles both requirements for you automatically if you’re integrated with Anrok for invoicing:
- Anrok sends your qualifying B2B transaction data as e-invoices.
- All other transactions are submitted as e-reports.
- Mailbox support for received invoices.
There's nothing separate for you to build for Anrok to support this.
The mandate Alongside this, in-scope businesses must also e-report certain transaction and payment data to the tax authority, including for B2C and cross-border sales where no e-invoice is issued.
What are the requirements?
Large and intermediate-sized enterprises must begin issuing e-invoices from September 1, 2026, with all remaining businesses, including SMEs and micro-businesses, required to do so 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.
Definitions
- Large Enterprise: You have 5,000 or more employees and have either at least EUR 1.5 Billion realized annual revenue globally or have at least EUR 2 billion balance sheet
- Intermediate: You have 250 or more employees and have either at least EUR 50 million domestic turnover or have at least EUR 43 Million balance sheet
What is the registration process?
E-invoicing registration is a separate process from a local French VAT registration. Anrok supports this process end-to-end.
- Sign a proof of authorization granting Anrok permission to send, receive, and report invoices on your behalf.
- Anrok's tax operations team collects the required details, such as your VAT number, SIREN and SIRET numbers, VAT regime, and filing frequency.
- Anrok submits those details to the French tax authority.
- Once French authorities confirm your registration, you're set up to issue and receive e-invoices without needing to register with a PDP yourself.
How Anrok handles e-invoicing and e-reporting issuance
Once you're registered, Anrok manages e-invoicing and e-reporting on an ongoing basis.
- Seller issues an e-invoice from their AR/billing system (e.g. Stripe). Anrok transforms the transaction data into the fields and format France requires.
- Anrok submits the e-invoices to our French PDP
- Simultaneously: the PDP sends the e-invoice to the buyer's PDP, and to the government portal (PPF) for e-reporting
- The buyer's PDP accepts the e-invoice, validates the info (VAT ID), and agrees to pay
- The seller verifies payment was made — for services, France requires proof of actual payment (cash accounting); for goods, receipt of the e-invoice is sufficient (accrual accounting)
- The PPF verifies the e-invoice and returns a submission status to the supplier
- For sellers specifically on a cash accounting basis for VAT purposes, update the payment status in your billing system
- For received invoices, Anrok supplies mailbox forwarding support of invoices.
Sellers can see the status of sent e-invoices on the Transactions page under the e-Invoice column.
The transaction successfully e-invoiced.
The transaction did not successfully e-invoice. You can hover over this error to see more detail on the failure reason.
How Anrok handles transaction changes and corrections
France has strict requirements for the type of invoicing behavior allowed for cancellations, refunds, and adjustments. France prohibits editing or deleting an e-invoice that's already been transmitted and requires a secondary, formal corrective document instead called an “avoir” that works like a credit note.
Anrok ingests the credit notes already coming from your billing system and processes them into allowance notes, the proper 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.
Below are the best practices sellers should follow to compliantly adjust transaction details:
| France E-Invoicing Best Practices | Required Seller Invoicing Behavior in the Billing System |
| How to handle changes to an already-submitted invoice | Issue a secondary, separate credit note to make any changes to an invoice |
| How to handle negative line items | Represent discounts or any negative line item as a secondary, separate credit note |
| How to handle voiding credit notes | To void or reverse a credit note, seller could issue a new invoice for the same amount |
| How to handle retroactive VAT ID or exemption additions | VAT IDs must be added to transactions before they are e-invoiced. If VAT IDs are added retroactively, (1) issue a credit note for the total amount (including tax) of the original e-invoice (2) Issue a new invoice with the correct amount. |