Since 1 September 2026, every business registered for VAT in France, including the French subsidiary or branch of a foreign company, must be able to receive electronic invoices. Your French accountant will talk to you about choosing a platform. They will not ask the five questions that belong to everyday office IT: where the invoices land, who holds the credentials, whether your software talks to theirs, what happens when the office manager leaves, and how to spot the fake emails coming in December.
“By the way, have you chosen your platform?”
Late November. The French accounting firm calls to prepare the year-end closing of your French entity. Accruals, fixed assets, December payroll. And just before hanging up, almost in passing: “By the way, have you chosen your platform for e-invoicing?”
Silence. Head office thought this was handled locally. The local office manager thought the group’s finance software took care of it. Someone finds an email from the French tax administration, received in the spring, in French, filed because it looked like all the others. Nobody knows exactly who is supposed to do what, or with which credentials.
For a foreign company with a site in France, this scene is even more likely than for a French SME: the obligation is French, the emails are in French, and the people who understand them are not the people who run the IT.
THE FRENCH TIMELINE
Since 1 September 2026, every business subject to French VAT must be able to receive electronic invoices through an accredited platform. The obligation to issue them reaches small and medium-sized companies in September 2027. The tax administration tolerates latecomers until 31 December 2026, provided they are engaged in a compliance process; after that comes a formal notice, three months to regularise, then a fine of €50 per invoice, capped at €15,000 a year. By spring, about 600,000 of some 10 million businesses concerned had registered their receiving point.
1. Which mailbox receives the invoices, and who reads it?
An electronic invoice no longer lands in an envelope on the accountant’s desk. It lands on the platform, which notifies an email address someone typed in one day. If that address belongs to the local office manager and she is on leave, the invoice waits. If it belongs to someone who left the company, it waits longer. If it is a generic address at head office that nobody in France can read, it waits until the supplier chases.
The right answer is not complicated: a shared mailbox, read by two people, one of them able to read French, with a known substitute. But it has to be decided, and written down somewhere.
2. Who holds the credentials for the French tax portal?
To register the receiving point, someone has to log into the company’s professional space on the French tax website. For a foreign-owned entity, that account was often created years ago by a previous accounting firm, a former local director, or a lawyer at incorporation, with a password noted somewhere in a file head office has never opened.
The day you need it, you search. You request a reset, which goes to an address nobody checks any more. You lose a week. This account is one of the most important the French entity owns, and it is often the one nobody knows where the key is.
3. Does your group software actually talk to the French accountant’s?
The group’s finance system says French e-invoicing is “supported”. In practice, there are three cases.
It works
The French module is switched on, invoices flow in and out through an accredited platform, and the local accountant gets everything without retyping.
It will work, later
The French localisation needs an upgrade, a paid option, or a project the group IT team has scheduled for next year.
Someone retypes
By hand, in both directions, for months, because nobody checked what the French site actually runs.
The question to ask before December is about the exact version and configuration running for the French entity, not the vendor’s roadmap.
4. What happens when the person who set it all up leaves?
This is the question nobody asks, because it is always asked too late. In a French site run from abroad, the e-invoicing setup usually rests on one person: the office manager who chose the platform, whose browser holds the credentials, whose mailbox receives the invoices, whose account links the software. She leaves in March. Invoices keep arriving, nobody sees them, suppliers chase head office in a language it does not read, and the clean-up costs more than the fine.
Everything set up for French e-invoicing should fit on one page, with the accesses, the name of the substitute and the procedure, readable by a manager at head office without help. It is the same reflex as for employee offboarding: you do not discover the accesses on the day they are missing.
5. How will you recognise the fake emails in December?
Every new obligation attracts its imitators. In December, well-written emails will arrive, in French, in the name of an “invoicing platform”, “the administration” or your “software”, asking you to confirm your credentials, pay activation fees, or update a direct debit mandate. They will reach the person handling invoices at the very moment she expects that kind of message, and head office will not be able to tell a real one from a fake one.
THE ONE RULE THAT HOLDS
Know in advance through which channel your real platform writes to you, and decide that everything else goes through a phone call before anyone clicks. An invoice that waits one more day costs nothing; a credential handed to a fake site costs weeks.
What these five questions have in common
None of them requires French tax expertise. All of them require someone, on site or next to it, to look at everyday office IT with a little method: which version, which account, which mailbox, who covers for whom, what is written where. It is an hour of work on a quiet day, with the French accountant on the phone for their part, and someone who reads French and understands IT in the room. It is also, in January, a week of work in a hurry, with suppliers chasing and a fine running.
ONE PAGE TO WRITE BEFORE 31 DECEMBER
- The platform chosen for the French entity, and the channel it uses to contact you.
- The mailbox receiving invoices, its two readers (one reads French), the substitute.
- Where the French tax portal credentials are kept, and who at head office can recover them.
- The exact version and French configuration of the invoicing software, and what it does on its own (or not).
- Who to call in case of doubt about an email, before clicking.
The difference between an hour in November and a week in January is not luck. It is having someone who looks before. That is what a fractional IT manager based in France is for: not choosing the platform in your place, but making sure that, on the day your French accountant asks the question, the answer fits on a page you already have, in a language head office can read.
Frequently asked questions: French e-invoicing for foreign companies
Does French e-invoicing apply to the French subsidiary of a foreign company?
Yes, as soon as the entity is established in France and subject to French VAT: a subsidiary, a branch, or any business with a French VAT registration and a French establishment. Since 1 September 2026 it must be able to receive electronic invoices from its French suppliers through an accredited platform. Issuing its own invoices electronically becomes mandatory for small and medium-sized entities in September 2027. The group’s home-country rules do not replace the French ones.
What happens if nothing is done before 31 December 2026?
The French tax administration’s practical guide provides a tolerance period until 31 December 2026 for businesses engaged in a compliance process. Beyond that, the entity receives a formal notice and has three months to regularise; then the fine is €50 per non-compliant invoice, capped at €15,000 a year. For a site run from abroad, the real cost is usually elsewhere: supplier invoices that land nowhere, chasers in French that nobody at head office reads, and a regularisation done in a hurry.
Can we handle it from head office, or do we need someone in France?
The fiscal part is handled by your French accounting firm, wherever you are. The IT part is where distance hurts: the French tax portal, the platform’s notifications and the fake emails are all in French, the credentials often sit with a local person, and the group’s finance software may not run its French module. What works in practice is one person in France who reads the language and understands IT, spending an hour with the accountant on the phone, then writing the result on one page that head office can read. That is the kind of hour a fractional IT manager spends with the companies he follows.
How do we tell a genuine platform message from a scam?
A genuine message from your platform always comes through the same channel, the one noted at registration, and never asks you to enter credentials through a link in an email or to pay unexpected fees. Faced with a message that presses, threatens a fine or asks for updated bank details, the simple rule is to click nothing and call a number you already know. Scam attempts multiply at every regulatory deadline; December 2026 will be no exception, and they will be written in good French.
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