Invoicing French clients: what changes on September 1, 2026

France switches on its B2B e-invoicing mandate in stages: from September 1, 2026 every French company must be able to receive e-invoices through a registered platform (PDP), and large/mid-size companies must start issuing them; SMEs and micro-enterprises follow by September 2027. Accepted formats follow EN 16931: Factur-X (PDF with embedded XML), UBL, and CII.

Honest answer for foreign suppliers

Invoices you send into France from abroad are not directly in the domestic issuing mandate — your French client reports those transactions themselves (e-reporting). But their whole invoice intake is consolidating into PDP workflows. In practice that means: finance teams asking for Factur-X instead of plain PDF, portal-upload requests, and slower payment for anything their tools can't ingest automatically. The EU-wide framework (ViDA) points the same direction for cross-border invoices later this decade.

What to send

Factur-X is the friendly option: a normal, human-readable PDF that carries machine-readable XML inside — their system ingests it, their humans can still open it.
The XML must pass EN 16931 validation — required fields, VAT codes (cross-border B2B is usually reverse-charged), and calculation rules.

Your options today

Keep sending plain PDF — still legal from abroad, increasingly unpopular with French AP teams from September 2026.
French invoicing tools — built for French companies inside the PDP ecosystem, French UI.
A lightweight sender built for outsiders — what we're building: your invoice in, valid Factur-X (or UBL) out, delivered to your client. From $19/month.

Invoice French clients from outside France?
Join early access — founding members lock in $99/year, forever.

FAQ

Is this the same as Chorus Pro? Chorus Pro is the public-sector (B2G) portal — mandatory for invoicing the French state for years. The 2026 mandate extends structured e-invoicing to B2B via PDPs.

Will foreign suppliers be forced in eventually? The direction of travel — France's e-reporting plus the EU's ViDA reforms — is toward structured data for cross-border flows too, later this decade. Getting your invoices machine-readable now is the safe side of history.

This page explains invoice formats and delivery, not tax rules. For VAT questions, talk to your accountant.