Definition
A client accepts your €3,000 quote for a small website. You would rather not block out three weeks with nothing in the bank, so you ask for 30% before starting.
What you send them is where many go wrong: it is not a signed quote, not an improvised receipt, and not a proforma.
A deposit invoice (facture d'acompte) is the invoice that goes with a Deposit, meaning a first payment collected before the job is finished.
It is a full invoice: it carries a number, it enters your books, and it can never be deleted once issued. It does not replace the Quotation, which describes what will be done.
And it does not stand on its own: a balancing invoice comes later, restating the full amount and deducting what has already been settled.
What it must contain
It carries every one of the Mandatory invoice details of an ordinary invoice: your identity and your SIRET (the establishment registration number), the client's details, the issue date, a description of the work, the amount, and the payment terms.
Three things are specific to it: the word acompte in the heading, the full value of the order of which it represents only a fraction, and the reference of the quote or purchase order it belongs to.
Without that reminder of the total, neither your client nor an inspector can tie the payment to the work.
The number follows the ordinary rule: Invoice numbering must stay continuous, with no gap and no duplicate.
The safest choice is to place the deposit invoice in your usual sequence, at its own date.
A separate series is accepted only where it matches genuinely distinct operating conditions and is itself unbroken.
If you benefit from the franchise en base (the VAT basic exemption), the invoice carries the Article 293 B notice, the wording TVA non applicable, article 293 B du CGI, and shows no VAT amount.
The BOFiP, the official tax doctrine database, accepts two further wordings, one of them a reference to the European directive: the phrase you use is not the only valid one.
This wording applies until 31 December 2026; VAT rules move to a new code on 1 January 2027, and the invoice then carries "TVA non applicable, article L. 233-3 du CIBS".
Three thousand euros spread across two years
Take that website again, built by a freelance developer in an unregulated liberal profession (BNC, non-commercial profits).
A €900 deposit, invoiced and received on 12 November 2026; a €2,100 balance, received on 9 January 2027.
The €900 belongs to the November 2026 declaration.
At the 25.6% rate applying in 2026 to liberal professions under the general scheme, social contributions come to €230.40.
On top comes the CFP, the contribution à la formation professionnelle or vocational training levy.
It is 0.2% of turnover for a liberal profession in 2026, which is €1.80, and it is due as soon as a positive turnover was declared in the previous calendar year.
She pays €232.20. An architect affiliated to the Cipav would apply 23.2% in 2026, and none of these rates covers income tax, which is settled separately.
The €2,100 balance goes into none of the 2026 declarations.
Received on 9 January, it belongs to the 2027 year: this €3,000 job weighs only €900 in her 2026 turnover, and that figure alone counts towards the scheme ceiling and towards the year's VAT threshold.
She will declare the balance at the rates in force in 2027, which have not yet been published: no change is confirmed to date, and this page will be revised when the finance act comes out.
What decides the year is not the invoice date but the date of the Cash receipt. A deposit invoice issued on 28 December and paid on 5 January belongs entirely to the following year.
Conversely, a deposit received in December for a job starting in March belongs to December, because work still to come postpones nothing.
The line repeated everywhere, that the ceiling is measured on what you invoiced, is wrong: it is measured on what you actually received.
A deposit you collect can change your VAT position in the middle of a job.
For a service provider, the basic exemption stops once the year's turnover passes €41,250 in 2026, and article 293 B of the French tax code sets the effect on the very day of the crossing, not on the first day of the following month.
The deposit that takes you over the line is the first document that must carry VAT, even though the quote had been accepted under the exemption.
Three useful clarifications. That €41,250 figure covers services only, and your total national turnover must also stay under €93,500 in 2026.
Going over €37,500 of services in 2026 without reaching €41,250 also costs you the exemption, though only from the following 1 January.
And losing the exemption does not push you out of the micro scheme, whose ceiling is €83,600 for the years 2026 to 2028.
Proforma, arrhes and progress invoices: what it is not
The Proforma invoice looks like an invoice without being one: it prices an order still to come, takes no number in the sequence and enters no set of books.
Sending one to ask for a deposit is the most common mistake, and it leaves the money you receive without a valid supporting document.
A deposit is also not arrhes.
An acompte binds both parties firmly, and a client who backs out remains committed; arrhes, by contrast, give each side the right to withdraw against compensation set by the civil code.
The word printed on the document decides which rule applies, so it is chosen before printing, not after the dispute.
Finally, a deposit invoice is not a progress invoice.
The first calls in a fraction agreed in advance, before the work is done; the second records what has genuinely been completed at a given date, on a job that stretches over time.
Frequently asked questions
How do I deduct the deposit on the balancing invoice?
The balancing invoice restates the full price of the work, then deducts each deposit already invoiced by quoting its number and its date, leaving the amount still to pay.
Without that line-by-line deduction, your books show the same income twice and your client pays the same sum twice.
The client pulls out after paying the deposit: what happens to the invoice?
It stays in your records, because an invoice that has been issued is never deleted.
If the money has to go back, the correction goes through a credit note, cancelling all or part of the deposit invoice while keeping a trace of both documents.
If you keep the money, it remains turnover for the year in which it was received.
Is a deposit received before any work starts declared straight away?
Yes, in the declaration for the month or quarter in which the money reached your account.
The micro scheme works on a cash basis: how far the job has progressed has no bearing on the declaration date, and waiting for delivery before declaring exposes you to an adjustment.
Can I issue a single invoice at the end instead of a deposit invoice?
You can work without a deposit at all, but as soon as money is paid to you during the job, it calls for its own dated and numbered document.
Rolling everything into one late invoice leaves a payment with no matching invoice, and creates a gap between your bank statements and your declarations.