Definition
A freelance developer gets a message from his invoicing software: "choose your platform". He has just emailed his latest Invoice as a numbered PDF, so he assumes he is already compliant.
This is where the misunderstanding starts, and it is almost universal: a PDF sent by email is a digitised invoice, not an electronic invoice.
Electronic invoicing is the obligation, for businesses established in France, to issue and receive their business-to-business invoices in a structured form, meaning a set of data a machine reads without anyone retyping it, and to send them through an approved platform rather than through an inbox.
What changes is not the file, it is the channel: the invoice no longer travels from you to your client, it travels from your platform to theirs, and the tax administration collects the data on the way.
The micro scheme grants no exemption of its own, and neither does the VAT exemption scheme (franchise en base de TVA): charging no VAT does not mean issuing no invoice.
The exemption changes what is written on the document, not the duty to produce one nor the route it takes.
Receiving first, issuing later
The reform carries two obligations that almost every article blends into one.
The first is to receive: there is little to prepare, it simply lands on you the day your suppliers start issuing on their side.
All you need is to be reachable, which means connected to a Certified invoicing platform and correctly identified by your SIREN (business identification number) in the directory that routes the traffic.
The second is to issue your own invoices in that format, and it rolls out in successive waves depending on company size, the smallest businesses last.
A micro-entrepreneur may therefore have to receive electronic invoices long before having to produce any.
Alongside those two sits a third mechanism, E-reporting: sending the tax administration the data from your sales to consumers and to foreign clients.
Those transactions never travel through the business-to-business invoice circuit, yet they do not fall outside the reform.
An activity aimed entirely at the general public is still concerned.
€3,000 invoiced in December, collected in January
An electronic invoice carries a time-stamped issue date, transmitted as it stands. Your turnover does not follow that date, and the gap catches people out every year.
Take a developer under the BNC (non-commercial income) rules who invoices €3,000 to a slow-paying client.
| What happens | Date | Year it belongs to |
|---|---|---|
| €3,000 invoice issued | 18 December 2025 | None: nothing is collected |
| Client transfer received | 9 January 2026 | 2026 turnover |
Those €3,000 go into your first 2026 turnover declaration and cost €3,000 × 25.6%, that is €768 of social contributions at the 2026 rate for non-regulated liberal professions, a rate that covers neither the vocational training contribution nor income tax.
They count towards the 2026 ceiling of €83,600, not the 2025 one, and that micro-scheme ceiling is not the VAT exemption threshold, which sits lower and has to be watched separately.
The invoice creates the claim, the Cash receipt creates the turnover, and no platform will ever declare on your behalf what you actually received.
Switching invoicing tools is precisely when VAT appears on an invoice by itself, because new software installs with a default rate.
Under the franchise en base, the penalty is immediate: any VAT written on an invoice is payable simply because it was written there, even by mistake, and your client cannot deduct it, they lose it outright.
Before the first invoice issued from a new platform, check two things: that the applied rate is zero, and that the Article 293 B notice is still printed, namely "TVA non applicable, article 293 B du CGI" until 31 December 2026.
The Bulletin officiel des finances publiques (the official tax doctrine) accepts two other wordings, including article 293 B bis for the EU-wide exemption.
On 1 January 2027, VAT rules move into a new code and the wording becomes "TVA non applicable, article L. 233-3 du CIBS". Check it on your first January invoice; the old one remains accepted until 30 June 2028.
The timetable, and the date that has already passed
Two obligations, two dates, and the first one catches most people out because it is behind us.
Receiving your invoices in electronic form has been compulsory since 1 September 2026, on the same date for every VAT-taxable business established in France, whatever its size.
That one does not depend on your activity but on your suppliers': the day one of them switches over, you need somewhere to receive.
Issuing your own waits until 1 September 2027 if you are a micro-entrepreneur, large companies and mid-sized companies having been bound since 1 September 2026. E-reporting follows the same timetable.
These dates come from article 91 of the 2024 Finance Act, and the tax administration portal shows them identically.
The scheme has already been postponed once, from 1 July 2024 to 1 September 2026: that is why this page dates its deadlines, and why a date read anywhere other than that portal is worth nothing.
Three checks, on the other hand, depend on none of these deadlines and can be run today: that your invoicing tool advertises support for structured formats, that your SIREN and your address are accurate in the public registers, and that your invoices already carry every mandatory detail.
This page is up to date as of 8 September 2026 and will be revised whenever the scheme moves.
Frequently asked questions
Will a PDF sent by email still be acceptable?
No, not within the business-to-business invoice circuit: a PDF is a picture of an invoice, which no system reads without retyping.
The expected formats are structured, and Factur-X is the most common compromise, since it tucks machine-readable data inside a PDF that remains readable by you.
I only invoice consumers, am I concerned?
Yes, from two directions at once.
Your own business suppliers will send you electronic invoices, which you must be able to receive, and your sales to consumers fall under e-reporting, which passes their data to the administration without any business-to-business invoice being involved.
Does the VAT basic exemption keep me out of the reform?
No. The exemption relieves you of declaring and paying VAT, not of producing invoices or sending them through the prescribed channel.
Your electronic invoice will simply carry the no-VAT wording where a tax amount would sit, exactly as your paper or PDF invoice already did.
Should I change software right now?
There is no rush if yours advertises upcoming support, something publishers state on their website rather than inside the product.
The real risk is not lateness, it is a rushed migration: a product catalogue reimported with a default VAT rate, or an invoice numbering sequence restarting at one, are far harder to repair than a connection set up a month later.