Definition
End of the month. You open your URSSAF account to file, you pull up the invoices sent over the past thirty days, you add them up, you submit.
The figure is wrong, and it will be wrong again next month: what you declare is not what you invoiced, it is what you were actually paid.
The livre des recettes (income ledger) is the document that holds that difference.
It is a journal, filled in calendar order, where every sum actually received is entered on its Cash receipt date: a transfer landing on 6 January belongs to January, even if the invoice is dated 18 December.
It is the only bookkeeping a micro-enterprise is required to keep, and it is also the only proof of what you declare.
What a single line must contain
No template is imposed: a notebook, a spreadsheet or invoicing software all work, as long as the lines follow one another in date order, with no gaps and no crossings-out.
Each line carries the date of receipt, the reference of the supporting document, the client's name, the nature of what was sold, the amount received and the payment method.
That reference is in practice the invoice number: it is how an inspector ties a line in the ledger to a document, and it is why Invoice numbering has to run unbroken.
The payment method is not decoration. It is what lets you reconcile the ledger with the bank account, and a cash payment often has nothing but that line to prove it existed.
Small retail sales settled in cash may be totalled at the end of the day, provided the till records are kept; outside that case, every payment gets its own line.
The ledger is never sent to anyone.
It is produced on request, during an URSSAF or tax audit, which means it has to be archived: Document retention for accounting records runs into years, long after the job concerned is finished.
One December, line by line
A freelance graphic designer in an unregulated liberal profession (BNC, non-commercial profits) sends three invoices in December 2026: €1,200, €800 and €1,000.
She has therefore invoiced €3,000. Her income ledger, however, holds only two December lines: the €1,200 transfer received on the 12th and the €800 one received on the 23rd.
The client owing €1,000 pays on 6 January, and that sum opens the January 2027 page.
December is therefore declared at €2,000.
At the 25.6% rate applying in 2026 to unregulated liberal professions, contributions come to €512.
On top comes the CFP, the contribution à la formation professionnelle or vocational training levy, at 0.2% of Turnover for a liberal profession in 2026, which is €4.
It is only owed if revenue was declared in the previous calendar year, as it was here.
Total paid: €516. Adding up her invoices instead, she would have declared €3,000, paid €774, and advanced €258 on money she had not yet received.
A contribution rate never covers everything: not that levy, not the chamber levy owed by traders and craftspeople, and not income tax, which is settled separately.
A ledger kept late becomes expensive when VAT arrives.
The higher VAT threshold, €41,250 in 2026 for a service provider, is assessed on the current year and ends the exemption on the very day it is crossed: transactions carried out from that date are subject to VAT.
It is not a standalone threshold but a sub-ceiling: total revenue, sales included, has to stay below €93,500 in 2026 as well, and that is what pushes mixed activities out of the exemption.
That is what article 293 B of the French tax code sets out, and not the first day of the month of the overrun, as is often written.
An up-to-date ledger gives you the exact date; a ledger caught up in March forces you to reissue invoices, deposits included.
Income ledger, bookkeeping and purchase ledger
Three documents with similar names do three different jobs. The income ledger records money coming in.
The Purchase ledger records money going out, and it only concerns buy-and-resell activities, accommodation and food sold for consumption on the premises: a service provider does not have to keep one.
Full company bookkeeping, meanwhile, produces a balance sheet and a profit and loss account, and the micro regime waives it precisely because expenses cannot be deducted.
Which leaves the most expensive confusion of all.
The ledger total is turnover, not income: it knows nothing of your hardware, your software subscriptions or your travel, which come out of that sum without ever reducing it.
That total, and nothing else, is what goes into the monthly or quarterly Turnover declaration filed with URSSAF, including when it is nil: a month with no payments is declared at €0.
Frequently asked questions
Is a plain spreadsheet enough?
Yes, no format is imposed. A spreadsheet is fine as long as it respects date order, leaves no gaps or corrections, and keeps the reference of every supporting document.
The risk is not the tool, it is the line added three months later: a ledger filled in as you go stays consistent with the bank account, a reconstructed one never quite does.
Should unpaid invoices be entered?
No. An invoice enters the ledger only on the day it is settled, and an invoice never paid never enters it at all.
It remains a debt to recover, but it forms no part of the declared turnover and no part of the contribution calculation.
Chasing unpaid invoices is tracked separately, in its own follow-up list.
What happens if you do not keep one?
The ledger is only ever requested during an audit.
On that day, not having one deprives you of the sole proof of what you received: the administration reconstructs your turnover itself from your bank statements, and it is then up to you to show that it got the figure wrong.
Keeping it takes minutes a month, rebuilding it takes weeks.
Do PayPal or Stripe payments go in at the net amount received?
No, what goes in is the sum paid by the customer, before the platform's commission.
That commission is a business expense, and the micro regime deducts no expenses at all: entering the net amount transferred to your account means under-declaring your turnover.