France is about to change how every invoice works. Here's what that means for you.
If you sell to or from France, the way you send and receive invoices is being rewritten by law - and a surprising number of business owners have no idea it's coming. This is the no-jargon version: what's actually changing, when it lands on you, and what to do about it without booking a week off to read government PDFs.
What's changing, in one breath
Today you can email a PDF invoice, or post a paper one, and everyone's happy. France is ending that for business-to-business sales. Soon, invoices between French businesses will have to be structured electronic invoices - sent and received through an officially approved platform that also quietly reports the key data to the tax authority. Think of it less like “email an invoice” and more like “every invoice now goes through an official, machine-readable post office.”
Why? Mostly to close the VAT gap - the tax that should be collected but quietly isn't. When the tax office sees invoice data in near real time, there's a lot less room for things to go missing. Good for the public purse. A genuine project for your finance team.
- From 1 September 2026: every VAT-registered business in France must be able to receive electronic invoices through an approved platform - and large and mid-sized companies must also issue them and report transaction data. (impots.gouv.fr)
- From 1 September 2027: the obligation to issue e-invoices and report data extends to small and micro-enterprises and the self-employed. (economie.gouv.fr)
- Approved platform (“Plateforme Agréée”): a provider registered by the tax administration to send, receive and transmit your invoice data. Every domestic B2B invoice flows through one. (impots.gouv.fr)
- Factur-X: one of the accepted formats - a hybrid file that's a normal human-readable PDF on the outside with machine-readable data tucked inside, so people and software both get what they need.
Accurate as of June 2026. The French timeline has shifted before - always confirm the current dates and your obligations against the official source before acting.
Does this actually hit you?
Quite possibly, and in ways that aren't obvious. A few examples:
- You're a foreign business selling into France. You might assume “French law, not my problem” - but your French customers will need to receive compliant invoices, and your data may need to flow through the system.
- Your invoicing lives in an old tool or a spreadsheet. “Export a PDF and email it” stops being good enough. Something has to connect to an approved platform.
- You're small, so you feel safe until 2027. Except you still have to receive e-invoices from September 2026. The receiving deadline doesn't wait for the issuing one.
Where Kehai comes in
Kehai isn't an invoicing platform - it won't send your invoices. What it does is make sure this mandate (and the next one, and the one after that in whatever country you sell to) never ambushes you. It watches the official French sources, flags the milestones that apply to your setup, and turns each one into a plain action with an owner and a deadline - so “France is changing invoicing” becomes “confirm our platform is ready by this date, assigned to this person, source attached.”
No 60-page PDFs. No newsletter you mean to read and never do. Just the official source, the date, and what to do next.
See it on your business
Not another newsletter you mean to read and never do. Tell me where your business sells, and I'll show you the rule changes that actually touch you - scoped to your jurisdictions, entities and invoice flows.
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