Since 1 September 2026, every VAT-registered business in France has to be able to receive structured electronic invoices, not just PDF invoices sent by email. Large and medium-sized enterprises also have to be able to issue them in structured format; small and micro businesses get an extended deadline to September 2027 for the issuing side. If any of your customers are VAT-registered businesses in France, this mandate reaches you even if your company has no legal presence there at all.
Why "receive" is the part that catches foreign sellers out
Founders selling SaaS into France often assume an e-invoicing mandate is a French-business problem, something that applies to companies incorporated there, not to a foreign seller invoicing French customers. That assumption is wrong for the receiving side of this mandate. A French VAT-registered business that buys your product needs to be able to receive a structured e-invoice as part of its own compliance, and depending on how your invoicing is set up, that can mean your invoice to them needs to be issued through, or made compatible with, France's structured e-invoicing system — not simply emailed as a PDF the way it might have been accepted before.
The exact obligation on your side depends on your own business's size and structure and on how the transaction is routed, which is genuinely detailed enough that this is worth a direct conversation with a French tax adviser rather than something to self-diagnose from a blog post. What's not ambiguous is that the date has already passed — the receiving obligation took effect 1 September 2026, and it's live now, not upcoming.
What the penalties actually are
Non-compliance carries two separate penalty tracks. Failing to issue a proper e-invoice carries a penalty of €50 per invoice, capped at €15,000 per year. Failing to meet e-reporting obligations — the separate requirement to transmit transaction data to French tax authorities — carries €500 per failure, also capped at €15,000 per year. Both caps mean this isn't a business-ending risk for most companies even at scale, but it's a real, avoidable cost that accumulates for as long as a business's invoicing process doesn't match what the mandate requires.
Who is actually affected right now
If you invoice any VAT-registered business in France today, you're affected by the receiving-side requirement now, regardless of your own company's size or country of incorporation. If you are a large or medium enterprise yourself selling into France, you additionally need to be able to issue structured e-invoices as of 1 September 2026. If you're a small or micro business, the issuing requirement doesn't reach you until September 2027, which gives you a genuine runway to prepare rather than an immediate deadline — but it's real runway, not an indefinite delay, and it's worth starting the compliance work well before that date arrives rather than in the weeks before it.
What to actually do this month
Check whether any of your current French customers are VAT-registered businesses, and if so, ask them directly how they want to receive invoices under the new requirement — many French companies are actively working through this with their own vendors right now, and getting ahead of the question makes you an easier vendor to keep paying compliantly.
If you're a larger business already required to issue structured e-invoices, this almost certainly means routing invoices through one of France's approved e-invoicing platforms (referred to as PDPs, or "plateformes de dématérialisation partenaires") rather than continuing to email PDFs — check with a French tax adviser or your accounting software provider about which platform integration applies to your situation.
If you're a small business with the 2027 runway still ahead of you, don't treat that as "not my problem yet." Start researching which platform and invoicing format you'll need well before the deadline, since integrating a new invoicing system properly takes real implementation time, and the businesses that leave this until the final months tend to be the ones who end up non-compliant on day one.
The bottom line
Since 1 September 2026, every VAT-registered business in France must be able to receive structured e-invoices, and large and medium enterprises must issue them too, with penalties up to €15,000 a year for each failure track. If you sell to French VAT-registered customers, check your current invoicing setup against this requirement now, and if you're a small business with the 2027 issuing deadline ahead, start preparing well before it arrives.
This is general information, not tax advice. Rules, thresholds and penalty amounts can change; verify current requirements with a qualified French tax adviser before relying on any of this.