B2G e-Invoicing in France
France announced business-to-government (B2G) e-invoicing at the beginning of 2017. All suppliers to public entities have been required to issue and submit invoices electronically since 2020. Almost all suppliers will have to send their invoices via Chorus Pro.
What is Chorus Pro?
Chorus Pro, which is the national invoicing portal, help all public sector suppliers to submit invoices, track any invoice’s status, and monitor payments, all on the same platform. It was developed by the Agence pour l’Informatique Financière de l’État (AIFE), the French public IT agency , supported by the Ministry of Economy and Finance. The invoice format should be XML or PDF.
Is e-Invoicing mandatory in France?
B2G e-invoicing became mandatory in January 2020 for all public authorities.
Large companies (with more than 5,000 employees) have been legally obligated since 2017.
Medium-sized companies (250 to 5,000 employees) have been legally obligated since 2018.
Medium-small companies (10 to 250 employees) have been legally obligated since 2019.
Very small companies (with fewer 10 employees) have been legally obligated since 2020.
E-invoicing will expand to B2B transactions in 2023.
How to submit French e-Invoices
Taxpayers can submit their e-invoices to the Chorus Pro portal,
- via the Peppol eDelivery Network,
- via electronic data interchange (EDI), or
- via an application programming interface (API).
Peppol simplifies the cross-border exchange of electronic business documents. It was developed by the European Union and associated states. Sending e-documents and messages, or connecting networks with each other is safer and easier via Peppol.
Suppliers will have to choose a Peppol Access Point provider to connect to the portal and other participants on the network. (‘Connect once, connect to all’.)
Additionally, the portal allows the creation and uploading of invoices in PDF format for companies working with a small number of invoices.
SNI’s French e-invoice solution
SNI provides an SAP-integrated e-invoice solution, as well as an external portal solution to government supplier companies.
SNI’s solution:
- connects users to the Peppol network,
- sends electronic invoices to the Chorus Pro portal in the required electronic format, and
- handles all the steps in the process (data extraction, mapping, and transmission).
