Peppol eInvoicing in France

While most countries are introducing regulations around eInvoicing when dealing with the public sector, France is going further, with a push to make eInvoicing mandatory for all businesses by 2025. This will not only keep them in line with Directive 2014/55/EU but will bring the country cost savings and greater competitiveness in international markets.

If you’re wondering about the state of eInvoicing in France, what Factur-X and Chorus Pro are, and how Peppol eInvoicing fits into the whole system, then you are not alone. This blog post will address many of the most common questions, and show you how you can easily become Peppol-enabled as an enterprise, or even a Peppol service provider for public and private sector entities not just in France, but for any business throughout the world hoping to transact on the Peppol network.

Much like Germany, Portugal, Italy, and Croatia, France have their own national invoicing standard (Factur-X) and platform (ChorusPro) through which electronic invoices can be sent. While other countries like Sweden, Norway, and Denmark also had their own national eInvoice format(s), most have either merged with or been replaced by the Peppol standard, which allows for easy e-document interoperability across borders.

As mentioned above, ChorusPro is the national invoicing portal, through which all public sector contractors and their suppliers must send structured electronic invoices. Through Chorus Pro you can:

ChorusPro has seen a huge increase in usage over a relatively short period of time. As reported on the European Commission’s website:

In 2019, there were 547,000 suppliers invoicing 166,000 public contractors using ChorusPro.

These numbers are extremely encouraging and show the benefits of eInvoicing, which include:

In accordance with Directive 2014/55/EU, public sector contracting authorities are required to be able to receive and process invoices sent by private sector suppliers. Europe-wide, this relates to 300,000 public administrations! As we have seen with the example of Germany’s system of federated states, some smaller regional public authorities are not yet required by law to work with eInvoices, which has led to an uneven rollout; but nonetheless, B2G eInvoicing has quickly become the norm.

As referenced at the start of this blog post, France has implemented its own ambitious timetable with Finance Law No. 2019 – 1479, which will hopefully see all businesses in the B2G and B2B markets using eInvoices in the near future. The law states that:

This is an ambitious but realistic target that will see businesses of all sizes and sectors benefit from the eInvoicing advantages listed above.

Factur-X is the French invoice format mandated for use by the government. It has equivalent specifications to ZUGFerd 2.1, the hybrid PDF/XML German invoice format. As a UN/CEFACT Cross Industry Invoice XML message, Factur-X, is one of the two acceptable message types that fall under the European standard. The other type is UBL 2.1, which is used as part of Peppol BIS (Business Interoperability Specifications) 3.0.

As France has its own standards for eInvoicing, you may be wondering whether Peppol is needed and if it is the best option.

If you are a small business sending very few invoices domestically, putting manual information into ChorusPro can be suitable; however, for bigger businesses sending many eInvoices, and conglomerates that are transacting internationally, Peppol is undoubtedly the best choice for the following reasons:

If you are a small- to medium-sized business in France, you have the option of working in ChorusPro or through your ERP system if it offers an API connection. If you fall into one of the following three categories, you will need to get Peppol Access Point accreditation to be able to connect to the network and provide Peppol to your employees or clients:

With accreditation, you can essentially become a Peppol Access Point provider, with the ability to create Peppol IDs for those who wish to join the network.

Tickstar is a Peppol infrastructure provider(SaaS), with experience in offering easy Peppol implementation to clients around the world for almost 10 years. We have seen the network grow and know the unique challenges that public and private sector entities face when connecting. We can fast-track your Peppol accreditation, handling development, hosting, and maintenance, so the only thing you need to concentrate on is growing your business.

We offer the following Peppol Components as a Service in the cloud:

And popular additional features like:

Peppol is central to the EU’s eInvoicing strategy, as well as those of Norway, Singapore, New Zealand, and Australia. The amount of Peppol Authorities and Access Points are increasing, and there are currently OpenPeppol members in 38 countries. By providing your business or clients Peppol access, they then become part of a connect once, reach all network, gaining a competitive advantage in the global marketplace.

Contact Tickstar about the SMP, shared instance, or white-label Access Point accreditation, or check out our new video, where you can get an overview of why partnering with an infrastructure provider is the smart way to interact with Peppol.