French E-invoicing Mandate Deadlines Delayed

by Marcus Gray, Product Compliance and Interoperability Manager @ Tradeshift

Friday 28th July 2023, France’s Ministry of Finance announced that they would delay the implementation of mandatory e-invoicing to allow businesses more time to adapt to the requirements. The press release can be found here. The original date for the first wave of the changes was 1st July 2024. On this date all businesses would be required to receive invoices from the government portal from the largest companies that would be required to send invoices via the portal. No new date has been communicated yet, we would expect to hear more information within the next few weeks.

This news follows an announcement that the platform would not be ready for testing until early 2024. This would have meant that businesses would have very little contingency time before the original July deadline. The delay will be welcome news for businesses as it provides more time for testing to help to maintain supply chain resilience when the changes will be required. 

Development of the platform and requirements is not slowing down. Service providers and businesses will still be aiming for the same dates to meet PDP certification requirements and have solutions that can be implemented for their customers. 

Monday 31st July 2023, new specification files were published that provide details of how to manage the new requirements. These replace the specification files published in January 2023. The new specification files add more clarity and references to assist businesses to implement the changes. The use cases that detail corner case management have been published as a separate requirements document. Some of the changes are:

1. The January files said that the portal could be used optionally for international B2B transactions, this has been removed. E-reporting requirements for these transactions remain

2. Invoice data from PDPs must be sent within 24 hours of the document being received

3. Clarity has been added that confirms that the PPF(Public Invoicing Portal) will meet legal storage requirements for any data it receives. This doesn’t replace storage requirements for any documents outside the scope of the PPF but does help businesses meet security requirements at a potentially lower cost

4. Invoice rejection reasons for business reasons will be provided in free form text. Details of the rejections must include clear instructions on how to resolve the issue

Tradeshift is currently working with the authorities and other service providers on the Interoperability Proof of Concept which still needs more definition. 

What is a PDP?

PDP stands for Partner Dematerialisation Platform and is the name given to service providers that will be approved by French authorities to host document exchange for customers and report on the transactions as per the legal requirements. Approval means that the service provider has been assessed and approved as able to –

• • Send and receive invoices on behalf of their customers
  • Receive, control and send e-reporting data
  • Perform compliance checks on invoices and transaction data before transmission
  • Manage and send invoice processing statuses
  • Provide information needed to update the directory

You can read more about France Finance Law changes here.