Chorus Pro is the free French government platform through which suppliers send electronic invoices to public-sector buyers, including the State, local authorities and public hospitals, and it has been mandatory for all of those suppliers since 1 January 2020.
Chorus Pro is operated by the AIFE, the State agency for financial IT. The obligation was phased in by company size: large companies and public entities in 2017, mid-caps in 2018, SMEs in 2019 and micro-enterprises in 2020. Suppliers can submit through three channels: manual entry or PDF upload on the portal, an EDI connection for volume, or an API connected to their invoicing software.
Most Chorus Pro rejections come from missing routing data rather than from the amount:
- the SIRET of the public buyer is wrong or belongs to another entity
- the service code required by the buyer is missing
- the legal commitment number, the public equivalent of a purchase order number, is absent
- the invoice duplicates one already filed on the platform
Chorus Pro stays separate from the B2B reform. Invoices between companies go through approved platforms since the public invoicing portal stopped handling invoice exchange in 2024, while invoices to public buyers continue through Chorus Pro. A company selling to both markets therefore runs two channels, and both accept structured formats such as Factur-X.
Phacet helps suppliers file complete invoices the first time: the agent that can check documentary file completeness verifies that the commitment number, service code and supporting documents are present before submission, which avoids the rejection and payment delay that follow a missing reference. The wider regulatory context is covered in the e-invoicing mandate entry.
