The e-invoicing mandate is the French tax reform that requires every VAT-registered company established in France to receive, then issue, its domestic B2B invoices in a structured electronic format through an approved platform, and to report to the tax administration (DGFiP) the transaction and payment data that invoices do not cover.
The e-invoicing mandate follows a calendar set by company size:
- 1 September 2026: every company must be able to receive e-invoices, and large companies and mid-caps must issue them
- 1 September 2027: SMEs and micro-enterprises must issue their e-invoices in turn
- Same dates: e-reporting of B2C, cross-border and payment data starts together with the issuance obligation
The e-invoicing mandate relies on three distinct actors that are often confused:
- Approved platforms (PA), formerly called partner dematerialization platforms (PDP): private operators registered by the DGFiP, and the only channel for B2B e-invoices
- The public invoicing portal (PPF): the central directory of invoicing addresses and the data concentrator for the DGFiP, which no longer exchanges invoices since October 2024
- Chorus Pro: the platform for invoices addressed to public-sector buyers, which stays outside the B2B reform
Invoices travel in one of three base formats, UBL, CII or Factur-X, and approved platforms must interoperate with one another, notably through the Peppol network, for which the DGFiP is now the French authority.
Compliance is only half of the equation. A structured invoice delivered by an approved platform is legally valid, not financially correct. It can still carry a supplier price variance, a duplicate billing reference, or a quantity that does not match the purchase order. Structured data makes control possible, it does not perform it.
Phacet operates at that point. Once the platform has delivered the invoice, Phacet's pre-payment controls and supplier invoice automation read the structured data and check it against the order, the receipt and the negotiated price before payment. The e-invoicing mandate builds the infrastructure, and AI finance control turns it into reliable numbers.
