The French e-invoicing reform has applied since 1 September 2026. The tax authorities have said they will deal proportionately with companies acting in good faith that run into a technical obstacle. The tolerance is real, but it is narrow: it covers incidents, not the timetable.
The timetable has not moved
Tolerance is neither a postponement nor a suspension. Three deadlines continue to run exactly as before.
| From | Who | Which obligation |
|---|---|---|
| 1 September 2026 | every company within the scope | be able to receive invoices through an approved platform (“plateforme agréée”, formerly “plateforme de dématérialisation partenaire”, PDP) |
| 1 September 2026 | large and mid-sized companies | also issue by that route and transmit transaction and payment data |
| 1 September 2027 | small and medium-sized businesses and micro-businesses | issue electronically and file “e-reporting” data |
What the authorities look at
It is not the failure that decides the matter but what the company did about it. The authorities examine how real the difficulty was, what corrective steps were actually taken, and whether a penalty would be proportionate to the incident.
The dividing line is clear. On one side, a documented failure with remedial measures already under way. On the other, inertia, deliberate avoidance and a lasting refusal to join the system. The first falls under the tolerance. The second does not.
Which incidents are meant
The approach covers temporary situations:
- an approved platform is unreachable;
- an invoice is transmitted or addressed incorrectly;
- the accounting or invoicing software fails;
- a software house, a platform or another provider breaks down.
Business carries on during an outage
The DGFiP practical guide is explicit on this point: economic activity must be able to continue. An invoice sent temporarily by e-mail, as a PDF or on paper cannot be rejected for that reason alone.
If it reflects a real transaction and carries the information needed to process it, it is booked and paid. The right to deduct VAT is assessed as usual, against the ordinary substantive and formal conditions.
That leaves the catch-up, and this is where files turn awkward. Where the supplier is already required to issue electronically, the invoice still has to travel the prescribed route. That second pass needs preparing: without care it produces a double payment, a double entry or a double VAT deduction.
What to do now
- Appoint an approved platform, or check that the existing connection holds.
- Record every incident with its error message, its timestamp and the invoice concerned.
- Keep the correspondence with the platform, the software house and any other provider.
- Move the flows that already work onto the electronic route without waiting.
- Keep the fallback route to the transactions actually affected.
- Correct errors and re-transmit promptly.
- On every re-transmission, check that no duplicate has been created.
What counts in the end is being able to show that the changeover never stood still.
Source: DGFiP practical guide on electronic invoicing.