The electronic invoice is compulsory, and you are ready for it

The law is asking for an invoice a machine can read as well as a person can, written from the figures you already have.

What is changing

You write an invoice, turn it into a PDF, email it, and somebody at the other end reads it and types the figures into their own accounting software. That retyping is slow, it is where mistakes creep in, and it is where fraud hides. That same invoice now has to carry those figures inside itself, in a form the other side's software picks up on its own — and it has to travel through an approved platform rather than through your mailbox.

An approved platform is a company the tax authority has vetted to carry invoices between businesses. Your accountant, or the software you already invoice with, will name the one you should use, and it is paid by subscription.

The page everybody is used to stays. What changes is that it now carries its figures along with it.

The dates in France

Since article 123 of the budget act of 19 February 2026 took the government's own portal out of the exchange, the whole exchange goes through the approved platforms, to send and to receive alike.

The team checked these dates on 27 July 2026, against the practical guide the French tax authority publishes. Article 91 of the budget act of 29 December 2023 is what set these years. A calendar written into law can be moved again, and this one already has been.

It is not only France

• Italy has required it between businesses since January 2019, the smallest traders being brought in at the start of 2024.
• Germany has required every business to be able to receive one since January 2025. From January 2027 a business turning over more than 800 000 euros must send them that way, and from January 2028 everybody must.
• Poland switched its largest companies over in February 2026 and most of the rest in April 2026, the very smallest in 2027.
• Across the European Union, invoices between businesses in two different member countries move onto the same footing on 1 July 2030, under a directive the Council adopted on 11 March 2025. Countries already running a scheme of their own at the start of 2024 have until January 2035 to line up with it.

If you sell abroad, or buy from abroad, this reaches you sooner than the French calendar alone would suggest.

What it means for a business that sends invoices

• You must go through one of the approved platforms, which carries the invoices in both directions and reports to the tax authority the data it is entitled to.
• And whatever writes your invoices must create the document in one of the accepted forms. That last step is the one this engine does for you.

What the engine writes, and what it asks of you

The invoice the engine writes is one single file that reads two ways: a page laid out the way your invoices have always looked, and, tucked inside that same file, the same amounts written out for a machine. An invoice that is at once a page to read and a file for a machine is one of the three shapes the French requirements accept, and the order of 7 October 2022 is where they are named. The very same file is accepted in Germany, where it goes under another name.

The machine-readable side — the amounts written out for a machine — comes from you, or from the accounting software that already has those figures. What the engine does is everything after that: it creates the page, seals that side inside the very same file, declares it in the document's own description, and turns the whole thing into a file an archive will still open. That sealing is the fiddly half.

That form is called Factur-X in France and ZUGFeRD in Germany, and it is one and the same thing. It comes in five levels of detail, from the barest up to the one that matches the European requirements in full. Your accountant, or the customer receiving the invoice, will tell you which one they need. You say which one your invoice claims, and the engine keeps your file to it: an invoice keeping to another level than the one you declare is refused rather than written, and so is one attached under a name your invoice does not carry. Checking the amounts themselves stays yours to do.

And the file it creates is an archival one: everything it needs is inside it, so it opens and reads the same way years from now, which is what the requirements ask of the human-readable side.

See the invoice it writes, and the code that writes it

The engine also writes files made to go straight on a printing press, and a document is one or the other, never both. Ask for the one your document is for, and the engine writes it. See what a file ready for the press has to carry

Where to start

The quickest way is to rent the service by the month: you send us what the invoice should say, and the finished invoice comes straight back. Nothing to install, and you can stop at the end of any month. If your documents must stay inside your walls, the very same engine can be bought and run on your own machines.

See the prices See the examples