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

Before long, sending an invoice as a PDF attached to an email will no longer count as sending an invoice at all. The law is asking for a document a machine can read as well as a person can. That is exactly what this engine writes, from the figures you already have.

What is changing, in one sentence

Today 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. Tomorrow that same document 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.

The dates in France

There is no free government service to fall back on. Article 123 of the budget act of 19 February 2026 took the state's own portal out of the exchange, and every business now goes through an approved platform, to send and to receive alike.

The dates above are the ones in force in July 2026. Article 91 of the budget act of 29 December 2023 moved them to these years, and the team read them off the practical guide the French tax authority published in July 2026. 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 everybody else in April 2026, the very smallest having until 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.

Why a PDF sent by email will not do any more

A PDF is a picture of a page. A person reads it; a machine only sees ink. Somebody has to retype the amounts, the dates and the account references at the other end, which is slow, which is where mistakes creep in, and which is where fraud hides. What the law asks for is the same invoice with those figures written into it a second time, in a form the receiving software reads with nobody in between.

The familiar page is not going away. What is going away is a document that carries nothing but the page.

What it means for a business that sends invoices

• You must be able to receive one. From September 2026 a supplier may send you an invoice in this form, and turning it away is not an option.
• You must be able to send one, on the date that matches the size of your company.
• You must go through one of the approved platforms, which carries them in both directions and passes the tax authority what it is owed.
• And whatever writes your invoices must produce the document in one of the accepted forms. That last part is the one this engine does for you.

We are already there

The document 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. This is the mixed form named by the order of 7 October 2022, one of the three the French rules accept, and the very same file is accepted in Germany, where it goes under another name.

Here is the honest division of labour. The machine-readable part — the amounts written out for a machine — comes from you, or from the accounting software that already holds those figures. What the engine does is everything after that: it draws the page, seals that part 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, and the half a reader never forgives you for getting wrong.

The format comes in five levels of detail, from the barest up to the one that matches the European rules in full. You say which one your document claims, and the engine writes that claim into the file. It takes your word for it: it does not read your figures back to check them.

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

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

An invoice is not a press file

The engine also writes files made to go straight on a printing press. That is a different job, and a document is one or the other, never both: an invoice carries a second file tucked inside it, and a file ready for the press carries nothing inside it at all. The people who write the printing standard say so for every version of it.

In practice the question never comes up. An invoice is read on a screen and kept for ten years; a catalogue cover goes on a press. 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 document 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