Tax authorities lay out plans for planning and launching Sept 2026 mandatory e-invoicing and e-reporting
On 13th December, the French tax authorities, DGFiP and national association of e-invoicers, FNFE-MPE, provided a public update of its plans in preparation for the launch of a 2026 B2B e-invoicing and B2C e-reporting mandate.
This included the creation of a dedicated AFNOR commission to run the launch, and confirmation a French Peppol Authority will be established to promote interoperability of the regime.
New external specifications December 2024
A new version of the external specifications will be published on the 18th December. It will describe the scope of operation of the PPF, the data hub and registry of providers, i.e. in its interaction with the PDPs (approved e-service providers) on the Directory and on the exchange of information on invoice data and statuses required by the DGFIP. As a reminder, the PPF will also provide public access to the Directory through its Portal.
The description of invoice formats, the use of lifecycle messages between companies via the PDPs, and use cases therefore fall outside the scope of external specifications, but will be provided by a new standards body (see below).
New AFNOR e-invoicing standards body
An AFNOR commission will be created in January 2025 and will take charge of the description of the standard, a common operating base between PDPs, but also between OD (or more generally business information systems) and PDPs.
It will take over the work of the DGFiP / AIFE, with comments from the ecosystem represented in particular by the FNFE, to publish the functional and technical documentation on the formats of the minimum base and on the use cases. This commission will also have the mission of collecting specific sectoral needs to support them in the use of the Standard, and when necessary create the necessary extensions to meet the needs.
All this will happen in coordination with the European work, which, following the adoption of ViDA, also aims to allow an alignment of the semantic invoice model with B2B needs and at the EU level.
The DGFIP will be a key stakeholder in this AFNOR Commission, also ensuring the financing of the secretariat. The FNFE and its members will also be actively involved, as well as representatives of sectoral needs that would not be represented there.
Ensuring interoperability
It is also necessary to organize the governance of interoperability between PDPs, first of all to enable a native network interoperability mode, which can be implemented by default to guarantee connectivity between each PDP, but also to define the minimum common obligations of the PDPs, in terms of formats and use cases to be supported, organization of PDP changes, common practices.
To do this, the DCTCE PEPPOL POC conducted over the past 2 years has made it possible to define the specific operating features of the PEPPOL network to address the needs of the reform. A PEPPOL authority was needed to manage its governance.
French Peppol Authority set-up
The DGFiP confirmed that the Administration would become the PEPPOL Authority in the coming months. To enable the production of exchanges via PEPPOL for France from the beginning of 2025, OpenPEPPOL has also decided to take charge of the PEPPOL Authority for France, while the Administration takes over.
Thus, the PDPs that wish and are ready will be able to start recruiting their customers, so that they define their invoice reception addresses and can receive their invoices from their suppliers who are also ready to issue them, from January 2025.
3-phase launch schedule
The reform schedule has also been confirmed ahead of the September 2026 launch:
- 3 February 2025: the opening of the Directory (LOT 1 of the PPF) in qualification with 10 PDP Beta testers, then an opening in production at the end of February, with a fully loaded Directory. From then on, all PDPs will be able to pass the qualification tests, then the production connection tests, with the individualized support of the DGFIP / AIFE teams, and with the objective of having most of the PDPs connected by the end of April 2025. This will then allow all PDPs to update the directory, in synchronization with what will have been anticipated on PEPPOL for those who have done so. From then on, the equipment of companies and the exchange of invoices and statuses can begin under the conditions of the reform.
- 13th October 2025: The qualification environment will be available for Lot 2, namely the Concentrator. As for Lot 1, all PDPs will be invited to connect and test the operation of this part (flows 1 of data on domestic invoices, flows 6 for statuses, flows 10 for e-reporting). This will make it possible to raise the registration reserves of PDPs, which will be able to This will make it possible to raise the registration reserves of PDPs, which can then be fully registered. They will then have a maximum of one year to produce their audit.
- 9th February 2026: The Concentrator will be put into production to be used in Pilot mode by any company that wishes to do so. The objective is to be able to ensure the proper functioning of the system for all use cases and in an operational production framework. This will be an opportunity to be able to adapt, correct, tighten the screws, before the obligation to strictly comply with the requirements.
The role of ChorusPro and B2G
ChorusPro will remain in place for the long term, first as an invoice reception platform for the public sector, but also as an invoice issuing platform for the public sector for suppliers who wish to continue to use it. It will therefore be a bit of a PDP for this scope alone, since it will take care of extracting flow 1 and sending the mandatory statuses.
But it will also be possible to go through a PDP to issue invoices to the public sector, with the formats and terms of the minimum base (but always augmented by the specific ChorusPro business rules). In this case, flow 1 and the statuses at the initiative of the issuing PDP will be carried out by the PDP, and the PPF will then play the role of recipient PDP.
