French E-Invoicing Checker built by Attestwire

My French client rejected my PDF invoice — what now?

First, the reassuring part: you almost certainly did nothing wrong. If a French customer has started sending your invoices back — or their accounts-payable system quietly swallowed one — this is the French e-invoicing reform, not a mistake on your invoice. Here is what changed, what they need from you instead, and what you can do about it this week.

Why it is happening

From 1 September 2026, every VAT-registered business established in France must be able to receive electronic invoices, and must do it through an approved platform — a Plateforme Agréée (PA), the term that replaced "PDP". There is no size threshold on the receive side, so it applies to every French business from day one.

To get ready, French companies have spent 2026 wiring their accounts-payable systems up to a platform. Those platforms take structured invoices — machine-readable data in a defined format. A PDF attached to an email is not structured data, so in the new pipe it has nowhere to go. Two things can happen next, and from your side they look identical:

So: nothing switched off on one dramatic date, and a rejection is not anybody saying your invoice was wrong. It is a routing problem, and routing problems are fixable.

What your client actually needs

Same invoice, different envelope. They need it as a structured e-invoice, delivered to their platform, at their routing address. Three pieces of information make that possible, and only your customer can give you all three:

  1. Which approved platform they use. Every French business has to be attached to one. You can look them up by name or SIREN here and check the official French directory (l'annuaire) for an attached platform — the checker walks you through reading it, in English. Or browse all 148 approved platforms.
  2. Their routing address, and at which level. French e-invoices are addressed to a SIREN (the 9-digit legal entity), a SIRET (14 digits, one establishment), or a SIRET plus a routing code for a specific department or cost centre. Do not guess here: the head-office SIRET is not automatically the right one.
  3. Which format they want. Usually Factur-X, UBL or CII — see the format explainer. Good news: most platforms accept several and convert between them.

One limitation worth knowing about: the directory is CAPTCHA-protected and French-only, and its API is reserved for approved platforms. We link you to it and translate what you will see there, but we never query it for you.

What you can do this week

Here is the good news: you do not have to rebuild your invoicing to unblock a rejected invoice. Start at the top and stop when you are unstuck.

  1. Ask your customer the five questions. Platform name, routing address and level, preferred format, a test invoice before you go live, and who to contact when something gets rejected. The full wording is on the homepage and nothing is gated — copy it into an email today, it takes two minutes.
  2. Ask them how they want this one paid. This is the step people skip, and it is the one that gets you your money. Most French AP teams have an interim route for suppliers who are not sending structured invoices yet — often re-keying it themselves, or asking you to upload it to a portal. Use that route for the current invoice while you sort out the permanent fix.
  3. Check whether you already send a format they accept. If you issue Peppol BIS or UBL for other European customers, you may be much closer than you think: 102 of the 148 approved platforms report accepting UBL. Check this before you build anything French-specific.
  4. Confirm where you actually stand. As a supplier outside France you are generally not the one carrying the French statutory duty — see what non-French suppliers must do for the detail and the exceptions.

What is Factur-X, in one paragraph

Somebody has probably already said this word to you, so here it is in plain English. Factur-X is the French hybrid invoice format. It is an ordinary PDF/A-3 file — you can open it and read a perfectly normal invoice — with a structured XML document tucked inside it, in the UN/CEFACT CII syntax, carrying the same figures in machine-readable form. Technically it is the same standard as the German ZUGFeRD 2.x, and its EN 16931 profile matches the European semantic standard for electronic invoicing. The appeal is that it still looks like the PDF everybody is used to, so your customer's staff do not have to change how they read an invoice — only how their system takes it in. Compare it with UBL, CII and Peppol BIS.

An honest note on scope

This bit is worth money to you, so read it carefully. The statutory obligation to issue electronic invoices sits on businesses established in France. If you have no French establishment, French law does not oblige you to issue through a French platform. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise, and please do not buy a product on that basis alone.

The commercial reality is a separate, less comfortable thing. Your customer's ability to receive is what decides whether your invoice lands, and their AP process now runs on the platform. You can be completely within the law and still not get paid on time, purely because the document you sent has no route into their system. Sales to a business established in France also fall inside your customer's own e-reporting duties, which gives them another reason to want your data structured.

So the useful question is not "am I obliged?" It is "what does this customer need in order to pay me?" — and that is a conversation, not a compliance project.

One caveat we will keep repeating: this is a description of a regulation, not tax or legal advice. Where the answer has money attached, confirm it with your customer and your own adviser.

Want the checklist and the September 1 updates by email?

Nothing is hidden behind this form — the questions to ask your client are already on this site, free. Leave your address and we will send you the same list in a form you can forward to a colleague, plus a note whenever the French rules or the approved-platform register change in a way that actually affects you. That is it.

Here is exactly what happens to your address. We store it — lowercased, with the date you first sent it, and nothing else — in Cloudflare Workers KV, the key-value store this site runs on. We use it to send you this checklist and the occasional update about the French mandate. No third-party marketing tools, no tracking pixels, nothing shared with anyone. Want out? Reply to any email, or write to hello@attestwire.com, and we will remove you.

Frequently asked questions

Can I still send a PDF invoice to a French company?

You can send one — but from 1 September 2026 it is not a compliant electronic invoice under the French reform, and your customer's approved platform will not ingest it, so expect it to come back or go nowhere. The fix is quick: ask the customer for their platform, routing address and preferred format, then send a structured invoice instead.

Why did my invoice get rejected without an error message?

Frustrating, and there is a reason for it. Rejections now travel back through the platform rather than by email, so if you are not connected to one, there is nothing to deliver the message to. This is why it pays to ask your customer up front who to contact when an invoice fails — otherwise a silent rejection looks exactly like a slow payer, and you wait weeks for nothing.

Do I have to use a French platform as a foreign supplier?

Generally no, and you should not let anyone rush you into one. The French obligation to issue applies to businesses established in France, so a supplier with no French establishment is outside it. What binds you in practice is your customer's receive process: they take invoices through their platform, so a structured invoice is what gets paid. You can send one through your own provider, over Peppol where their platform accepts it, or through a French platform if you decide you want one.

What format should I send to a French customer?

Ask them — genuinely, that is the answer. The three formats French approved platforms are built around are Factur-X (a PDF/A-3 with CII XML embedded), UBL and CII (both plain XML). Many platforms also take Peppol BIS, which uses UBL syntax. If you already produce UBL or Peppol BIS for other European customers, check whether their platform accepts it before you build anything new.

How do I find out which platform my French client uses?

Find their 9-digit SIREN, then look it up in the official French directory, which shows whether an approved platform is attached and at what level invoices should be routed. Easiest route: start from the company checker on this site. It finds the SIREN for you and translates every line of the directory into English. If the directory does not name the platform, ask their finance team — they know.

Plenty of tools generate compliant structured formats these days, including one from Attestwire, who build this checker. This page is not a pitch for any of them, ours included — the questions above are worth asking whatever you end up using.