# E-reporting in France: What You Need to Know

> Understand France's e-reporting obligations for B2C, international sales, and payment data. Learn about timelines, frequencies, and penalties for compliance.

Published: 2026-10-16

Canonical: https://sygnet.ai/blog/e-reporting-france-what-you-need-to-know

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## Key takeaways

- E-reporting is a genuinely distinct obligation: it covers sales to consumers (B2C), sales to professional clients not established in France (intra-EU and export), and payment data for certain services, transmitting aggregated data rather than invoices.
- The timeline follows that of the invoice-issuance obligation: 1 September 2026 for large companies and mid-sized enterprises (ETI), 1 September 2027 for SMEs, micro-businesses and small firms.
- Frequency depends not on company size but on VAT regime: every ten days under the standard monthly VAT scheme, monthly under the standard quarterly and simplified schemes, and every two months under the VAT exemption threshold (franchise en base).
- Since the 2026 Finance Act, failure to comply with e-reporting costs €500 per missed transmission, capped at €15,000 per year.

## Do I need to do e-reporting if I never invoice in B2B?

Yes. A company that sells only to consumers issues no electronic invoices at all, but it must still transmit its sales data to the DGFiP (Direction générale des finances publiques, France's tax authority). E-reporting is the transmission to the DGFiP of data on sales to consumers or to foreign businesses.

Take a bakery, an e-commerce site or a physiotherapy practice: no structured invoice to issue. A business that sells only to consumers has no electronic invoice to issue, either in 2026 or in 2027, but it must be able to receive them from that date, and will later have to transmit its sales data in a form that has nothing to do with an invoice.

This dual obligation surprises many business owners. Even if your SME is not required to issue electronic invoices before September 2027, it must be able to receive electronic invoices from its suppliers starting 1 September 2026.

> Not issuing electronic invoices doesn't mean escaping the reform: it means entering it through the other door.

## Which transactions fall under e-reporting rather than e-invoicing?

Three categories: sales to consumers, transactions with foreign clients, and payment receipts where VAT becomes due on payment. E-reporting refers to the obligation to transmit transaction and payment data to the DGFiP for operations not covered by e-invoicing: sales to consumers, transactions with foreign businesses, and exchanges not subject to VAT.

The export case is often misunderstood. An invoice issued to a foreign client, whether within the European Union or outside it, falls under e-reporting: it does not pass through the e-invoicing channel, but its data must still be sent to the tax authority.

The most common profile among SMEs is mixed. Domestic B2B sales go through e-invoicing, while B2C and export sales go through e-reporting. A 40-person accounting firm that invoices 95% French professional clients and a few expatriates will therefore have two flows to manage, not one.

On the payment-data side, this information may relate to a domestic B2B electronic invoice, an international transaction that generated an invoice, or B2C transactions where receipts are aggregated on a daily basis.

## What data do I actually need to transmit?

Totals, not receipts. For each reporting period, you transmit the net amount, the VAT amount and the gross amount, broken down by applicable rate (20%, 10%, 5.5%, 2.1%, exempt): these are totals, not invoice line items.

For B2C transactions, this means data aggregated by day: the tax base broken down by VAT rate and the corresponding VAT amounts. The scope was narrowed along the way: since the decree of 27 July 2026, businesses no longer need to transmit the number of transactions carried out during the day or the numbers of any invoices issued, and no data that would allow individual consumers to be identified is passed on to the tax authority.

Transmission is not done directly. It must go through an approved platform (plateforme agréée, or PDP), which verifies the data and then forwards it to the DGFiP. Compatible software can prepare and send the information to the approved platform, but if it is not itself an approved platform, it cannot transmit the regulatory data directly to the tax authority.

The stated goal on the government's side: to track VAT in near real time.

## E-invoicing or e-reporting: what's the practical difference?

| Criterion | E-invoicing | E-reporting |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | B2B between French companies subject to VAT | B2C, international, non-taxable persons |
| What is transmitted | The full invoice passes through approved platforms | Aggregated data or invoice data |
| Format | Factur-X (France's hybrid PDF/XML invoice format), UBL or CII | Structured data flows via an approved platform |
| Frequency | With every invoice | Aggregated (B2C) or per transaction (export) |
| Nature of the obligation | Issuance + receipt | Data transmission only |
| Penalty | €50 per invoice, capped at €15,000/year (French Tax Code, art. 1737 III) | €500 per transmission, capped at €15,000/year (French Tax Code, art. 1788 D) |

Both strands share the same timeline but not the same mechanics. The first is event-driven (one invoice, one transmission), the second is periodic. If you're already working on the invoicing side of things, our page on [electronic invoicing in France](https://sygnet.ai/solutions/e-invoicing-france) details the expected formats and flows.

## How often do I need to transmit the data?

It depends on your VAT regime, not your headcount. Frequency depends on the VAT regime, not the size of the company.

The reference table is easy to remember: standard monthly scheme, every ten days with a 10-day deadline after the period ends; standard quarterly scheme, monthly before the 10th of the following month; simplified scheme, monthly between the 25th and the 30th; VAT exemption threshold, every two months between the 25th and the 30th. As for the rumour of a relaxed schedule: it has been denied, three transmissions a month remain the rule under the standard monthly scheme.

For an online retailer under the standard monthly scheme, this means 36 submissions a year, on top of VAT returns. For companies on the monthly regime, the pace is therefore demanding: three transmission windows every month.

Micro-entrepreneurs are not exempt. A micro-entrepreneur under the VAT exemption threshold is still subject to e-reporting for sales to consumers or international clients, with transmission every two months; their obligation to issue invoices between VAT-registered businesses starts on 1 September 2027, but they must be able to receive electronic invoices from 1 September 2026.

## What happens if a company misses a transmission?

€500 per missed transmission, and the meter runs fast when the cadence is every ten days. For the transmission of transaction and payment data, the fine rose from €250 to €500 per missed transmission, the regime having been tightened by the 2026 Finance Act.

The cap shouldn't be too reassuring. The €15,000 annual cap applies separately to transaction data and to payment data, meaning a service provider's total annual exposure can reach €30,000. A worked example: under the standard monthly scheme, with 36 transmissions a year, exposure reaches the €15,000 cap on transactions alone and can climb to €21,000 once payment data is included.

The real risk lies elsewhere. A missing transmission throws off your VAT return, and the resulting reassessment carries no cap at all. This makes sense given the purpose of the scheme: the reform aims for a pre-filled VAT return, with the DGFiP cross-checking e-invoicing and e-reporting data.

> The penalty cap protects your cash flow, not your VAT return.

## Where should you actually start?

Four steps, in this order. First, choose an approved platform: as soon as you do, you're registered in the national directory and your suppliers know where to send their invoices.

Next, map out your flows: how much revenue comes from domestic B2B, how much from B2C, how much from exports. An accounting firm that receives 300 supplier invoices a month also needs to check that the 20% of its revenue from services to consumers is properly isolated in its software, by VAT rate.

Third, check that your till system or e-commerce platform actually produces daily aggregates by rate. This is often where things get stuck, not in the transmission itself.

Finally, align your internal timeline with your VAT regime rather than with the September deadline. Except for the tax identification number, the data to be transmitted matches that of the electronic invoice.

Sygnet publishes document-data extraction tools used in particular by [accounting firms](https://sygnet.ai/solutions/accounting-firms) to structure incoming documents, and has released a [guide to the 2026-2027 deadlines and penalties](https://sygnet.ai/blog/french-e-invoicing-2026-2027-deadlines-penalties-smes).

## FAQ

### Do I need to transmit every receipt to the DGFiP?

No. B2C data is transmitted in aggregated form on a daily basis: you transmit daily totals, not the details of each transaction. You break these totals down by VAT rate. No personal data about your customers is transmitted. Your till system or e-commerce platform therefore needs to be able to produce these daily totals, which is the real technical challenge.

### My client is a German company: e-invoicing or e-reporting?

E-reporting. E-invoicing covers B2B invoices between VAT-registered businesses established in France, while e-reporting covers sales to consumers and international transactions. It makes no difference whether the client is inside or outside the European Union: the invoice does not go through the approved-platform channel, but its data must still be reported according to the frequency set by your VAT regime.

### I run an SME: do I really have until September 2027?

For e-reporting and invoice issuance, yes. SMEs, small businesses and micro-businesses are subject to this obligation from 1 September 2027, but they must be able to receive and process an electronic invoice via the approved platform of their choice as early as 2026. In practice, choosing your platform in 2026 settles both matters at once.