Company established in France: here is what you should know about the information that must appear on your customer invoice.

If you’re an American manager who would like to do business in France, you may be surprised by the information that must be reflected on your customer invoice. It must meet the following requirements:

Your invoice must reflect:

• The date you issued the invoice,
• An invoice number: this is a unique number that you must assign to each invoice. This number should be based on a chronological and continuous sequence and must appear without “holes”. You cannot delete an invoice.
• The date you delivered the goods or rendered the service.
• Your identity as the seller or the service provider: your company’s legal name (or your first and last name if you’re an independent contractor), address of the headquarters and billing address if different, Siren number or Siret, the form of the entity and the capital, the RCS number and the city of the Greffe of registration or incorporation (if you’re a commercial business) or répertoire des métiers and department of registration (if you’re an artisan).
• The identity of the buyer or the client: legal name (or name, if it is an individual), address (except opposition from an individual client), delivery address, billing address, if different.
• The purchase order number but only if the buyer or the client issued a purchase order.
• Your VAT number and the client’s one if the client is a company and is subject to VAT and the total amount of the invoice before VAT exceeds EUR150. You and your client’s VAT information is not required if the total amount of the invoice before VAT does not exceed EUR150.
• The designation and an itemized list of the goods delivered, or the service rendered including the quantity, the unit cost before VAT, the rate of the VAT that was added, the discounts.
• The listing price, which is the sale price by unit before VAT of the goods sold or your hourly rate before VAT.
• The statutory VAT rate: if you applied multiple VAT rates, they must be indicated distinctly.
• The amount of the rebates or discount.
• The total price before VAT and VAT included.
• The invoice payment options: the payment due date, the late payment fee, the financial discount for early payment.
• The existence of and the duration of the two-year legal warranty of conformity for certain goods purchased in your store such as computer equipment, telephone equipment, household appliances, etc.
• « Membre d’une association agréée, le règlement par chèque et par carte bancaire est accepté » if your company is a member of a centre de gestion agréé ou association de gestion agréée.
• « TVA non applicable, art. 293 B du Code général des impôts » if your company falls under the régime de franchise en base de TVA.
• « montant hors taxe ». « Auto-liquidation de la TVA » describes a contractual business relationship where the subcontractor no longer reports the VAT, the general contractor does. In this case, you must indicate that your sales price is before VAT.

Penalty for non-compliance

If you don’t provide all the information that is required on your customer invoice, you may incur.

A EUR15 tax penalty per information that is missing or is inaccurate with a maximum amount of penalty of 25% of the amount of the invoice.

An administrative penalty of EUR75,000 for an individual or EUR375,000 for a business. This penalty may be doubled for a second violation committed within 2 years of the first violation.