E-reporting or electronic
invoice: which one applies
to each sale in your store?
They are not two names for the same thing. One sends an invoice to your customer, the other sends data to the tax authority — and it is your buyer, not your product, that decides which applies. Here is the split, sale by sale.
Your buyer decides, not your product
The French reform creates two obligations, not one. E-invoicing requires structured invoices to be exchanged between VAT-registered businesses established in France, through an approved platform. E-reporting requires you to send the tax authority data about the operations that fall outside that circuit — because the customer is a consumer, or because they are not established in France.
For a classic B2B merchant the line is easy: everything goes out as an electronic invoice. For an online store, the line runs straight through the checkout. The same form takes payment from a consumer in Lyon, a company in Bordeaux, a Belgian shopper and a Swiss buyer — four different regulatory treatments, decided by fields most stores do not even collect.
Which leads to a counter-intuitive consequence: the more B2C you are, the fewer electronic invoices you will issue, and the more e-reporting becomes your main obligation. A store selling only to consumers issues no electronic invoices at all — and is still fully inside the reform.
- Sale to a VAT-registered French business → electronic invoice via an approved platform
- Sale to a consumer, in France or the EU → transaction e-reporting
- Sale to any customer established outside France → transaction e-reporting
- Services or deposits where VAT is due on payment → payment e-reporting on top
E-invoicing vs e-reporting, line by line
Two obligations from the same reform, but they do not cover the same sales, the same recipient, or the same content.
E-invoicing
A structured invoice, sent to your customer
E-reporting
Data, sent to the tax authority
Who receives it
E-invoicing — Your customer receives the invoice — the tax authority reads it in transit.
E-reporting — The tax authority only. Your customer never sees the e-reporting.
Which sales
E-invoicing — Goods and services sold between VAT-registered businesses established in France (domestic B2B).
E-reporting — Everything else: sales to consumers, cross-border operations, and payment data.
What travels
E-invoicing — The invoice itself, in a structured format (Factur-X, UBL or CII), with its lifecycle statuses (submitted, received, paid…).
E-reporting — Aggregated data: net revenue and VAT per rate, per day or per period. No personal data about B2C buyers.
Through which channel
E-invoicing — An approved platform (plateforme agréée, formerly PDP) — mandatory. The public portal no longer exchanges invoices: it only runs the directory and concentrates data.
E-reporting — An approved platform as well, which pushes the batches on to the public portal.
How often
E-invoicing — Continuously: each invoice leaves as it is issued.
E-reporting — In periodic batches, depending on your VAT regime: up to three times a month under the monthly standard regime, monthly under the quarterly one, every two months under the simplified or franchise regime.
The penalty
E-invoicing — €15 per invoice (€50 from September 2027).
E-reporting — €250 per missing batch (€500 from September 2027).
What it does not replace
E-invoicing — Your VAT return. Electronic invoices feed the pre-filled return, they do not replace it.
E-reporting — Neither the French VAT return, nor the OSS return, nor the EU sales lists. E-reporting is a data transmission, not a tax filing.
Which obligation for which sale?
Nine situations one store can hit in a single day — and the treatment each one gets.
What you transmit
- Data aggregated per day: net revenue and VAT per rate, number of transactions, currency.
- No personal data about the buyer.
- Transmitted through your approved platform, at the cadence of your VAT regime.
Watch out
You still owe your customer an invoice or receipt on request — but that invoice does not have to be electronic in the sense of the reform. The two topics are independent.
What you transmit
- The invoice itself, in a structured format (Factur-X, UBL or CII), through an approved platform.
- The invoice lifecycle statuses (submitted, received, rejected, paid…).
- No transaction e-reporting on top: the data flows through the invoice.
Watch out
A customer under the franchise regime is still VAT-registered: electronic invoicing applies. The reverse is true too — if you are a micro-business yourself, your suppliers have been invoicing you electronically since September 2026.
What you transmit
- The transaction data, with the rate and the country of taxation.
- In parallel and unrelated: your quarterly OSS return, unchanged.
Watch out
Classic mistake: believing OSS exempts you from e-reporting, or the other way round. They are two distinct obligations on the same sales. And your data will only be right if your store already applies the correct destination-country rate.
What you transmit
- The data for the intra-EU supply, exempt with reverse charge by the customer.
- Your invoice stays a classic invoice, with the reverse-charge mention and both VAT numbers.
Watch out
E-reporting replaces neither the EU sales list for services nor the intra-EU statistical survey for goods. And if your customer is connected to an e-invoicing system in their own country, they may require a structured format: that is their national law, not yours.
What you transmit
- The operation data, with its category (exempt export) and amount.
- Keep your proof of exit from the territory: e-reporting does not replace it.
Watch out
Watch out for DDP sales where you pay import VAT at destination: the qualification changes, and so does what you must transmit. Scope this with your accountant before configuring your store.
What you transmit
- On sales: transaction e-reporting, as if you sold direct — except where the platform is deemed buyer-reseller (low-value imported goods, non-EU sellers).
- On commissions: you receive an invoice from the marketplace, often under reverse charge if it is established outside France.
Watch out
The trap is not regulatory, it is accounting: the marketplace pays out a net amount, not a gross one. If your chain does not separate revenue from withheld commissions, your e-reporting data will be understated by the commission amount.
What you transmit
- Transaction e-reporting on the sale itself (unless it is domestic B2B).
- Payment e-reporting on top: collection date and amounts collected per VAT rate.
Watch out
The payment side is the forgotten half for stores that also sell services. If you are on the accrual basis it does not concern you — check your option before building anything. For physical goods, where VAT is due on delivery, this side is generally moot.
What you transmit
- If the original sale was a B2B electronic invoice: an electronic credit note, through the same approved platform.
- If the original sale was B2C or cross-border: the correction folds into your e-reporting data for the period.
Watch out
A credit note is not an edited invoice. It has its own numbering and must stay linked to the original invoice. Many tools designed for pure B2B handle this badly — and in e-commerce it can be 20% of the flow.
What you transmit
- The invoice goes through Chorus Pro, the B2G channel in place since 2017.
- Neither B2B electronic invoicing under the reform, nor e-reporting.
Watch out
Do not confuse this with selling to an association or a private non-taxable entity: that falls under e-reporting, like a sale to a consumer.
The reform is won at the checkout
No store fails this reform because it picked the wrong invoice format. It fails because when the time comes to sort its sales, it no longer knows which one was B2B, which one shipped to Belgium, and which invoice last week’s credit note belongs to.
Qualification happens at checkout, not at close. Here are the four places it usually gets lost.
Capture buyer status at the moment of the order
An optional "company" field and an unvalidated intra-EU VAT number are enough to push a B2B sale into the wrong flow. Validate the number on entry: it decides the transmission channel, and it also drives the reverse charge on intra-EU sales.
Separate billing address from delivery address
The VAT rate follows the destination country of the goods; the transmission channel follows where the customer is established. They are not always the same. A French billing address with delivery to Spain is not the mirror image of the opposite case.
Attach every order to its operation category
Domestic B2B, French B2C, intra-EU distance sale, export, service: this category has to travel with the order from the moment it is created. Reconstructed afterwards from a CSV export, it will be wrong — and nobody will notice until an audit.
Be able to re-qualify after the fact
A customer who supplies a VAT number after the fact, an order cancelled then recreated, a partial refund: each of these can move a sale from one flow to the other. You need to be able to replay the credit note and re-invoice cleanly, not patch a spreadsheet.
Who has to be ready, and when
Your deadline depends on your size — but the first one applies to everybody.
What forgetting costs
Failing to issue an electronic invoice costs €15 per invoice. Failing to file an e-reporting batch costs €250 per missing transmission. Both are capped at €15,000 per calendar year — and both rise to €50 and €500 on 1 September 2027. A first mistake corrected voluntarily, or within 30 days of a request from the tax authority, is generally not penalised.
Six confusions that cost real money
Assuming a B2C store is out of scope
The most common and most expensive mistake. "Electronic invoicing" became the generic name for the whole reform, when it only covers one half. A store selling only to consumers will never issue an electronic invoice — and will have to report 100% of its revenue.
Thinking e-reporting replaces the VAT or OSS return
E-reporting is not a filing: it is a transmission of raw data, on its own cadence and its own channel. You will keep filing your French VAT return and your OSS return exactly as before. Anyone hoping to remove an obligation will find one more instead.
Counting on the free public portal to transmit
The public portal no longer routes invoices. It only runs the directory and concentrates data. Every business must be connected to an approved platform, directly or through its invoicing software — including businesses that only do e-reporting.
Treating credit notes as edited invoices
A partial refund is not a corrected invoice: it is a credit note, with its own numbering, and it must travel through the same channel as the original sale. In e-commerce, where returns are daily, mishandling credit notes pollutes both flows at once.
Leaving the checkout without buyer qualification
Without a company field and a validated intra-EU VAT number at checkout, all your business sales look like consumer sales. You will report them instead of invoicing them electronically — while your business customers, who are now required to receive structured invoices, ask you for one.
Waiting for your own deadline to start
Your obligation to issue may start in 2027, but the obligation to receive started in September 2026, with no exemption. And the real work — cleaning up order qualification, per-country VAT rates, credit note linkage — is measured in months of reliable data, not afternoons of configuration.
Both obligations are decided before the approved platform
Both obligations share one dependency: every order has to be qualified correctly at the source. The buyer status decides the channel, the delivery country decides the rate, the credit note has to stay attached to its sale. No approved platform will do that work for you: it transmits what it is given.
That is precisely the layer Order Invoicer fills, between your sales channels and your invoicing software.
Go further
E-reporting for e-commerce: the obligations
The full scope, the data expected, and links to the official French sources (economie.gouv.fr, impots.gouv.fr, francenum.gouv.fr).
See the e-reporting obligationsOSS VAT for distance selling
Thresholds, destination-country rates and quarterly filing: the part that stays entirely on your plate, on top of e-reporting.
Understand OSS VATWhich invoicing software for your store?
The software that issues your invoices is what connects you to an approved platform. Pick one that is already ready.
Compare the toolsQuestions online sellers ask
Educational content, current with the official publications available in 2026. It is not tax or legal advice: how your operations are qualified depends on your VAT regime and your selling model — confirm it with your accountant.