1 September 2026: are you ready to receive your electronic invoices? The SME checklist

From 1 September 2026, an electronic invoice may land in your company without your having asked for it — and you will have to be able to receive it. The practical guide published by the Direction générale des Finances publiques (DGFiP), France's tax administration, on impots.gouv.fr leaves no room for doubt: "from 1 September 2026, all businesses covered by the reform must have the capacity to receive electronic invoices". The Ministère de l'Économie, France's economy ministry, puts it the same way: "all businesses, whatever their size, must be able to receive electronic invoices".

Almost everything written about the reform deals with issuing, and that is precisely what wrongly reassures the heads of small and mid-sized companies: they remember "2027" and file the matter away. The date that concerns them is 2026, and it applies to the other direction of the flow.

This article does not re-explain the reform from scratch: our guide to preparing for e-invoicing in Odoo already covers the groundwork — architecture, formats, overall timetable. At doo.FINANCE, an Odoo Gold partner, we have been supporting French SMEs through this work for several months. What you are reading here is something else: the operational inventory of receiving, point by point, to be completed before 1 September.

What 1 September 2026 requires exactly (and what it does not)

Two distinct obligations go by the same name in everyday conversation, and they have neither the same scope nor the same date. Telling them apart is the first thing to do.

Obligation	Who is concerned	From
Receiving electronic invoices	All businesses covered by the reform, whatever their size	1 September 2026
Issuing electronic invoices	Large companies and mid-sized companies (entreprises de taille intermédiaire, ETI)	1 September 2026
Issuing electronic invoices and transmitting e-reporting data	SMEs (PME), very small businesses (TPE) and micro-enterprises	1 September 2027

Source: the getting-started practical guide published by the DGFiP on impots.gouv.fr, and the page "Tout savoir sur la facturation électronique pour les entreprises" on economie.gouv.fr. Scope re-verified on 15 August 2026.

Three practical consequences follow, and they are weightier than they look.

You are not exempt until 2027. Deferring the obligation to issue defers nothing on the receiving side. An SME may perfectly well carry on issuing its invoices in its usual way until its own legal deadline, and still have to receive them from 2026.

Your first senders are already identifiable. Since large companies and ETIs switch over on the same day, the first electronic invoices you receive will come from them. Look at your accounts payable ledger: your landlords, energy suppliers, telecoms operators, carriers and large IT providers are, for the most part, in that category.

Receiving is not just a technical channel. Receiving an invoice also means knowing who handles it, within what deadline, and what happens when it is incorrect. That is what the checklist below is about.

The receiving checklist: seven points to check before 1 September

1. Choose your Plateforme Agréée — this is no longer an option

This is the point that surprises most. A Plateforme Agréée (PA) — an Approved Platform registered by the DGFiP, the designation that has replaced plateforme de dématérialisation partenaire (PDP) — becomes mandatory, and it is set out in black and white in the reform note devoted to approved platforms, published on impots.gouv.fr: "choosing a Plateforme Agréée will become an obligation for all VAT-registered businesses from 1 September 2026 in order to receive electronic invoices".

In other words, a company that has chosen nothing by 1 September is not in a waiting position: it is in default on a dated obligation. And the question that follows deserves a clear answer: the Portail public de facturation (PPF), France's public invoicing portal, is not a free way out for receiving — its scope has been narrowed, and it does not exempt you from connecting to a PA. The official list of Plateformes Agréées can be consulted in the Professional area of impots.gouv.fr, under "Je passe à la facturation électronique".

If your finance operations already run in Odoo, the question of choice arises differently — we covered it in a dedicated article on what Odoo's Plateforme Agréée status changes for your invoices. The essential point here: the decision must be made and contracted, not merely considered.

2. Make your identification in the directory reliable

An electronic invoice does not travel by e-mail: it is addressed to an identified company. The DGFiP reform note describes the role of the PA in these terms: it must "update the directory of invoice recipients for its clients" and "ensure invoices are correctly addressed, using the directory made available to it".

Your platform therefore does the work — from the data you give it. The DGFiP practical guide asks you to "check the information used: SIREN, SIRET, recipient establishment, company name". In concrete terms, before 1 September:

• Confirm your SIREN and your active SIRET numbers with your platform, including after a recent change of address or amendment to your articles of association;
• If your company has several establishments, settle which one receives what: a single SIRET for all supplier invoices, or a split by site? This decision determines the addressing;
• Check the registered company name as it is recorded, not as it appears on your letterhead;
• Tell your platform about any establishment you plan to open or close before the end of the year.

Incorrect identification data does not produce a late invoice: it produces an invoice that never arrives.

3. Open your receiving capability, then test it

The practical guide describes the expected steps: the company must "identify the solution through which it wishes to receive its invoices, check that this solution does allow the use of a Plateforme Agréée, organise the connection with its provider".

Three verbs, three distinct checks — and it is the third that is most often neglected. The connection is organised with the provider; it is not switched on with a click the day before. Plan an incoming test invoice, received end to end, and check that it appears in your accounts payable with usable data — not merely as a file dropped somewhere.

If you work in Odoo, this test is also the moment to check that the installed version and the French localisation are up to date. An environment that has not been upgraded for two financial years is the first cause of blockage we come across.

4. Configure the incoming formats

An electronic invoice as the reform defines it is a structured file, not a PDF sent as an attachment. Several formats of the core set coexist, and your system must be able to read the ones your suppliers will issue — the technical detail is covered in our preparation guide.

What needs checking here is simpler: ask your platform, in writing, which formats it accepts as input and how it hands them over to your management software. Then check in your system that the fields retrieved really do feed your entries — order references, VAT rates and amounts, payment due date — rather than ending up in a free-text field that nobody reads.

5. Organise the handling of the invoices you receive

This is the least technical point and the most underestimated. An electronic invoice received is not merely stored: it travels with statuses transmitted by your platform, and some of those statuses commit you. The DGFiP practical guide addresses incidents — rejections and refusals — precisely as the main point of friction.

So decide, before the deadline:

• Who consults incoming invoices, and how often — daily, not weekly;
• Within what deadline an invoice is approved or refused, and who has the authority to refuse it;
• What is done with a rejected invoice: who goes back to the supplier, in what form, with what record;
• How the existing approval circuit — purchase order, goods receipt, budget sign-off — connects to this new flow.

Refusing an invoice inadvertently, or failing to handle it because nobody is watching the queue, amounts to not paying your supplier. The cost is not a tax cost, it is a commercial one.

6. Name who does what — and plan for the return from the summer break

1 September falls on the day everyone comes back from the summer break. In many SMEs, the person who keeps the accounts payable returns from leave that week, or the week after. So appoint a named owner for receiving, and a deputy, and check that both have access to the platform before the August shutdown. Also inform your expert-comptable, your chartered accountant, of the configuration you have chosen: they are the one who will see the anomalies first.

7. Warn your suppliers and your large-account clients

Two letters are worth sending now. The first, to your large-company and ETI suppliers, to confirm your platform and your receiving identifiers. The second, to your large-account clients, whose purchasing departments will be in touch: better to answer before they ask.

Why receiving is the real project of 2026

A company that does not yet issue electronic invoices carries on working. A company that cannot receive them, on the other hand, ends up with supplier invoices that arrive nowhere — with no alert triggered, since there is no longer a missing attachment to notice.

The risk is not only regulatory. It is operational first: purchases not recorded, bank reconciliation distorted, chasers sent on invoices never seen, a period close to piece back together. A quarter of disorganisation for a few days of configuration.

The reverse holds as well. Receiving that is properly configured removes the manual entry of purchase invoices, makes deductible VAT data reliable and gives real-time visibility on commitments. The work imposed by the reform is, for many companies, the occasion to settle a problem they were already living with.

Disclaimer: this article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute tax or legal advice. The timetable and the scope of the reform have already changed; check the current information on impots.gouv.fr and consult a qualified advisor before making any decisions.

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