Invoicing

1. Overview

2. “Can I invoice my UK client in English, in pounds?”

Yes — and there is one habit that makes the whole question go away. Almost everything people worry about here — which language, which currency, whether to send a second copy, what the tax office might ask for — collapses into two rules. Adopt them and you will not have to think about any of it again. The whole answer

• Send one bilingual invoice, every time. French and English side by side on the same document, carrying one invoice number.
• Invoice in euros, and show the client’s currency alongside. Your US client sees exactly what to wire in dollars, without you invoicing in dollars.

3. Why bilingual, always

Because it is the only approach that is correct for every client you might have, which means you never have to work out which category someone falls into.

• For a French client , the French satisfies the legal requirement and the English is a courtesy.
• For a business client abroad , English is permitted anyway — and the French half of the document is the French version you would otherwise have to keep on file separately.
• For a private individual anywhere , French is required, and a bilingual invoice contains it.

One document. One number. Nothing to file separately, nothing to translate later, and no decision to make at the moment of invoicing. It is a template job, not an ongoing chore. Set the French wording alongside the English once, and every invoice afterwards produces itself:

What the law actually requires, if you want to know

You do not need this to follow rule one — it is here because clients ask, and because it explains why the private-individual case is the odd one out. Your client Language the invoice may be in A business based in France French A business elsewhere in the EU English is permitted A business outside the EU A private individual, anywhere That last row is the one that catches people. The rule allowing English exists for dealings between businesses . A private individual counts as a consumer wherever in the world they live — so a holiday-let guest from Manchester, or a private coaching client in Dubai, should receive a French invoice. Being abroad does not change it. The underlying rule is the Loi Toubon of 1994, which requires French in commercial documents, and a 1996 circular which carves out an exception for invoices between businesses where one party is foreign. The exception is worded to exclude consumers and end users, which is why the last row differs.

4. Why the French half matters even when English is allowed

Because your accounts and your invoices are governed by different rules, and the accounts are the stricter of the two. Your accounting records must be kept in French and in euros. There is no foreign-client exception to that — it applies to your books as a whole, whoever you sold to. Your invoices are the supporting documents behind those records. So even where an invoice may lawfully be written in English, the record it sits behind still has to be readable in French, and the amounts still have to appear in euros. On top of that, where an invoice is in a foreign language the tax office may ask for a translation into French, and can require one done by a sworn translator at your cost. In practice this is not routine — the administration’s own guidance says the requirement is not applied systematically, and it tends to arise where something already looks inconsistent. A bilingual invoice is already its own French version, so the question never arises.

5. Currency — and why euros are the tidy answer

Euros are not compulsory. You may invoice in any internationally recognised currency. But invoicing in euros and printing the equivalent alongside gives your client exactly what they need — a figure to pay in their own currency — while keeping your own paperwork in the currency your accounts are already in. It removes a set of obligations rather than satisfying them.

If you do invoice in a foreign currency

Then a few extra details are required on the invoice:

• The amount in that currency and its euro equivalent .
• The exchange rate you applied. A single line does it — for example: Taux de change appliqué : EUR/GBP, taux de référence BCE du 12 septembre 2026.
• Where French TVA applies, the TVA amount in euros .

Two different rules govern which rate to use, and they are not the same. For your accounts , conversion runs on the date of the operation — for services, completion or invoicing, whichever comes first. For the TVA amount , conversion runs on the date the tax falls due, which for services is normally when you are paid, not when you invoice. If you are in franchise en base and charge no TVA, only the first applies and the distinction never surfaces — which covers most of our clients. If you do charge TVA, it is worth getting right, and we will check it with you. On the source of the rate: the European Central Bank daily reference rate is the cleanest choice and the one we suggest, but the Banque de France monthly average or your own bank’s rate are also accepted. What matters is that you use one consistently and can show which. Watch what actually lands in your account. Between transfer fees, correspondent bank charges and the gap between the market rate and your bank’s rate, the amount you receive will rarely match the amount you invoiced. That is normal — but the difference has to be explicable. Keep a note of the rate you used and the fees deducted, and the gap stops being a mystery later.

Where the money lands is commercial, not tax

No rule requires a French bank account or payment in euros. If most of your income arrives in one foreign currency, holding an account in that currency — or a multi-currency account — saves you converting back and forth and carrying the exchange-rate risk twice.

6. The real risk is your numbering, not your English

If your books are ever examined — a contrôle fiscal — the inspector reconciles three things. Language is the last of them and the easiest to answer. The first two are where problems actually arise.

Your invoice numbers must run in an unbroken sequence

Continuous, chronological, no gaps. A missing number invites the question of whether there was a sale you did not record, and answering it is your job, not theirs. More than one series is allowed where your circumstances justify it — an annual prefix, for instance — but it has to be consistent and explicable. This is the practical reason behind rule one. People who send a separate English “copy” end up with two sequences, or with a gap where one was cancelled and never accounted for. That is far more likely to cause you trouble than anyone asking for a translation — and unlike a translation request, it is not easily answered after the fact.

Every payment in should trace to an invoice, and every invoice to a payment

Harder in foreign currency, because the euro figure in your accounts will not match the line on your bank statement without a working. Keeping the rate and the fees, as above, is what closes that gap.

And then, readability

Only here does the language of the document come up, and the answer is the one already covered: a translation if they ask. That is a request you can satisfy. Broken numbering is not.

7. What has to appear on the invoice about TVA

This depends on your own TVA position and on what exactly you are selling, so treat the table as an orientation rather than an instruction. We confirm the right wording for you individually — it is not something to copy from a website, including this one. Your situation The mention that goes on the invoice You are in franchise en base — below the TVA threshold — whoever the client is TVA non applicable, art. 293 B du CGI Services to a business in another EU country Autoliquidation , plus your TVA number and theirs Services to a business outside the EU TVA non applicable, art. 259-1 du CGI Services to a private individual abroad Treated as a French sale — invoice exactly as you would for someone in France Autoliquidation means the tax is accounted for by the other party rather than charged by you. Franchise en base is the regime you are in if your turnover is below the TVA threshold and you therefore do not charge TVA.

Three things that catch people out

Being under the TVA threshold does not mean you never need a TVA number. If you supply a business in another EU country you need an intracommunautaire TVA number even in franchise en base, and you must file a monthly declaration called a DES for those services. The number is issued free by your tax office — but you have to ask for it, and people routinely discover this after the first invoice has gone out. Buying does the same thing — and it is far more common than selling. If you pay for services from a supplier outside France, that can create a French TVA obligation for you even though you charge none yourself. It applies from the first euro, and it is the reason we now ask every client about their software and advertising subscriptions. The next section explains it properly. If you are in franchise en base and selling to an EU business, two rules apply at once. Both the 293 B wording and the autoliquidation wording come into play. This is exactly the case to have checked rather than guessed at. If you are not sure which row you are in — or whether you are in franchise en base at all — ask us before you send the invoice. Correcting one invoice is straightforward. Correcting a year of them is not.

8. The invoice that arrives with 0% TVA on it

This one has nothing to do with the invoicing reform, and almost nobody has been told about it. It applies to anyone who pays for software, advertising or online services billed from outside France — Adobe, Canva, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Zoom, a website subscription, an online course platform.

What to look for

Find one of those invoices and look at the tax line. It will show 0.00% . Somewhere on the page there will be wording along these lines: That is not a discount and it is not an exemption. The supplier has not charged tax because the French TVA on that purchase is yours to account for. It is the same mechanism as the autoliquidation row in the table above, running in the opposite direction.

What it actually costs you depends entirely on your own position

If you are… What happens Cost to you A company, or a business charging TVA You declare the TVA and deduct it on the same return Nil Under the threshold, charging no TVA most auto-entrepreneurs You declare the TVA and pay it, and you cannot reclaim it Around 20% of what you spend So on €1,000 a year of subscriptions, a company pays nothing extra and an auto-entrepreneur pays around €200. Modest, but real — and it accumulates quietly, because nothing in your French paperwork mentions it and no supplier will ever raise it with you.

What to do about it

• Tell us which of these you pay for. That is the whole of your side of it. We will confirm whether it applies to you — for plenty of clients it does not.
• If it does, the first step is an intracommunautaire TVA number. Free from your tax office. It does not change your position on the sales you make, does not affect your thresholds, and does not take you out of franchise en base.
• Give that number to the supplier. Most large ones ask for it at signup. Without it some will charge you their own country’s VAT instead — which you also cannot reclaim, so you can end up worse off, not better.

If this has been going on for a while, do not panic. The amounts are usually small, the period the tax office can look back over is limited, and putting something right voluntarily is treated very differently — and costs materially less — than being asked about it. That is precisely why we would rather raise it now than leave it sitting there. Whether it applies to you at all depends on what you buy and from where. Ask us before assuming either way.

9. Furnished letting, guests and platforms

For a furnished-letting landlord, most income comes from private individuals — and that changes what happens to it, though not how you invoice. A tenant and a holiday guest are the same thing here. Someone on a three-year lease and someone staying seven nights are both private individuals. What decides the treatment is who you are letting to, not how long they stay. Length of let, and whether you provide services alongside it, decide something else entirely — your TVA position. That is a separate question and one of the things we check for you.

The exception, and it does come up

If a French business books your property — a company taking an apartment for staff, a firm booking for a contractor — that is a sale between two French businesses. From September 2027 it must go out as an electronic invoice. Most holiday landlords have a handful of these a year without ever thinking of them as different. Your portal handles both without you having to sort them.

Airbnb, Booking.com and similar

The commission they charge you is an invoice coming to you from a company established outside France — which puts it squarely in the section above. It is the most common single reason a landlord who never charges TVA nonetheless needs an intracommunautaire number, and it is worth checking rather than assuming.

10. What changes for clients abroad — and what doesn’t

For your clients abroad, nothing changes at all. Electronic invoicing operates between two businesses established in France. A client in London, Berlin or New York sits entirely outside the system, as does any private individual. You go on invoicing them exactly as you do now — same language, same currency, sent however you send it today. No platform, no portal, no new format, and nothing your customer has to join. The same is true in the other direction. A supplier established outside France stays outside it permanently, so the Adobe or Canva invoice described above will still be a PDF in your inbox in 2028 and every year after.

From September 2027, these are reported — not routed

What does eventually change is that the details are transmitted to the tax office, in euros. That is called e-reporting, and it covers your sales to customers abroad, your sales to private individuals, and your purchases from suppliers abroad where you account for the TVA yourself . Three things are worth knowing: it is data, not money , so nothing you are paid passes through anyone’s platform; it is automatic ; and we handle it for you . We will tell you before we switch it on, and confirm the price at the same time.

And for your French clients, rule one is doing more work than you think

Where electronic invoicing does apply, an invoice stops being a document and becomes structured data. Your SIREN, the dates, the amounts, the TVA rate, the payment terms, the nature of the sale — these are coded fields with no language at all. Words survive only in the free-text description lines, which is exactly where your bilingual wording sits. So the same template serves both. And because the system checks your numbering and your content at the moment you issue, and keeps the archive, the most common problem in a contrôle largely stops being possible. What the law requires, the dates, and what each status has to do — auto-entrepreneur, artiste-auteur, LMNP, LMP and SCI.

11. What we tell every client

• One bilingual invoice, every time. Never two parallel documents — that is the thing most likely to cause you real trouble, and it is entirely avoidable.
• One continuous number sequence. No gaps.
• Invoice in euros , showing the client’s currency alongside. If you do invoice in another currency, show the euro equivalent and the rate you used.
• Every invoice traceable to a payment , with the rate and any fees noted where the two do not match.
• Tell us what you buy from outside France. One question, and it is the one most likely to be hiding something.

If your situation does not look like any of the above — you sell goods rather than services, a platform invoices on your behalf, or you have French and foreign clients under the same activity — tell us and we will work it through with you. Some of these rules turn on details that are not obvious from the outside. This page is a general explanation prepared for information only and is not individual tax or legal advice. The TVA position in particular depends on facts we would need to check with you. Rules may be updated by the administration; where a specific situation is concerned, please contact us so we can review it against your circumstances.