ERP Connector and E-Invoicing: Connecting Your ERP to an Approved Platform (2026)

Since September 1, 2026, every French business subject to VAT must be able to receive electronic invoices — whatever its size, including micro-enterprises and businesses under the basic VAT exemption scheme (franchise en base). This is not a deadline to prepare for: it is an obligation already in force. Issuing, for its part, has been mandatory since the same date for large enterprises and mid-sized companies, and will be on September 1, 2027 for SMEs and very small businesses.

For the head of a manufacturing SME, the question is therefore no longer “when.” It is: what exactly must my ERP be able to do, and what do I need to connect to it? Because the reform is not settled by signing up for a subscription. It requires your management system to perform a precise list of functions — formats, a directory, lifecycle statuses, reporting of tax data — of which most installed ERPs cover only part. This guide describes what a connector between your ERP and an approved platform must cover, where the blind spots are, and where AI genuinely adds something.

In short

Receiving is already mandatory for all businesses subject to VAT since September 1, 2026; issuing is mandatory for large enterprises and mid-sized companies from the same date, and for SMEs and very small businesses on September 1, 2027 (source: impots.gouv.fr, DGFiP).
There is no longer a free government entry point. The public invoicing portal has been refocused on the central directory and the concentration of tax data; Decree No. 2026-677 of July 27, 2026 removed references to it from the legal texts. Going through an approved platform (PA) is mandatory, including for receiving only.
“PDP” is an outdated term. Article 123 of the 2026 Finance Act replaced “partner dematerialization platform” with “approved platform” in the French General Tax Code (CGI). More than 140 platforms appear on the DGFiP list in September 2026.
Three core formats — Factur-X, UBL and CII — all compliant with the European standard EN 16931. Your ERP must issue one of them and be able to receive all three.
Four lifecycle statuses are mandatory (standard XP Z12-012): 200 Submitted, 210 Refused, 212 Collected, 213 Rejected. This is the most common blind spot: a connector that carries invoices but not statuses is not compliant.
Delays are massive and documented: 38% of businesses had taken no concrete action in February 2026, and only 35% had chosen their platform (source: E-Invoicing Barometer, 7th edition, OpinionWay for the CNOEC and ECMA, published in May 2026).

What is mandatory today, and what will be in 2027

The reform reads in two columns, and confusing them is costly.

Receiving concerns everyone, right now. Since September 1, 2026, a business subject to VAT and established in France must be able to receive an electronic invoice from its suppliers via an approved platform. No headcount threshold and no special regime exempts it. In practice, if one of your suppliers is a large enterprise or a mid-sized company, it is already issuing electronically — and it needs you to be reachable.

Issuing follows a size-based schedule: large enterprises and mid-sized companies since September 1, 2026; SMEs, very small businesses, micro-enterprises and self-employed workers on September 1, 2027. Watch the definition: the legal categorization does not rest on headcount alone, but on a combination of headcount, revenue and balance sheet total. A manufacturing SME with 80 employees and high revenue deserves a check, not a rough guess.

In July 2026, the DGFiP published a practical start-up guide confirming that the legal schedule is neither postponed nor suspended, while indicating that penalties would not be applied immediately and automatically in the event of real start-up difficulties that are documented and followed by corrective actions. This is a transitional tolerance, not a postponement: it covers neither inertia nor the deliberate continuation of paper circuits.

On penalties, two articles of the CGI matter. Article 1737 provides for €50 per invoice not issued in electronic form, capped at €15,000 per calendar year — an amount raised from €15 to €50 by the 2026 Finance Act, which makes much of the content still online obsolete. Article 1788 D targets e-reporting failures, at €500 per transmission, capped at €15,000. Its paragraph V provides a first-offense clause: the fine does not apply if it is the first offense in the calendar year and the three preceding years, and if it is remedied spontaneously or within 30 days of a request from the tax authorities. These amounts are those of the version in force since February 21, 2026; a later finance act may change them.

The PPF is no longer an entry point: everything goes through an approved platform

This is the most structural design change, and the least understood. The original project provided for a free public invoicing portal (PPF), capable of issuing and receiving. That component was abandoned in October 2024, then the textual references to the public portal were removed by Decree No. 2026-677 of July 27, 2026, in favor of a single notion: the approved platform backed by a central directory managed by the administration.

What remains on the government side, then, is the directory — which lists businesses' electronic invoicing addresses — and the concentration of tax data. What disappears is the free option. Every business must contract with an approved platform, including one that only receives invoices.

Good news for reversibility: the same decree establishes mobility rights. The platform must document the switching procedure free of charge and maintain the service for one year after the client leaves. Registering and updating data in the directory also requires the explicit written consent of the taxable person. In other words, choosing a PA is not a permanent lock-in — provided your ERP connector is built to switch, and not welded to a proprietary API.

E-invoicing or e-reporting: the split your ERP must be able to make

Two distinct obligations coexist, and your system must decide automatically, invoice by invoice.

E-invoicing is the transmission of the invoice itself. It covers domestic B2B transactions between taxable persons established in France.

E-reporting is the transmission of data, not invoices. It covers everything outside the previous scope: B2C transactions, exports outside the EU, intra-community supplies, services provided to operators not established in France. Added to this is payment data for services, since VAT on them becomes due on collection. The data reported is aggregated — total amount excluding VAT, VAT rates applied, VAT collected, nature of transactions, period — and not transmitted transaction by transaction.

This is the classic trap for the exporting manufacturer. An invoice to a German customer does not go through the e-invoicing circuit, but must be reported through e-reporting via your platform. An ERP that handles domestic invoices perfectly and ignores e-reporting leaves full exposure under Article 1788 D. The split rule — domestic B2B between taxable persons or not — must be coded in the connector, not left to an accountant's judgment at month-end.

The seven functions an ERP connector must cover

Here is the checklist to put to your software vendor or integrator.

Issue in the right format. Produce EN 16931-compliant invoices in one of the three core formats — Factur-X (readable PDF/A-3 with embedded XML), UBL or CII — carrying the newly mandatory mentions, including the buyer's SIREN and the transaction category (supply of goods, provision of services, mixed).
Receive and integrate. Consume the three core formats as input and integrate them into accounts payable. This is the obligation already in force, and the most urgent compliance point.
Connect to the platform. Via the standardized APIs of standard XP Z12-013, which describes the integration of business systems with approved platforms. The DGFiP's external B2B specifications, version 3.2 of April 30, 2026, provide the XSD schemas and Swagger files.
Resolve the directory. Find the customer's invoicing address in the central directory from the SIREN, the SIRET or a routing code — and above all handle resolution failure, which triggers a rejection.
Manage lifecycle statuses. Issue and receive status messages, not just invoices (see next section).
Produce e-reporting. Aggregate and transmit out-of-scope transaction data and payment data, at the frequencies set by your VAT regime. Many ERPs do not cover this function natively.
Archive. Retain the electronic invoice and its reliable audit trail for the legal retention period.

If you build this layer or have it built, the architecture principles are the same as for any management-system gateway — we detail them in our guide on ERP connector development.

The four mandatory statuses, the blind spot of projects

Standard XP Z12-012 defines fourteen lifecycle statuses. Four are mandatory:

200 — Submitted, issued by the issuer's platform.
210 — Refused, issued by the buyer: this is a business refusal, a dispute on the merits (wrong price, non-compliant service).
212 — Collected, issued by the supplier: it carries the payment data used to pre-fill VAT returns.
213 — Rejected, issued by a platform: this is a technical rejection (missing mandatory mention, invalid format, recipient not found in the directory).

The distinction between 210 and 213 is decisive for your processes. A technical rejection calls for a correction that can be automated in the issuing system; a business refusal calls for human handling and commercial follow-up. The other ten statuses are optional, but implementing them clearly improves traceability and the monitoring of outstanding amounts.

In practice, the projects that go off the rails are almost always those that treated the reform as a file-format problem. Carrying a Factur-X is easy. Maintaining a consistent state machine between your ERP, your platform and your customer's platform is much less so — and that is precisely what compliance requires.

Where AI genuinely adds something, and where it adds nothing

Let us be clear: compliance itself is not an AI problem. Issuing valid XML, calling a standardized API, respecting a state machine — all of this is deterministic code, testable and auditable. An invoice must never depend on a probabilistic model to be compliant. Be wary of any offer selling “compliance AI.”

On the other hand, the reform produces a considerable side effect: it turns a flow of heterogeneous documents into a complete, standardized flow of structured data. That is where value shifts, and that is BCUB3's territory.

What this data makes possible, once compliance is achieved:

Automatic matching between supplier invoice, purchase order and receipt, with human escalation on discrepancies only — a process that structured data makes reliable, where OCR on PDFs remained approximate.
Anomaly checks on prices, quantities and terms, by comparison with history and framework agreements.
Cash management: with 212 statuses, collection dates become reliable data, usable for forecasting.
Purchasing analysis: consolidation by supplier, by category and by site, with detection of material cost drift.
Document agents connected to this corpus, able to answer in natural language “what is my actual outstanding balance with this supplier, and which invoices are in dispute.” On the conditions for this type of agent not to make things up, see our analysis of the ERP, MES and WMS data that powers AI agents.

Rent compliance or own your connector

Two strategies are open to you, and the right choice depends less on your size than on your exposure.

The vendor's all-in-one solution. If your ERP offers a certified native module and your flows are simple — few suppliers, no exports, a single legal entity — this is the fastest and generally the most economical route. Don't build what you can buy.

The owned connector. It becomes relevant as soon as things get complicated: an old or heavily customized ERP, several entities or several management systems to reconcile, significant volumes, export flows requiring careful e-reporting, or a wish not to depend on a proprietary API even though the decree organizes your right to switch platforms. In this configuration, an integration layer that you own — code, schemas, tests — spares you from paying for the integration again at every change of PA or ERP version.

This is the position we advocate at BCUB3: your data and your connectors belong to you, with no recurring license on the integration layer. We work on top of your existing management system, with your current vendors and partners. To compare market solutions by category, including e-invoicing, our solution comparator is freely accessible.

A realistic path for a manufacturing SME

Delay is the norm, not the exception: in February 2026, 38% of businesses surveyed had taken no concrete action, and only 35% had chosen their approved platform (E-Invoicing Barometer, 7th edition, OpinionWay for the CNOEC and ECMA). Among the smallest businesses, an OpinionWay study conducted for Tiime among 607 heads of businesses with fewer than 20 employees (fieldwork in March 2026, ISO 20252 standard) shows that 54% had no dedicated invoicing software, and that among those equipped, 42% were using a solution not compatible with the reform.

If this is your case, four steps, in this order:

Secure receiving — this is the obligation in force. Choose an approved platform and make sure you are correctly registered in the central directory. Without this, your suppliers who already issue electronically run into a 213 rejection.
Map your flows and draw the e-invoicing / e-reporting boundary: share of domestic B2B, share of exports, share of B2C, services subject to VAT on collection.
Audit the ERP against the seven functions above, with emphasis on the two most often missing: lifecycle statuses and e-reporting.
Prepare for 2027 issuing by treating the reform as a data project, not an accounting project — this is what will determine your ability to get something other than compliance out of it.

What this approach does not solve

A well-built connector does not fix the quality of your supplier master data, commercial disputes, or a poorly defined internal approval process. It makes them visible, which is already a lot, but it does not correct them. Likewise, standardizing invoices says nothing about what actually happened in production: actual material cost, scrap and throughput times remain in other systems.

Finally, this guide is not tax advice. Your company's categorization, the exact scope of your exemptions and the application of penalties are matters for your chartered accountant or tax advisor — 78% of the business leaders surveyed also believe the chartered accountant will play a decisive role in their compliance (same CNOEC/ECMA barometer).

Frequently asked questions

Am I required to receive electronic invoices right now?

Yes. Since September 1, 2026, every business subject to VAT and established in France must be able to receive its supplier invoices in electronic form via an approved platform, regardless of size. Micro-enterprises and businesses under the basic VAT exemption scheme are included. Only the obligation to issue follows a size-based schedule, until September 1, 2027 for SMEs and very small businesses.

Can I use the public invoicing portal for free?

No. The public invoicing portal has been refocused on the central directory and the concentration of tax data, and Decree No. 2026-677 of July 27, 2026 removed references to it from the regulatory texts. There is no longer a free issuing or receiving option provided by the government: every business must contract with an approved platform, even to receive only.

What is the difference between a PDP and an approved platform?

It is the same thing under two names, but only one is official today. Article 123 of the 2026 Finance Act replaced the expression “partner dematerialization platform operator” (PDP) with “approved platform” (PA) in the French General Tax Code. Content that still refers to PDPs predates February 2026.

Which invoice format should I choose between Factur-X, UBL and CII?

All three belong to the core set and comply with the European standard EN 16931; none is individually mandated. Factur-X is the most accessible for SMEs because it is a hybrid format: a human-readable PDF with embedded XML. Approved platforms handle conversion between core formats, so your issuer and your recipient can use different ones.

What is a 213 rejection and how can I avoid it?

Status 213 “rejected” is a technical rejection issued by a platform, to be distinguished from status 210 “refused,” which is a business dispute raised by the buyer. The most common causes are a missing mandatory mention — the buyer's SIREN or the transaction category, for example — an invalid format, or a recipient not found in the central directory. Prevention lies in upstream validation, on the ERP side, before sending.

Is my current ERP enough to be compliant?

It depends on seven functions: issuing in a core format, receiving and integration, connection to the platform's APIs, directory resolution, lifecycle status management, e-reporting production and archiving. Most installed ERPs cover the first two and neglect statuses and e-reporting. A function-by-function audit, put to your vendor, is the only way to decide.

In summary

E-invoicing is not an accounting project, it is a data integration project with a legal deadline. Receiving is already mandatory, the government's free option no longer exists, and real compliance comes down to details that sales brochures pass over in silence: lifecycle statuses, directory resolution and e-reporting of out-of-scope flows.

The company that treats the subject as a box to tick will pay twice — once for compliance, and again later to make use of the data. The one that treats it as an integration layer it owns gets compliance and a structured flow usable for automatic matching, anomaly checks and cash management.

Want to know where your ERP stands on the seven functions? Let's talk — we audit what is in place and work on top of your existing systems, with your current partners.