All professionals, whether they exercise a ‘société’ or an ’entreprise’, must bill - in French and in euros - the services undertaken or the sales achieved. If they don’t they risk to be exposed to sanctions, especially penal ones. But what most business owners ignore, is that they risk sanctions, when they give a bill/invoice, that does not conform to the legal obligations and there are a lot of obligations that apply.

Important : Faulty billing or forgetting to put on an obligatory statement can run up to 75 000 euros fine. And on top, for each statement missed out or inexact, you can be fined 15 euros per statement.

You have to give an invoice or a bill each time you sell a product or service. Here are some of things that you have to think about:

Using the ‘Clause de réserve de Propriété’ ( right to ownership of products )

It may be an idea to reproduce on your invoice, the principle clauses from your general terms and conditions, especially those clauses concerning the right to ownership of all products supplied. This clause allows you to keep the ownership of the products sold, until the client has completely paid for them. Which allows you to recuperate them, if the client is not able to pay or the client company goes bust. This clause should above all figure in the contract or the ‘Bon de Commande’ signed by the buyer.

Note : TVA (Taxe sur la Valeur Ajoutée) is the equivalent to VAT.

Legal Layout of an Invoice

1. Identification of the company -

The name, the address, the SIREN or SIRET no, the Chamber of Commerce etc, and town where inscribed e.g. SARL Dupont, 19 boulevard Montparnasse, 75006 Paris, SARL au capital de 22 000 euros, SIREN 334 001 816 RCS Paris. If you are a ‘société’, don’t forget to indicate its legal form e.g. SARL and the sum of start-up capital. If you belong to a ‘Centre de Gestion Agrée’ or an ‘association agrée’, you have to indicate that you accept payment by cheque.

2. Name & address of client

3. TVA Identification Number -

You must indicate you TVA number. This is given to you by the Tax Office at your creation. (This of course does not apply to a micro entreprise.) If you do business with other European countries you must add the following statement ’exonération de TVA, article 262 ter I du code général des impôts’, which allows you to bill without the VAT included.

4. Date of the bill -

You should bill in principle as soon as the sale has happened or the services has been undertaken. Note that if you forget an indispensable element in your billing, the fiscal services allow you to have a slight difference.

5. Invoice Number

6. Description (Désignation) and quantity of products or services - The description allows you in a precise manner to identify the product or service. The quantity should be expressed in units of products, weight, volume or hourly rate, according to the type of business.

7. Price & TVA applicable -

You must indicate -

• The unitary price before TVA of each product
• The rate of TVA by product
• The total cost before TVA of the products by TVA category
• The total of TVA by each category
• The total sum of the TVA and the total sum of the products with TVA included.

Note : that if you have opted out of the TVA system you must add a statement, by which right you do not show the TVA. In the case of a micro entreprise ‘TVA non applicable, art. 293 B du CGI’

8. Discounts (Rabais, Remises & Ristournes) -

you must mention all reductions in price given on the date of the sale or the supply of a service. This must be indicated for each product concerned, unless it is a global Discount.

9. Date of payment -

You must indicate the day, the month and the year, by which you wished to be paid or ‘paiement comptant’ (i.e. at the moment of the sale or completion of the service) or ‘paiement à la réception’ (i.e. at the reception).

10. Lateness penalties (Pénalités de retard) -

You must also indicate, if there are any penalties for late payment and the rate applied. The penalites are applicable from the following day after the date of payment given. ‘En cas de retard de paiement, il sera appliqué des pénalités de …. % par mois de retard.’

11. Early Payment Discounts (Escompte) -

This is a rate of reduction in total cost, if the client pays earlier than the required date of payment (normally around 1 or 2% of the global price per month). If you do not wish to apply this reduction to your bills, you must indicate that there will be no reduction in case of in the case early payment, ’pas d’escompte en cas de paiement anticipé.’

You should of course accompany all of the legal obligations with correctly drawn up general terms and conditions. These can be standardised and put on the back of all quotes and bills. You can highlight on the front certain specific conditions or as I mentioned earlier, important issues like ownership, forms of payment, late payment and payment periods. Obviously avoid cluttering up the front of your documents and needless to say these must be in French, but can be accompagned by an English translation. For further information on these, you should contact a commercial layer or the Chambers, that you are attached to. Be careful this can be expensive, but in the long run, you know that you are protected.