The Three Obligations at a Glance
The e-invoicing reform is not a single obligation, but a set of three obligations addressing different situations. Confusing them is the first source of misunderstanding. Let us clarify.
- Reception (inbound e-invoicing). Receiving, in structured electronic format, the invoices from your suppliers liable for VAT in France. This is the obligation that concerns everyone first.
- Emission (outbound e-invoicing). Issuing, in structured electronic format, your invoices to professional customers liable for VAT in France, through the official circuit.
- Reporting (e-reporting). Transmitting to the administration the data of transactions that do not fall under invoicing between French companies: sales to individuals (B2C), international operations, and payment data.
A simple rule to find your way: if your customer is a French company liable for VAT, you are in e-invoicing (emission). If it is an individual or a foreign customer, you are in e-reporting. And for your purchases from French suppliers, you are in reception.
These three obligations share a common goal: giving the administration a finer view of flows, notably to fight VAT fraud. For the company, the real challenge is to handle all three without multiplying tools or re-keying. This is where a compatible solution covering the entire scope makes the difference.
Simple guide: French VAT-liable business customer = emission. Individual or foreign customer = e-reporting. French supplier purchase = reception.
Receiving Your Supplier Invoices
Reception is the most immediate obligation, because it concerns all VAT-liable companies, regardless of size, from September 1, 2026 according to the texts in force. Concretely, how does it work?
Your suppliers now issue their invoices via the official circuit. The invoice arrives in structured format (Factur-X, UBL or CII) and is deposited directly into your solution, without going through an email attachment to download manually. You view a received invoice as you would view a document in your software, with its data already readable: supplier, amount, VAT, due date.
The real gain lies in the accounting chain. In CassKai, a received supplier invoice can turn into a purchase and generate a draft entry, ready to be checked and then validated. You move from full data entry to a simple check. This reduces processing time and the risk of copy errors.
What if my supplier uses another platform? That is not a problem. The official circuit guarantees interoperability between operators: your solution and your supplier’s may be different, the invoice still travels. You do not have to worry about your partners’ technical choices. Each connects to an approved platform, and the central directory enables routing.
Point of attention: to receive correctly, your identification data must be up to date (intra-community VAT number, establishment identifier). Making this information reliable upstream avoids routing errors on the day volume increases.
Issuing Your Customer Invoices
Emission follows a logic close to what you already know, with an additional compliance layer. Here are the steps, as they unfold in a compatible solution like CassKai.
1. You create the invoice. From your invoicing module, you enter your customer, your lines, your VAT. Nothing changes in your day-to-day way of working.
2. The invoice is generated in the right format. Instead of a simple PDF, CassKai produces the invoice in the expected structured format (Factur-X, UBL or CII), with data readable by the recipient’s computer systems.
3. Compliance is checked. The invoice is verified against the rules of the EN 16931 standard before sending. Any anomalies are flagged so they can be corrected before transmission, which limits rejections.
4. The invoice is transmitted via the approved platform. It takes the official circuit to your customer’s solution, whatever the customer’s operator. You no longer send the invoice by email: it travels through the regulated network.
5. You track its status. Once issued, the invoice is not a frozen document. It carries lifecycle statuses that inform you about its journey: deposited, received by the recipient, possibly rejected, collected. We detail these statuses in the next section.
The important point for a director: this machinery unfolds with no extra effort on your part. You invoice as before, compliance and routing are handled in the background.
The Lifecycle of an Electronic Invoice
This is one of the most structuring novelties of the reform: the electronic invoice is no longer a simple document sent and forgotten. It carries lifecycle statuses that trace its journey, from emission to payment. Understanding these statuses helps better steer the customer relationship and cash.
We generally distinguish mandatory statuses, imposed by the circuit, and recommended statuses, left to the parties’ discretion. Without going into an exhaustive regulatory list, here are the most useful milestones to know.
- Deposited / issued: the invoice has entered the official circuit.
- Received: the recipient’s solution has properly received the invoice.
- Made available: the invoice is accessible to the customer in their tool.
- Approved or rejected: the customer indicates whether they accept the invoice or dispute it. A documented rejection is better than silence: it lets you correct and resend quickly.
- Collected: payment has been recorded. This information also feeds the e-reporting of payment data for services.
For a cash-oriented director, these statuses are a goldmine of information. Knowing precisely that an invoice was received and made available removes the "I never received it" argument. Tracking the collection status lets you anticipate reminders and make your cash forecasts more reliable.
In CassKai, these statuses surface at the invoice level, giving you a clear reading of the real state of your receivables, without having to cross-reference several sources.
Lifecycle statuses turn the invoice into a steering source: knowing an invoice is received, approved or collected makes your reminders and cash forecasts more reliable.
Reporting: B2C and International E-Reporting
The third obligation, e-reporting, is often the least understood, because it does not produce an electronic invoice as such. It consists of transmitting to the administration data from transactions outside the scope of invoicing between French companies.
Which transactions?
- Sales to individuals (B2C): retail, restaurants, personal services. You do not invoice an individual electronically via the circuit, but you transmit aggregated data from these sales.
- International operations: sales and purchases with companies located outside France (intra-community and export). These flows do not go through the domestic e-invoicing circuit, but their data must be reported.
- Payment data: for services, the date and amount of actual payment complete the administration’s view.
How often? The transmission frequency depends in principle on your VAT regime. Companies under the standard real regime transmit more frequently than those under the simplified regime. The precise terms fall under the texts in force, which should be checked according to your situation.
The benefit of a compatible solution that covers e-reporting is to avoid an additional manual declaration. CassKai collects the relevant data from your activity (B2C sales, international operations, collections) and prepares it according to the regulatory schedule, with no double entry. E-reporting then stops being a separate chore and becomes a natural extension of your invoicing.
Doing All Three with CassKai
The strength of a well-designed compatible solution is to bring the three obligations together in a single flow, backed by your accounting. Here is how CassKai articulates the whole.
A single interface. Reception, emission and e-reporting are steered from CassKai, without juggling several portals. Your inbound and outbound invoices, your lifecycle statuses and your e-reporting data coexist with your entries.
A connection handled in the backend. The link with the official circuit goes through a DGFiP-approved platform, integrated in the background. You have no separate contract to subscribe to and no API to configure: that is the very principle of the compatible-solution status.
Accounting continuity. A received invoice becomes a purchase and a draft entry. An issued and collected invoice updates your cash tracking. Electronic invoicing is not an isolated layer: it feeds your financial steering.
Compliance kept up to date. Structured formats compliant with the EN 16931 standard, checks before sending, evidentiary-value archiving for the applicable legal duration: these elements are handled for you, subject to the conditions specified in your subscription.
A scope that goes beyond France. If your activity extends to West Africa or other zones, CassKai handles different electronic invoicing schemes depending on the country. You keep the same working logic from one market to another.
The reform requires receiving, issuing and reporting. CassKai’s goal is for these three actions to become as simple as ordinary invoicing, while remaining compliant. To check the specific cases particular to your company, using official sources or your chartered accountant remains recommended.