France — PPF / PDP (Facturation Électronique)

France’s E‑Invoicing Landscape — PPF, PDP, OD

  • France is rolling out a domestic B2B e‑invoicing and e‑reporting regime centered on two pillars: the public platform PPF (Portail Public de Facturation) and certified private platforms PDP (Plateformes de Dématérialisation Partenaires).
  • PPF — the state hub — routes, validates, and collects reporting data. PDPs — certified intermediaries — exchange invoices between suppliers and buyers and submit e‑reporting to PPF when required.
  • A third role, OD (Opérateur de Dématérialisation), is a non‑certified service provider that can prepare and relay invoices but must connect via a PDP or the PPF. A central directory (Annuaire) maps recipients by SIREN/SIRET and their chosen channel.

Standards and Formats — EN 16931 at the Core

  • Semantic compliance is based on EN 16931 — the EU standard for e‑invoice data. France adds national business rules and profile constraints.
  • Accepted formats typically include UBL 2.1, UN/CEFACT CII (D16B profile), and Factur‑X — a hybrid PDF/A‑3 with embedded EN 16931 XML.
  • Authenticity and integrity must be guaranteed — via qualified e‑signature, EDI controls, or a documented reliable audit trail — with PDP/PPF validation adding technical and business checks.

What Gets Exchanged vs What Gets Reported — E‑Invoicing and E‑Reporting

  • E‑invoicing applies to domestic B2B transactions — invoices flow supplier → PDP/PPF → buyer (via buyer’s PDP or PPF). Statuses and acknowledgments travel back to the supplier.
  • E‑reporting applies where invoices are not fully exchanged domestically through the network — B2C, and cross‑border B2B. Summaries and payment statuses are reported to PPF at mandated intervals.
  • Key identifiers are SIREN/SIRET, VAT numbers, and the directory routing entry. Line‑level VAT, exemptions, and delivery details must align with EN 16931 and French specifics.

Integration Models — Direct to PPF, Via PDP, or Through an OD

1) PPF Direct

  • Use when you want a state‑managed channel — fewer external contracts, but you must build to PPF’s APIs and constraints.
  • Pros — official hub, baseline capabilities, direct compliance. Cons — feature set is generic, you own more orchestration.

2) PDP Integration

  • Contract with a certified PDP — they handle interoperability, validations, directory updates, and e‑reporting on your behalf.
  • Pros — richer APIs, dashboards, advanced monitoring, and partner tooling. Cons — commercial terms, vendor selection, platform limits.

3) OD + PDP

  • Keep your existing billing stack (OD role) and connect to one or more PDPs via adapters — useful for multi‑tenant SaaS.
  • Pros — flexibility, vendor portability. Cons — you must manage mapping, routing, and multi‑PDP nuances.

EN 16931 Mapping — Practical Data Checklist

  • Parties — supplier and buyer with SIREN/SIRET, VAT IDs, and addresses; delivery and ordering parties if different.
  • Document core — invoice number, issue date, due date, currency, payment terms, references (order/contract/delivery).
  • Lines — item identifiers, quantities, unit prices, allowances/charges, tax category and rate, exemptions with legal references.
  • Totals — taxable bases per rate, VAT totals per rate, grand total including tax, rounding rules.
  • Attachments and profiles — Factur‑X PDF, structured XML, and any procurement references required by the buyer.

Lifecycle and Statuses — What to Handle

  • Technical validation — schema and business rules (EN 16931 + French rules). Failures produce rejects with error codes.
  • Business acceptance — buyer acceptance, refusal, or dispute; update statuses back to supplier.
  • Payment and adjustments — credit notes, cancellations, and payment status reporting for e‑reporting scenarios.

Security, Integrity, and Archiving — Compliance Foundations

  • Authenticity and integrity — ensure via qualified signature, EDI controls, or reliable audit trail. PDP/PPF validations complement but do not replace your evidence policy.
  • Archiving — retain invoices and evidence for statutory periods (typically up to 10 years in France) with immutable logs, hash chains, and time‑stamps.
  • Privacy — handle personal data in invoices under GDPR principles — minimization, lawful basis, retention, and access control.

API Integration — Step‑by‑Step for PPF / PDP

1) Discovery and scoping

  • Identify flows — domestic B2B e‑invoicing vs B2C / cross‑border e‑reporting. Inventory legal entities, volumes, and peak loads.

2) Directory readiness

  • Collect SIREN/SIRET, buyer routing preferences, and PDP affiliations. Synchronize with the Annuaire to ensure correct delivery.

3) Data mapping

  • Map ERP/billing fields to EN 16931. Implement pre‑submission validation to avoid PDP/PPF rejects. Support UBL, CII, and Factur‑X.

4) Connectivity

  • Establish OAuth/mTLS or PDP‑specific auth. Configure environments — sandbox, pre‑prod, prod. Implement idempotent submission with correlation IDs.

5) Eventing and statuses

  • Subscribe to callbacks or poll for statuses. Normalize states — submitted, accepted, rejected, refused, disputed, canceled, paid.

6) E‑reporting

  • Build report packages for B2C and cross‑border B2B — amounts, VAT breakdowns, payment updates — per cadence and schema.

7) Observability

  • Dashboards for throughput and failure rates, alerting on rejects and SLA breaches, dead‑letter queues and auto‑retries with exponential backoff.

8) Evidence and archiving

  • Store source XML/PDF, PDP/PPF receipts, qualified timestamps, and normalized audit logs for regulators and customers.

PDP Provider Onboarding — France‑Specific Considerations

  • Role decision — clarify whether you aim to become a certified PDP, integrate with one or more PDPs, or operate as an OD. Certification entails security, interoperability, and compliance audits.
  • Technical compliance — implement EN 16931 semantic validations, French business rules, directory sync, status orchestration, and e‑reporting payloads.
  • Interoperability — prove exchanges with PPF and multiple PDPs, support Factur‑X, UBL, and CII, and demonstrate end‑to‑end delivery and error handling.
  • Security and governance — mTLS, key management, logging, incident response, and data retention policies aligned with French requirements.
  • Operational readiness — monitoring, customer support runbooks, SLA commitments, and change‑management for evolving schemas and rules.

Testing and Certification — What Good Looks Like

  • Test matrix — valid/invalid invoices, multi‑rate VAT, exemptions, credit notes, cancellations, directory routing, and boundary cases.
  • Non‑functional — throughput under peak loads, resilience to 429/rate limits, replay safety, idempotency, and disaster recovery.
  • Evidence — test reports, trace IDs, and message receipts to demonstrate reliable processing to customers and auditors.

Costing and Commercials — Build vs Buy

  • Direct to PPF — lowest external cost but higher engineering effort and feature ownership.
  • Single PDP partner — faster time‑to‑market, consolidated SLAs, and tooling — balanced by platform fees and vendor dependency.
  • Multi‑PDP strategy — portability and leverage on pricing — traded off against integration complexity and maintenance.
  • Pricing model for SaaS — base platform fee per legal entity + usage tiering per invoice/report + compliance update Surcharge for schema changes.

Common Pitfalls — And How to Avoid Them

  • Assuming “PDF only” is enough — you need structured EN 16931 data, not just visual rendering.
  • Skipping pre‑validation — avoid downstream rejects by validating business rules prior to submission.
  • Ignoring directory sync — outdated routing leads to misdelivery or failures.
  • Underestimating e‑reporting — B2C and cross‑border flows require separate pipelines, schedules, and payment status updates.
  • Thin observability — without retries, DLQ, and alerting, small glitches cascade into compliance breaches.

Implementation Timeline — A Pragmatic 8‑Week Plan

1) Weeks 1–2 — Discovery, directory onboarding, and EN 16931 mapping with validation rules. 2) Weeks 3–4 — Build submission, status, and evidence services; wire Factur‑X / UBL / CII. 3) Weeks 5–6 — E‑reporting pipeline, monitoring, alerts, and archiving with LTV signatures/timestamps. 4) Weeks 7–8 — End‑to‑end testing with buyer samples, performance tests, go‑live runbook, and hyper‑care.

Glossary — Quick Reference

  • PPF — Portail Public de Facturation, the state platform for routing and reporting.
  • PDP — Certified Partner Dematerialization Platform that exchanges invoices and reports to PPF.
  • OD — Non‑certified operator assisting with preparation and routing via PDP/PPF.
  • EN 16931 — EU semantic standard for e‑invoicing.
  • Factur‑X — Hybrid PDF/A‑3 with embedded EN 16931 XML.
  • Annuaire — Central directory of recipients and routing choices.
  • SIREN/SIRET — French company identifiers for entities and establishments.

Summary — What to Remember

  • France’s model hinges on EN 16931 structured data, a central directory, and two channels — PPF and PDP — with ODs assisting.
  • Choose integration based on your scale, deadlines, and control needs — direct to PPF, via a PDP, or OD + PDP — and build strong validation, status, and evidence layers.
  • For “france e invoicing ppf pdp integration” and “facturation electronique en16931”, emphasize canonical mapping, directory sync, and resilient APIs. For “pdp provider onboarding france”, highlight role choice, interoperability proofs, and security governance.