Exporting your electronic invoices (Factur-X, CII)

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Here's some context on electronic invoicing in Europe, more precisely France.

What is electronic invoicing? 

Electronic invoicing involves digitizing the exchange of invoices. In practical terms, instead of exchanging PDF documents by mail or email, clients and suppliers exchange invoicing elements in the form of data streams.

This transition, initiated since 2020, now makes electronic invoicing mandatory for all French companies subject to VAT, starting from:

• September 1st, 2026,
  • invoice receipt for all companies
  • invoice issuance for large enterprises and intermediate-sized enterprises 
• September 1st, 2027,
  • invoice issuance for small and medium-sized companies and micro-enterprises

Electronic invoicing: What changes?

Electronic invoices must incorporate organized information and cannot be presented in simple PDF format anymore. Companies will be required to exchange their electronic invoices through dedicated electronic invoicing intermediary platforms:

• Public Invoicing Portal (Portail Public de Facturation or PPF)
• Private Partner Dematerialization Platforms (Plateformes de Dématérialisation Partenaires privées or PDP)

In France, invoices must necessarily be in one of the following three formats: UBL, CII, or Factur-X.

BoondManager offers CII and Factur-X formats for export.

Your invoices will be ready to be submitted on these platforms.

For more information regarding the implementation of the reform, we invite you to consult articles from the French government such as:

• E-invoicing presentation - impots.gouv.fr
• E-reporting for foreign enterprises without a permanent establishment in France - impots.gouv.fr

The difference between the Factur-X and CII formats?

• CII (Cross-Industry Invoice): a format based on XML with a highly structured international standard easily readable by computer systems
• Factur-X: a hybrid format comprising the CII format along with a PDF format to facilitate everyday reading  

Before exporting your invoices in these formats, there are some prerequisites.

Administrator's Side

Manager's Side

As mentioned earlier, Factur-X and CII formats are structured standards and therefore require specific information for reading in computer systems.

As an Invoicing Administrator, you will need to check certain points in your client's billing details before exporting your invoices:

• VAT ID
• SIRET
• Sending mode. (If the required sending mode for a client's invoices is Chorus Pro (French Public Invoicing Portal), you will be able to enter the legal entity's service code. Want to check if your client has a service code? Check the Directory of Public Structures.)

Exporting an invoice individually

Billing module > Orders view > Order card

To download one of your invoices, you can go to the Billing module or the Billing tab of your project to open the relevant client order.

You will find the invoices related to your order.

Click on the invoice you want to download, then export the invoice by choosing one of the available formats:

• PDF
• Factur-X
• CII

Bulk export of invoices

Billing module > Invoices view  

To download multiple invoices at once, the Invoices view in the Billing module is perfect for selecting invoices to export.

Once filtered, click on the selection tool and then on the Export button. You will have the option to download your invoices with or without their attachments in the available formats:

• PDF
• Factur-X
• CII

You will find your exported invoices in the Download Center (as shown below).

As a reminder, Chorus Pro is the French public invoicing portal.

Once logged in to Chorus Pro: 

• Go to the "Issued Invoices" tab
• Then, to the "Submit Invoice" sub-tab
• Follow our examples (GIFs below) and easily submit your formats (CII and Factur-X):

Submitting your CII-format invoice

Submitting your Factur-X format invoice

Bulk submission of invoices

You can, of course, submit your invoices in bulk on Chorus Pro by choosing a ZIP file, downloaded on Boond, containing all your invoices. (See the "Downloading your electronic invoices" section above)

Where to find submitted invoices?

You will find the invoices you have submitted in the "Issued Invoices" tab > "Search" sub-tab.

Your invoice will transition to the "Submitted" status while Chorus Pro certifies that the invoice is properly integrated into its databases, and then it will move to the "Available to Recipient" status.

For more information on the life cycle of your invoices on Chorus Pro, we invite you to consult their article on the subject (Note: They have yet to translate it to English).

Rejected invoice? Where to find error messages and how to address them?

If you cannot find your invoice in the "Issued Invoices > Search" tab as mentioned above, your invoice may have been rejected and not issued. To check this, go to the "Data Flow Overview" tab.

After submitting your invoice, the information (data flow) should be "Integrated" into Chorus Pro's data. If not, you will find the "Rejected" status instead. This means that you did not properly qualify your Boond interface before downloading your invoice, and the Chorus Pro computer system does not recognize your information.

We invite you to reread the "Required" section of this article and ensure that your information is correct (VAT, SIRET, or even the invoice's reference number).

For example, Chorus Pro will reject invoices with the same reference as a previously submitted invoice.

Error messages can help you identify which information was not recognized by Chorus Pro so that you can review this information before downloading your invoice on BoondManager.