[News] Reform of e-invoicing in France and Open Source ERP

E-invoicing and Open Source ERPs

Walid : welcome to all of you for this new episode of Projets Libres! Today, we’re going to talk about a subject that came up through my work. We started talking internally about e-invoicing, you’ll see that it’s a subject that is quite topical, and I thought it would be interesting to do an episode on it, because I’m really not a specialist in the field. And so, thanks to Laurent from Dolibarr and Dora from Akretion, today, I have with me three people who are very involved in this whole process. Around e-invoicing and its impact on free tools, in particular ERPs.

So, I am delighted to welcome three people today. First, Philippe Scoffoni, who is the founder of Easya Solutions and a member of the Dolibarr community. Alexis de Lattre, who is an Odoo developer at Akretion and a member of the OCA, the Odoo Community Association. And Alexandre Spangaro, who is a Dolibarr expert at Inovea Conseil and an accountant, and also a member of the Dolibarr community. Gentlemen, welcome to the Projets Libres! podcast. It’s nice to have you.

Alexis : Thank you. Hello.

Philippe : Thank you, hello.

Presentation of the guests

Walid : For listeners who don’t know you, I’m going to ask you in turn to introduce yourself briefly and explain to us who you are, what project you’re involved in and why you’re involved in this episode. Let’s start with Philippe, if you’d like to introduce yourself, please.

Philippe : Hello. So, Philippe Scoffoni, professionally I run a company that implements a business management software based on the open source ERP Dolibarr. We also do a little collaboration with other free software, a little reporting, BI (business intelligence) with Metabase, etc.

I have the hat of president of an association called PLOSS-RA, which is the Association of Free Digital Professionals in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. And then a very recent hat, which is that of an association, we may say a few words, which is PDPLibre, of which I am also lucky enough to be president. And which is related to this issue of e-invoicing.

Walid : Thank you. Alexis, I’ll let you speak.

Alexis : Yes, Alexis de Lattre, I started in open source when I was a student in the Videolan project. Some people also know me from documentation I wrote about Debian. Well, it’s been a while, but sometimes I still meet people who say to me “ah, but I remember you at that time”. I’ve been working on Odoo since 2009. First, as a user for my own company. I had chosen Odoo for my business, and then I went to the other side of the fence. I became an integrator. And so, I learned development on Odoo and that’s what I do today in my job.

And within the OCA, the Odoo Community Association, I am above all an active contributor on the accounting part, the side effects, the banking part, e-invoicing, today’s topic, the customs part, the French specificities of accounting. That’s what keeps me busy in my contributions. Odoo. And then, we can perhaps talk about my more specific contributions to e-invoicing. But maybe we’ll finish the round table presentation.

Walid : Thank you. Alexander?

Alexandre : For me, it’s a bit of a special path. I was head of mission after my studies. I was head of mission for about ten years in an accounting firm. I am a real accountant with an accounting degree. I have nothing to do in IT, let’s say. This is called a hybrid. I touch a little bit of everything. I am passionate about computers.

I was lucky enough to join the Dolibarr world a very long time ago. I was looking for a software for one of my clients who didn’t have too much money: I’m not going to say, I never said that open source was free or anything, mind you, I didn’t say that. But in the meantime, I looked for software, I came across Dolibarr and I became passionate about the Dolibarr community, which welcomed me with open arms.

And a little bit like Alexis, today, now, I’m with an integrator called Inovea Conseil , which is a Dolibarr specialist. And now I’m in charge of the accounting part of the software. I didn’t integrate on my own, but I integrated a large part of the accounting features and I’m recognized as such in this respect. I continue to take care of the accounting part, trying to make it evolve thanks to the help of the whole Dolibarr community and by myself. I am also treasurer of the Dolibarr association and I am also treasurer of the new PDPLibre Association, which Philippe was talking about a few minutes ago. There you go.

Why the reform and what does it contain?

Walid : We are well surrounded today. I would like to take this opportunity to say that for listeners, who would like to know more, I invite you to listen to episode number 1 with Laurent Destailleur on the history of Dolibarr and how it works. And also the episode whose issue I forgot with Joël Grand-Guillaume on the OCA (Odoo Community Association), what it is and where it comes from. This will allow you to learn more about what we have just mentioned.

Alright, thank you for those introductions. And indeed, we’re going to talk about all that again. To begin with, the first thing we need to talk about is this famous billing reform. And the first question I’m going to leave is someone answer, that’s why there was this reform and what does it contain?

Alexis : The starting point for the reform of e-invoicing is first and foremost the State, which seeks to better collect VAT. It seeks to better control the collection and deduction of VAT, since companies collect VAT and deduct VAT on their purchases, to better control this process. VAT is by far the first tax of the State. This kind of reform, by the way, I find that the word continuous transactional control, sometimes. It is referred to by the acronym CTC, Continuous Transactional Control: it is the State that controls the VAT flows collected, the VAT flows deductible.

These reforms have already taken place in the countries of southern Europe, or even for a longer period of time, in the countries of Central and South America. It is a reform that is gradually coming up. In Europe, it was Italy that was the precursor, which has already put this in place. There you have it, France that follows, and then other countries too, which are gradually getting into it. And we see this movement going up from the south to the north, because the countries of the south, which historically had, perhaps more VAT fraud, if they are put in earlier and the other countries are following suit.

So, that’s the path first of all. So, obviously, this is not what is too much emphasized by the State. When you listen to him, “he highlights the gain in efficiency in inter-company exchanges, the fact that he will be able to offer pre-filling services for the VAT return, intended for small businesses, a bit like the pre-filling of the tax return.” or things like that. But the real reason is still to recover the TV better.

Walid : When do we start discussing this reform?

Alexis : This reform, at the very beginning, at the time when it was really under the radar, was supposed to come into force in 2023. But few people heard of that at the time. And then there was a first postponement which gave a three-stage calendar staggered between 2024 and 2026. This timetable has been in force for quite a long time, and the DGFiP was already well in the process of communicating on the subject.

And then, in the summer of 2023, just after a cabinet reshuffle, they announced that this timetable was difficult to sustain because the state had started software development late, for its part. In reality, when we saw the moment when they awarded the public contract for the construction of the software bricks on the state side and the time when the beta tests started, there were less than 18 months in between with huge developments to be carried out on the state side: it was not tenable.

And so, just after the cabinet reshuffle in July 2023, there was the announcement of a postponement. And we knew the new calendar a few months later, with the current calendar, which is a start in September 2026. With a generalization of this reform, in September 2027. So, a calendar spread over a year, with only two stages, whereas there were three in the previous calendar. And so, there you have it, the two major deadlines are today, September 2026, September 2027.

Alexis de Lattre

Walid : What will this reform mean for companies, Alexandre?

Alexandre : It will involve all companies, all companies. You will correct me, I was going to say all the companies that have to respond to VAT. I don’t have the term in my head anymore.

Alexis : subject to VAT.

Alexandre : Subject to VAT, thank you, very much. So, auto-entrepreneurs, micro-enterprises in France, in France, in any case, will also be affected, especially, I would say, for those who may exceed certain thresholds. You just have to correct me on that.

Alexis : So, I’m going to correct you on that. Self-employed people, of course, are below the threshold. They don’t charge VAT, nor do they deduct it.

Alexandre : But it’s not an exemption from the law, I think.

Alexis : That’s right. In fact, they are still considered to be subject to the law, but with an exceptional regime. But they are still in the definition of VAT payers. And so, they are fully concerned by this reform. They are in the reform while they do not charge VAT. So that’s a little subtlety.

Alexandre : That’s good, thank you very much, Alexis.

As a result, all companies, well, all types of companies, almost in France, will be affected by this reform. It will consist of getting software, because I still know companies that are able to make invoices. On Canva, Paint, Word and Excel. Sorry, even on LibreOffice or anything, whatever. In fact, all these companies will be forced to equip themselves with software, or at least invoicing software, which is SaaS (Software as a Service), which is installed on the computers. But it will have to be connected to a service provider, to a dematerialization partner, in a partner dematerialization platform, which is called a PDP.

Alexis Spangaro

And so, this reform will require you to connect to send invoices. For the moment, we are only talking about B2B invoices, between professionals, what we call e-invoicing in the first place. And then, there will be a second phase for which we have very little information, e-reporting. In my opinion, it is not yet in line with the level of reform today. So, we talk about it, but we don’t have more information than that in terms of the format. Alexis, I see you nodding.

The goal after that will be to send invoices via these platforms without simply going through email. From now on, we will go through these platforms that will be responsible for sending the end customer, the professional, the end customer: it will send him the invoice. He will either be able to retrieve it on the platform with which he has contracted, or he will be able to take this invoice and if there are additional services or if the receiving software allows it, he may be able to automatically integrate this invoice.

For e-reporting, it will consist of reporting information on sales for individual customers every x day. We are not going to say professionals, but individuals. And so, it will allow us to send a recap. We won’t send the details of the invoices, we will send a recap. That’s just where for the moment, I find that we have little information about the final format. We don’t know what we’re going to have to send. This will happen in the background.

Alexis : In any case, indeed,

There are really these two components in the reform, e-invoicing, so e-invoicing in B2B. These are the things we talk about the most, what is the most understandable and on which we have an obligation. But there are also productivity gains linked to the fact that we will receive structured invoices, through a single channel, whereas today, in concrete terms, we waste more and more time looking for our supplier invoices on the different portals of the different suppliers. You will connect to the EDF portal to retrieve your electricity bill, to the portal of your Internet service provider, your mobile phone provider’s portal… Finally, we spend the time looking for our supplier invoices in these different portals. There, they will all arrive at a single place, i.e. at its PDP, its partner dematerialization platform. They’re going to arrive, not just in a form of what I call a dumb PDF, which is a simple PDF, with nothing, but they’re going to arrive in a structured form, which is in the form of an XML file or a PDF file with an XML file in it. And it is this XML file that will be able to be used to read the invoice 100% reliably, without resorting to character recognition systems.

Alexis de Lattre

So that’s this e-invoicing part that is generally what people remember from the reform. And then the hidden part of the iceberg is e-reporting. That’s the pain in the ass. And in e-reporting, it is not only to report to the tax authorities B2C sales and sales that do not give rise to the issuance of invoices by its PDP, but there is much more than that in e-reporting: we must also report the payment information of VAT invoices on receipt and the information on the life cycle of invoices.

The idea is to share information between customers and suppliers on the progress of the invoice processing, to say “yes, it’s good, I received it, I received it in my accounts, I approved it, I put it into payment, I received the money, I was actually paid”. And to share these invoice statuses between customers and suppliers. There are statuses that are optional and statuses that are mandatory, in particular reporting payment information on VAT invoices on receipt, it is mandatory.

And in e-reporting, there are also VAT-exempt transactions, for example, export sales, intra-community sales to professionals in the European Union. We must also trace intra-community acquisitions. So, it’s quite heavy. We bring up a lot of things. In fact, we report all the information that the administration needs to pre-fill the VAT return. And since there are a lot of things on the VAT return, we have to report a lot of things in e-reporting.

Alexandre :

It is certain that this reform will make it possible to accentuate the controls normally on payment deadlines as well. It’s the famous LME law of 2008 which said that if you pay beyond a certain time, there are fines, there is interest. There were fines for bad payers, but it required going to do on-site checks and checking when it had really been settled and whatever. There, it could be almost automated because we will know when it has been settled when it goes through the platforms.

Alexis Spangaro

Walid : Philippe, do you want to add anything?

Philippe : We’ll also have to think about how things are organized because today, we sometimes have bookkeeping or business management methods that are hybrid, that is to say that there is a part, for example, sales, sales invoices that are issued by the business management software.

And then, it is the accounting firm that takes care of the purchases. We will have to ask ourselves organizational questions and we may find ourselves having to manage several PDPs for the same company: a PDP to send invoices, because I do it from my management software, and the accountant will say “yes, but to receive the invoices, as it is, I was the one who entered them until now. You will have to register on this PDP”. And then, who actually reports the payments? It is the accounting firm that does the bank reconciliation.

So, there will be a little bit of questions like that too, around the reform. I think they will impose a reflection on the organization of the relations between the company and its accounting firm. When you don’t keep all the accounts in your own management software. What is the case, however, in large companies, is the case. For VSEs and SMEs, it is sometimes a little more fragmented in terms of role. There’s also something that we’re going to have to integrate.

This is once again a loss on his data

Walid : To finish on this subject in the plot, there is a line that says “it’s once again a loss of control over this data”. Can you explain what that means, please?

Philippe : Loss of control of data in the sense that, until now, we had management software. We generated his invoices, his purchases. And all this data was potentially stored in its software, in its database, which we could have on our own servers, etc. So, we had a form of mastery or control of what our data does. Tomorrow, with the reform, I will have to transmit all this data to third parties.

So, in the initial reform, which we may not have said, but we still had to have a public invoicing portal (PPF), that is to say that we had to be able to file and receive all these invoices by dialoguing directly with the State, which we can consider as a trusted third party for the sending of our data. But now, we’re going to find ourselves in a situation where, potentially, we’re sending all our purchases, all our sales to third parties. So, of course, the current contract, they will be required not to do anything with it. I hope that it will be well written in the contracts. We haven’t seen a contract yet, but it’s going to start. And that this aspect will be relatively clear. But I can be in the same PDP as my competitor. And I don’t know, that means that maybe the PDP can see at what price I buy from my suppliers versus my competitor. We can imagine a whole lot of things. And then, afterwards, behind it, there are security issues. What if one day, there is a security breach in a PDP?

Philippe Scoffoni

Of course, it will be a flow of invoices, but some will do archiving, storage. What would happen if someone could put a snitch and listen to all the bills that come in, that come out, it’s still a mass of information. There are certain professions, I think it’s still under discussion in the AFNOR or other groups, type, lawyer or other, which clearly say “wait, we have professional secrecy to protect, we would either like to be excluded, or for there to be special conditions for us”.

What is an Open Source ERP and its advantages over proprietary tools?

Walid : ok, I suggest that we don’t necessarily go any further on this part of the presentation. In a second part, maybe for people who are not familiar with free ERPs and the open source world. On these subjects, would anyone like to present briefly enough what an open source ERP is. And what are the advantages over other proprietary tools?

Philippe : Free software is the mastery of one’s computer science, it is being able to know what is going on, to be able to intervene on it in the simplest way possible, either directly or with the help of service providers who have the expertise. So, in a way, it’s mastering your computer tool. And here, we’re talking about business management software, the software in which we’re going to put all the company’s data, all the company’s information. And that’s a big part, often of the value of a company, an activity, a structure, whatever it is, cooperative, associative, whatever its legal status.

I would like to say that it is important that we can rely on an Open Source ERP: it is an ERP whose source code can be accessed, i.e. we are able to read the source code, modify it, make it evolve, reshare it, etc. We have free access to all this, we will be able to adapt it more easily to our needs. It’s much more difficult to develop a so-called proprietary software, with a publisher that has a roadmap, with fixed, rigid deadlines, and where it will be very complicated to influence certain features of the tool.

With open source, I’m not saying that it’s necessarily much simpler, but in any case, it’s much more open and much more possible. And then, free software, open source ERPs, are often by design (from their conception) scalable, easy to complete, and therefore designed to be potentially increased. We talk a lot about sovereignty, sovereignty is having control of these tools. Open source ERPs make it possible, as opposed to a tool, an online platform where, on the day it stops, you have to exchange your pricing conditions. Or they pull the plug on us, but we lose everything.

The particular problems of community tools with this reform

Walid : We’re going to take Dolibarr and Odoo because the people around the table on these subjects that you are working on, are there any particular challenges in working with open source tools on all these regulatory issues? If we take the case, for example, of Odoo through the OCA, Alexis, are there any particular problems of working with an Odoo, with the OCA, for example?

Alexis : I think the difficulty is that we have communities of geeks who like to write code and do cool things in terms of code. And then there, we have to delve into articles of law, into very functional specifications, published by the tax authorities or into areas that, historically, are not our areas of expertise.

We come from free software, which had a large market share in server operating systems, mail servers, things like that, and now we’re in the world of management software, and then we’re going to the tax part. And we are always going further, we are pushing the frontier of free software, always further. So, we have to find people who are willing to dive into the specifications of these fiscal imperatives, these regulatory changes, to follow, because things are moving.

And then this reform has shown it, because we have had a lot of reversals and a lot of unforeseen twists and turns. So we may not be out of the woods yet, because it’s not impossible that there will be others. So there have to be people in communities who are pretty passionate about code and geekery, who are immersed in tax specifications, and understand something about all of this. I think that’s the challenge. Afterwards, when we manage to find people who immerse themselves in it, it allows us to always push the frontier of free software further.

Alexis de Lattre

Who is working on the subject in the OCA and in the Dolibarr community?

Walid : And typically, at the level of the OCA, there are other people besides you who work on these subjects?

Alexis : For the moment, I think I’m a bit alone, but let’s say that I’m supported by other people who provide me with moral and psychological support. It’s true that, for France, it’s essentially me, but in other countries, there are the same problems. And so, in the OCA, there are communities that implement the specifications for Spain, for Belgium, etc. So, it is replicated at the level of each country. After all, I’m not alone, either. There are other people in the French community who are also interested in these subjects, even if I am often the one who follows these subjects very closely.

Walid : And on the Dolibarr side, Alexandre?

Alexandre : On the Dolibarr side, it’s a little different. I have the impression that we have DevCamps every six months that allow us to validate new versions.

There, for example, we were at the Devcamp in Valence, with Philippe, we started to alert at the Devcamp in Bordeaux, I think. We put this forward by saying that we had to work on the subject. Because we discuss it among ourselves, but it really has to be a common subject. The problem I would say in relation to the OCA is that we have the impression that it may be the French community that is discussing it. Whereas Dolibarr is international, let’s say. For the moment, we have little feedback from other communities because the largest community in Dolibarr remains the French community. With the arrival of e-invoicing on 1 January 2026 for Belgium, we can see, for example, that there are movements on the Dolistore, which is our Marketplace for Dolibarr.

Alexandre Spangaro

And on the Dolistore we see modules for the Peppol network, which we will talk about a little later, which will be other methods of communication. Because e-invoicing is coming to Europe, really everywhere in Europe. For the moment, we have the impression that we are really focusing on the French community. I am willing to help other communities, but it is already complicated enough with France. So perhaps other groups would have to be formed, that’s the difficulty. And for a group to be formed, you need motivated people, and that’s the difficulty.

Philippe : We set up what we call financial and functional interest groups (GIFs). There is the word financial in it, because indeed, it is time, all that, that we must try to finance. So these groups, today, are made up of integrators. This is the model we found today in the Dolibarr community. We create working groups on themes, e-invoicing, UI, UX, etc.

We had the situation invoice, which was a bit like the first beta-tester, the POC (Proof of concept) of this concept, which validated the concept and the functioning of our community. So that’s it, it’s the integrators who get together, who put money on the table to develop a function and e-invoicing. In any case, on the Dolibarr side, this is the model, for the moment, set up with a working group that is working on the specs. And that’s it, we’re going to start producing a little code, normally, by the start of the school year.

Philippe Scoffoni

Alexandre : That’s it.

Walid : We have presented the reform in broad strokes and why it is being implemented, but what does it mean in concrete terms for Dolibarr and for the Odoo Community? What, in the case of Odoo, for example, does it change between an Odoo published by the publisher Odoo SA and the OCA? What are the issues that are specific to these community tools that will be, for example, different if you take an Odoo Enterprise from Odoo SA? Alexis, do you want to start? Is there perhaps not in fact?

Alexis : no, in the Odoo world what we have seen, especially in Italy, Italy being the European country that was the first to have this kind of reform, that it is the publisher who implements the reform. For its part, in its official modules, the community also implements itself, independently of that of the publisher.

As a result, we find ourselves with the choice between adopting the community implementation of this reform or the implementation made by the publisher. I’ll remain neutral, each implementation has its advantages and disadvantages: often, in any case, that’s what the experience was in Italy, and that’s the experience I had in France on other subjects, is that maybe the community goes further into the details, goes deeper into the rather particular scenarios.

The editor, sometimes, goes a little less deep in certain specific scenarios. So, it doesn’t make it easy for the user to choose, who can be a little disoriented with the fact that there are two implementations, which are also competitors, let’s say alternatives, the publisher’s implementation, the one made by the OCA. But it is also, in the end, the life of free software communities, to sometimes have competing implementations.

Well, in any case, the schedule is tight. We have deadlines. We, as a community, can’t afford to wait for the publisher either, even if, obviously, he promises that he will be ready on time, but I, in any case, will also do the implementation in the OCA, no matter what. And then, afterwards, the legislators will have the choice between choosing one or the other. That’s how it works, in the end.

Walid : On the Dolibarr side, where there is no publisher

Philippe : There is no publisher, so there will necessarily be only one module that will be community-based. That’s it, it’s a little simpler, we know that we have to go. There is no one who will come and do the job for us.

Alexandre : That’s all the difference. We will rather start with a module. There is no company, there is no publisher that takes care of that. So, indeed, the goal is to create the famous GIfF that Philippe was talking about. The purpose of this group will be to create a module that will allow, let’s say, to be multi-PDP: it will allow you to connect to the different platforms. Now, we are just waiting for the PDPs to start providing their platforms with AFNOR’s standardised APIs, which were recently published.

Platforms are adapting their APIs with this. We wait to be able to connect to it and play with the famous sandboxes so that we can start sending our invoices.

The history of the reform

Alexis : Maybe it’s time to come back a little bit on what happened, because we didn’t explain it to our listeners.

Walid : Precisely, I wanted to come back to that, go ahead, I’ll leave you…

Alexis : So, so, to explain what Alexandre has just said and put it into perspective: historically, in this reform, there was the promise of Bercy to say “you will have the choice between, either connecting to PDPs, so these private service providers, which will allow you to exchange your electronic invoices, so both issuing and receiving, but you will also be able to connect to the Public Billing Portal, the PPF”, a portal developed by Bercy, free, as opposed to the PDPs, private and paid, to fulfill all your obligations. Both in terms of e-invoicing, but also in terms of e-reporting.

And so, that was the promise of the State. One of the challenges was to show that we could switch to this reform with a free platform offered by Bercy. Bercy had launched calls for tenders to major French development companies to develop this software brick. And in the end, they gave up. In October 2024, they announced the abandonment of this public invoicing portal open to all French companies. In the end, they did not say it publicly, but they acknowledged the failure of this software development project. You have to read between the lines. The Bercy press releases do not admit this publicly. And so they said “you’re going to have to go through the PDPs, so the private platforms

Alexis de Lattre

We didn’t expect it, it was announced in October 2024. And this is the first time that we have seen small business unions step up to the plate on this reform. In the end, it was rather interesting to see that finally, the company unions were interested in this reform which was going to impact them. And we saw all the small business unions protest that, suddenly, a reform promised to be free for companies would finally result in subscriptions to be paid to these PDPs. It was a bit of a break with the initial promise. And so, there was this wave of protest.

The Peppol network

So now that we have a little hindsight, this change has also brought the State which, until now… In fact, there is this network… I talked a little about the Peppol network.

Few people have probably heard of it because in France, until now, we snubbed the Peppol network a little. Peppol, i.e. Pan-European Public Procurement Online. This is an initiative launched in the 2010s by the European Commission, which had, with a public subsidy, launched the construction of a network so that public administrations could receive invoices from service providers who work for the administration. So, at the beginning, it was an exchange network, mainly oriented towards private companies sending their invoices to public administrations, at the very beginning. In any case, this was the purpose of the first European subsidies that began to finance this network.

And then, after this initial phase against the backdrop of the European Commission, there was the creation of the OpenPeppol session in 2012, if I am not saying nonsense, which constitutes the governance of this network. And with this evolution, it is not just invoices for public administrations, but all invoices exchanged between companies that can pass through the Peppol network.

It is a network that goes through the Internet, with its own exchange protocols based on existing protocols, but a secure network with a signature of the invoice, signed by the issuer. It should normally avoid the effect of spam that we have in our emails or things like that, the risk that it will be transferred to invoice exchange networks.

And so, the French State, which, until now, has snubbed this Peppol network a little, with the failure of the development of the Public Invoicing Portal, has oriented the entire sector towards the adoption of the Peppol network by saying: the private service providers, the PDPs, will exchange invoices with each other via this Peppol network”. This is what has been agreed at the ecosystem level. And it’s interesting because it avoids reinventing the wheel: we’re adopting a network that has proven itself, that exists, that is already used quite a bit, especially in Northern Europe, which was a bit of a first to adopt the Peppol network on a relatively large scale. So there you have it, avoid reinventing the wheel. And then, it’s the opening up to the international market because from the moment the PDPs connect and exchange excess invoices via the Peppol network, it’s also the possibility of saying: “if I have an invoice to send to a customer, for example in the European Union, in the event that the destination company is itself connected to the Peppol network, to be able to send it via its PDP to the recipient in another country”. So, it opens up a reform that, from the Franco-French, opens up a little to the international with this network.

Alexis de Lattre

Who are the PDPs?

Walid : Is the PDP a platform, is it a French company? Are they existing companies?

Alexis : yes, it’s a company… new, possibly, but in any case, the PDP is a company.

There are also foreign service providers who are entering the PDP market in France. And so, we must see the PDP as a French access point to the Peppol network with a kind of snitch function that sends a copy of the invoice to the tax authorities. That’s it, you have to see that in the end. That’s how I describe a PDP. It is an access point to the Peppol network with this spyware function.

Alexis de Lattre

I am sending a copy of the invoice that was issued to the tax authorities. And it allows the tax authorities to see all the invoices pass through in the exchanges. Inter-company. And it is also via this PDP that we will send our e-reporting, so this additional information that we have to send back when we are in the VAT regime, normally every ten days. You have to send this e-report via your PDP so that it can be sent to the tax authorities. And so, that’s the role of PDPs, to broadcast. And also serve as a bit of an inbox for our supplier invoices.

Walid : Philippe or Alexandre, can you explain, we adhere to a PDP, is it a different contract? Are there different services? How does it work? It’s going to be interesting for the rest of the discussion, I think.

Alexandre : Of course. So, first of all, I’m going to add an acronym, well, it’s not even an acronym, the PPF, when it disappeared, was replaced, it’s a bit like the snitch that Alexis was talking about just now. It’s not quite the same thing, but the State still has a service that will have to be set up, which is the centralized directory.

The centralized directory will mean that each company will have to declare itself in this centralized directory. The directory was released in June of this year. So, if you have to receive, I think, emails from publishers or whatever. To encourage you to register on this centralized directory. In any case, this centralized directory, all the people who are covered by this reform, by June 2026, will have to…

Alexis : September 2026.

Alexandre : Sorry, excuse me, September. By September 2026, will have to register. So, either we go through a software, or we go through a… I saw that they were going to set up a CERFA. For the moment, I don’t have any information on that and I don’t think it will happen like that. I saw that the PDPs, in their platform, were going to take care of the statutes, and finally, they were going to take care of the directory registrations. And so each company will have to declare which PDP it is registered for. That’s what to remember.

The centralized directory is managed by the government and each company will have to choose the PDP in which it registers. She doesn’t have the right to be automatically registered by a PDP, that’s important. And so, once it has chosen, this is where the transactions will go. When we send an invoice, even when we receive one, we will necessarily have to go through this PDP, because we will have declared it to the centralized directory. After that, that doesn’t prevent what has been planned is that we can change PDP. It’s important, we don’t commit for 25 years.

Alexandre Spangaro

But it means that afterwards, behind it, there will inevitably be contractualizations. There will be contracts with a certain number of mailings, I think, quantities of invoice mailings that will be put in place. And potentially, there may be periods of commitment. I can’t say that. We are starting to see the rates that have been proposed by some PDPs, we are seeing commitment periods that have been proposed.

Walid : Just to cut you off, what is a PDP? It’s a company that does PDP or for example, it’s a publisher that has this additional service, what does it correspond to?

Alexandre : A PDP is a bit of everything Walid. They are either new entrants, and you have the possibility to register as a PDP.

To be a PDP, you have to be SecNumCloud at the infrastructure level, you have to be SecNumCloud. You have to be ISO 27001 if I’m not mistaken. Once you have that, afterwards, you have to put a platform in place. You have to connect, I don’t know everything exactly. You will correct me, gentlemen, but in any case, there is a large infrastructure to be put in place and it costs a lot of money. So there are already some who have started on this with the aim of being funded. But they are still private players. So, I don’t know exactly how many there are today. We’ll say a hundred.

Alexis : There are about a hundred.

Alexandre : Yes, that’s right. I don’t know if they have reached them, but in any case, there are about a hundred PDPs who are today, let’s say, referenced, who are in the process of registration, well of validation, I’m going to put it like that, because they have already applied for registration. And so, they will be validated by the end of 2025. And so, they will officially become PDP. In the meantime, these are partner dematerialization platforms, the famous PDP.

For these platforms, the goal will be to get as many invoices as possible through them, of course, to make their model profitable, as we suspect. But then, there are new players and there are old players who adapt. There are already companies that were specialized in OCR and others, which have decided, of course, to focus on this. To take a new market that is being created.

Alexis : I have to say again, I think that PDPs must be registered by Bercy. And so, it is Bercy that publishes the list of PDPs that it has registered. Some are in the process of compiling their files, which will be registered in the coming months.

But in the end, the PDP, which we have to choose, must be on the official list of Bercy. And the other thing I wanted to say is that among the hundred or so PDPs that there are today, there are historical players in the world of e-invoicing, there are new players, sometimes publishers, management software software, like Sage or Cegid, who say to themselves “hey, I’m going to show myself my own PDP”. So, we can assume that their PDP services are reserved for their customers, who use their software and who will not open their services to other software.

There are PDPs which, on the contrary, are set up independently of any publisher to try to seduce as many publishers as possible to connect with them. We see some large companies that set up their PDP, a priori only for their own needs, which are not going to market their services.

We see companies from around the world, from e-invoicing, for example, companies that operated the Edifact networks, and who say to themselves, “I’m already in the middle of the flows in the automotive industries, in the mass distribution industries where I see Edifact flows of invoice orders. I will offer my clients to keep this network and I will send the copies of the invoices to the tax authorities in the expected format and do the format conversions to be able to dialogue with all French companies.” There are different players.

So even if there are a hundred PDPs registered today, PDPs who publicly offer their service to all companies, this represents a smaller number of a few dozen who, really, are likely to offer their service to any company.

Walid : Alexandre, you wanted to complete

Alexandre : That’s exactly what Alexis just said. We were talking about it, there are PDPs who will not offer their service because it is really for internal needs. I think in particular, we saw in the list, the Leclerc group, I don’t even know if there is not Lidl or something like that. It’s really for internal needs. There are PDPs who will sell their services and there are others, we have had announcements that it was going to be free, but they are publishers, software and in fact, they will simply offer it on their software.

Walid : Odoo, isn’t it going to try to be good PDP?

Alexis : this is what Fabien Pinkears, the boss, the founder of Odoo, announced on LinkedIn, in a short video he sent, or a small message he sent on LinkedIn about two months ago. From memory. They said that they were going to become PDPs themselves and that at the same time, if they were not ready in time, they were also working with existing PDPs to maybe move to the beginning or until they were fully ready. They were looking at all the opportunities, but that’s what Fabien Pinkears said in a post on LinkedIn.

AFNOR and the standardization of APIs

I just wanted to add a little point that Alexandre addressed. With the discontinuation of the public billing portal, all companies will choose PDPs. That’s 4.5 million French companies subject to VAT that have to choose a PDP. That’s one of the issues that came up quite quickly. When Bercy gave up on offering the public invoicing portal, it was to say “ok, “we have a jungle of PDPs, a hundred PDPs that are offered to us.

If each PDP has its own API, we will implement the API of a PDP, then, the day we choose another one, we will have to reimplement the API. And it’s not just an API, because in fact, there’s many, many exchanges. Requests to consult the directory, requests to send invoices, to receive invoices, to send reports, to send information. There are many, many of them. It’s not just an API call.” We’re talking about a lot of different requests to send for a lot of different things.

If each PDP has its own API, the cost of switching PDPs is going to be high. And when the cost of changing PDPs is high, obviously, the competition doesn’t work very well and therefore prices remain high. For example, changing banks for a company, even for an individual, but we’re going to talk about companies, inevitably, we change IBANs. All direct debits must be changed. It’s a job that is quite boring. And so, it’s a pain in the ass to change banks, so we don’t do it very often. And prices remain high because banks know that it is complicated to change banks. And this is a message that has been heard by Bercy, which has mobilized the ecosystem with this work done in partnership with AFNOR to offer a standardized API. Now, we call it the AFNOR API. There is no regulatory obligation for the moment on the part of the PDPs to implement the AFNOR API, but all the PDPs with whom I have had the opportunity to speak have promised me that they will implement the AFNOR API. And so, it is the promise of, a priori, being able to change and switch from one PDP to another relatively easily thanks to this standardization of the PDP APIs. So that’s good news from the last few months. This Afnor standard API project is on very good track. And the specifications were published a month or two ago.

Alexis de Lattre

Financing of work on the reform

Walid : Now, there is a subject that will be interesting to address. It’s all this work that you’re doing there. It’s time, it’s discussions, it costs money. How do you finance this time? We can start with Alexis. Is it you, as a person who does this? Do you have any special money to work on this or do you take your time to do it?

Alexis : I think it’s several months of work to implement this reform. These are not days or weeks. It takes months of work to implement the entire part, i.e. the e-invoicing part, but also e-reporting.

Walid : You mean to develop and test the module?

Alexis : to develop and test.

To implement this module in the OCA, I think it can clearly be counted in months of work. The work to be done should not be neglected. And so, for that, we haven’t completed the financing, etc. But what we’re considering is resources from us, from Akretion, and therefore the company I work for, which will be put on this, helped by perhaps funding from our own customers, who are obviously all concerned by this and who will help us finance this work. And it so happens that I, for 4 years now, have launched a service offer for my French integrator colleagues. So, I have about fifteen integrators who have subscribed to this service offer.

Alexis de Lattre

In fact, as I maintain a lot of modules in the French rental in all this accounting part, historically, I had a lot of integrators who made me work by telling me “oh Alexis, there’s one of your modules that I need on this version, come on I’ll pay you one or two days so that you can bring me the module on the new version, I need it for one of my clients, etc. ».

So, I had a lot of integrators who called on me. On small one-off missions, especially to port modules or add features to an existing model, telling me “you’re the one who developed it, you’ll be faster than us to develop it.” And so, I had like that with a lot of French integrators who made me work. I came back to see these integrators and offered a package that I charge them for every year. So obviously, they are free to subscribe to it or not, but I have about fifteen integrators who have subscribed.

And so it gives me a budget every year to finance developments: first, to maintain the existing, because there is a maintenance of the existing with Odoo, which evolves very quickly with a new version that comes out every year. Then all these modules must be available on the new versions, under penalty of dying or being sidelined. Finally, next year, the bulk of this budget will be dedicated to this major project to reform e-invoicing.

So in the end, it’s the integrators who finance: I also think that in the Dolibarr world, it’s also the integrators who finance with money that comes from their customers, directly or indirectly. That’s how it’s going to happen.

Walid : The OCA is not intended to put money on the table?

Alexis : It could, the OCA has budgets to finance a certain number of things, but here, we’re still talking about something specific to France, which doesn’t benefit other countries. And so, for the time being, the OCA is rather financing projects that benefit all its members, and therefore all countries.

Walid : On the Dolibarr side, Philippe, do you want to explain a little bit how you are organized?

Philippe : It is the system of functional financial interest groupings that I was talking about earlier, which effectively amounts to having integrators today.

But it won’t be enough, because indeed, as Alexis says, we’re not talking about 10 days of development, we’re talking about several months, so a necessarily substantial budget. So, we’ll probably do a bit of crowdfunding, things like that, that we’ll set up to actually bring Dolibarr users to come and contribute financially to the development of the tool. It’s a real challenge, once again, and then, we are forced to say that it only concerns France too.

Philippe Scoffoni

So there you have it, even if, indeed, there is a big, big French community on which we can rely, but it will be, I think, integrative funding, plus a contribution that we will seek out, solicit from our users/customers.

Alexandre : I just wanted to add.

A point that has nothing to do with this podcast, which we could also address in another podcast. That’s the difficulty we have, is that we have another reform that fell at the same time, the 2025 Finance Law and which relates to the certification of cash register software. It’s a double job, it’s a double funding to find, let’s say, and that’s what complicates things enormously.

Alexandre Spangaro

Alexis : That’s clear to have these two fixtures collide in terms of schedule. It’s really not nice, because it’s in both cases that make big budgets, big constraints. And so, on the part of the legislator, to have brought this down at the same time, that’s really not nice.

Walid : But it impacts everyone, not necessarily only free software.

Alexis : Yes, it has an impact, everyone, that’s for sure. But hey, free software players don’t have the same means as large proprietary publishers, for whom R&D budgets are in the millions of euros. We are not the unit in which we count our R&D budgets.

Philippe : Not yet.

What is the status of the work on the modules?

Walid : Where are you in your various discussions? Because here, what I understand is that you will have to develop a module, certainly choose one or more PDPs, with whom, maybe you are already talking. Where are you in your reflections and work at the moment? We can start with Dolibarr, where are you at?

Alexandre : The DevCamp in Valence, which took place in June, made it possible to validate the discussions that are underway. We even had a PDP who was directly present during the DevCamp. The first one with whom we had talked, there are others who, potentially, are starting to communicate on the networks to reassure users: already from Dolibarr to begin with, because what I was saying earlier, since the centralized directory opened in June, now, it’s at the communication level, all the PDPs, All software publishers communicate by saying “be careful, be careful, your software is no longer going to be compatible”.

What I want to say is NO. In any case, for Dolibarr, we will do what is necessary. We’ll be there on time. It’s just that you have to be patient and not worry. Everything will be done and there will be official communications that will be launched during the fourth quarter of 2025. It will probably spill over, of course, into the first quarter of 2026. But in any case, we’ll be there and we’ll be on time.

That was the first thing I wanted to clarify. But what was done, especially during this DevCamp, it allowed us to explain how we were going to try to proceed. We presented the work of the group. We were waiting, we feel like we’re passive, we’re preparing. But since we didn’t yet have access to AFNOR’s standardised API sandbox, for the moment, we weren’t coding. So, we’re really waiting and saying we’re going to try to make it happen. That’s the difficulty. In the end, what has been done is that the Dolibarr group will, from the beginning of the school year, start coding with the money that we had already raised previously from the many Dolibarr integrators and Dolibarr Preferred Partners.

Alexandre Spangaro

As a result, we are going to offer a module that I, personally, call Multi PDP. And so the goal is to have a specialized module, maintained by Dolibarr, in any case, where the ERP is located, but it will be a module that will be independent, because we don’t want it to be a module that is hung up in the body of Dolibarr. We have to be able to update it fairly quickly, and so, if there really is a maintenance team on it, the goal of the module is that it is updated fairly quickly if there are changes, things to adapt.

We don’t want there to be a need to update Dolibarr on the side. It’s really going to be an external module, knowing that we have another problem, of course, which is that Dolibarr being international, it’s a module that will only concern France, mainly. At first, we didn’t want to put it in the heart and for it to be offered to everyone, because there was no interest. But after that, the main difficulty is beyond the code, it will of course be to communicate and to be as clear as possible in the face of the aggressiveness of some other software publishers.

Even accountants are already trying to find out about this, to encourage some clients to register on their PDP. Because in each firm, for example, there is necessarily a publisher, who is present. Usually, there is only one. And so, all the publishers, the accounting community, are forcing them to pile up as many customers as possible to register on the PDP. So, that’s it for us. Discussions, at least at the level of the Dolibarr community, Philippe, if you want to add something, but in any case, everything is ongoing and it will take a little more time. And so everything will be spread over the fourth quarter of 2025, or even the first quarter of 2026.

Philippe : From a practical point of view, we do have a first PDP that gives us access to these standardized APIs. There you go. It doesn’t engage us further with them, it allows us to start working. It is not a choice made for the moment. The goal, however, is really going to be that we will only work on standardized APIs. There are no plans to implement the APIs of a particular PDP.

Alexandre : After the Dolistore being our module marketplace, maybe PDPs will offer modules for them. Now, we don’t know, it’s open. We are in the world of free software. If they want to offer a module that only communicates with their service, they will be able to do so. But we, of course, at the level of the Dolibarr community, will necessarily put more emphasis on multi-connected modules and above all that will be constantly updated by the community.

Walid : And Alexis, on the OCA side? Where are you at?

Alexis : We, like Dolibarr, already have the e-invoicing bricks to issue and import invoices in Factur-X or UBL format: these are things that we have had for a long time. In the case of Odoo, we were even the very first ERPs to support the Factur-X standard when it was released in beta in July 2017. We were really precursors of the Factur-X format, and so we’re in more or less the same tempo, that is to say that we were waiting to be able to do things completely, with a directory in production and specifications that, now, are finalized.

They have changed again with the abandonment of the public billing portal. So, there were big changes in the specifications in December, following this big U-turn by Bercy. And so, the goal is to work on the third or fourth quarter to be ready at the beginning of 2026, to start doing beta tests and, whatever happens, to be ready in September 2026 for the start of the reform.

The choices of Italy and Belgium

Walid : I’ll make an aside. What choice did the Italians and Belgians make? They have also chosen a single platform, a PDP system, as in France?

Alexis : I’m afraid of saying stupid things, but for me, the Italian platform is quite different because it is, to my knowledge, quite centralized. I’m afraid of saying stupid things, so I prefer not to say. On the other hand, the Belgians are really, I think, closer to what we do in France, with a real exchange network via Peppol and to say that all Belgian companies will be connected to the Peppol network and it is Peppol that will make it possible to exchange invoices. And I guess they have the same mechanism where the Peppol hotspot sends a copy to the tax authorities.

In any case, I think that the reform in Belgium will be quite close to what will be done in France with Peppol in the centre. And a priori, they will start before us, since from what I understand, it should start in January 2026.

Walid : Alexander?

Alexandre : I wanted to say, we were on a Y-shaped model, so to speak, where there was a PDP. There, if you type model Y on a search engine, you will surely find a pattern that will be quite equivocal. Now, with the abandonment of the PPF, that has changed, but this participation of partner dematerialization platforms, meaning private, is not totally mean when I say that, it’s a priori a Franco-French model.

From what I understand, from all the other European countries, either it goes through the Peppol network, Alexis will be able to correct me, or maybe it goes through partners, well private partners, but in the meantime, there is always the State which is not far away and which always puts something in place to hang up this data so that it can be used and worked.

It’s true that the abandonment of the PPF was a big blow and it changed a lot of things. Because even we, in the free software community, had started working on it and all of a sudden, we feel like we were abandoning a few months of work when they abandoned the public billing portal. It was quite a shame. However, it would have been a portal that would have been quite similar for those who know the Chorus portal. After that, it’s the same, for the moment, we’ve only talked about professionals, we haven’t talked about the government yet, it’s not part of the reform so far.

Alexis : In any case, in the bad news of the abandonment of the PPF, which we really took at the time as bad news, the good thing was the adoption of Peppol, and then above all also the fact that we are on something with Peppol, more decentralized. Because in the end, this public billing portal, we could expect it to capture a large part of the users attracted by the free aspect of the public billing portal.

And what about the day this public portal is down? If two-thirds of the companies are connected to this public portal and it is their channel for issuing and receiving invoices, the day there is a breakdown on the PPF, we could be a little worried. Really, this aspect. Single Point of Failure (SPOF ), as they say in the business. And so here, with this new architecture where everyone has to go through their PDP with Peppol in the middle, we see something more decentralized.

So, a priori, no Single Point of Failure, provided that there is not a PDP that starts to dominate the market because it would have a huge market share and that would become a Single Point of Failure on its own. But that’s up to us, as customers, not to all choose the same PDP so as not to recreate a Single Point of Failure, which would have been the one of the public portal. If companies are well distributed among many players, it will reduce this effect of “what happens on the day when there is a PDP that is down?”

Alexis de Lattre

A free PDP and the free PDP association

Walid : Has there been no discussion to make a free PDP?

Philippe : Yes. When the PPF announcement came, I launched it on LinkedIn. So, in fact, there were some discussions on the subject behind it. Well, as we said earlier, there are technical constraints in terms of the infrastructure, of ISO 27001, but again, we had groups that thought about the subject, people who could do it. But it was mainly the cost of financing this platform, which is still relatively high, I find it a bit crazy.

In the end, we’re going to develop the same thing 90 times, I’m caricaturing, but not far off. The overall cost of the electronic reform at the French level is still, with the model chosen, I probably find excessive. I doubt that all those who have developed platforms will recoup their costs, between those who will not open, those who will be bought out…

Finally, I think for several years we’re going to see a lot of movements around these platforms, in my opinion. So there you have it, we had talked about that. For the moment, we have left it at that. This is the aim of the association I was talking about earlier, PDPLibre. So, it’s going to go against what Alexis says, because the idea is to get together to negotiate wholesale rates with a PDP, to set up a central purchasing office somewhere. We won’t take the entire French market.

Philippe Scoffoni

Alexis : No, that’s right. It will just be the actors of free ERPs. It’s okay, there’s no risk of creating a Single Point of Failure for ourselves. There is no risk.

Philippe : Normally, I don’t think so. But that said, we also have proprietary SaaS platforms that are in the group. But the idea is above all to try to make this reform as cheap as possible for those subject to it, for those who will be obliged to comply with it. That’s the first objective.

And then, even if we had launched calls for action, I had tried via structures like TOSIT or others, which brings together big CAC 40 companies, which a priori like open source by saying “the big ones, Orange, SNCF and company, how are you going to do it?” you wouldn’t want to finance an open source platform that you could reuse each in your own corner, a bit like we used to talk about these PDPs that were set up to meet the internal needs of companies.

I think it’s a shame because I think there would have been a way to do something. And these companies would have had the means to finance this kind of thing. The project should have been conducted, it should have been carried out, that’s another debate, but it might have been possible through it. But for the moment, this is not the case. Maybe it will come back.

Communicate with the team leading the reform project

Walid : Another question, do you, at your level, have a way of reporting to the authorities that manage this e-invoicing project? Questions or is it more of a top-down (decisions go from the top down)? Basically, the information goes down, but there’s never anything that goes up?

Philippe : The problem is that I think we’re not in the group, we’re not in the right place. Today, all the PDPs are in the various working groups. So, we can attend there are events in public quotation marks, we can be present and actually discuss with actors. But today, I think it’s more the PDPs, a few big PDPs that give the LA, I have the impression.

Alexis : For my part, as I was one of the pioneers on this subject, especially the implementation of the invoice standard, etc., it put me in contact with Cyrille Sautereau, for example, the president of the National Forum for e-invoicing, which is the association that has been bringing together the e-invoicing ecosystem for a number of years. And so, it put me a bit in this small world of e-invoicing. And that’s useful to me, especially when I have questions that I don’t have the answer to by reading the voluminous technical specifications. So I manage to get answers from people in the ecosystem.

It’s useful so that we don’t get stuck on a problem in our corner and to be able to refer to people who are at the heart of the AFNOR specifications and the implementation of this reform, and to be able to interpret well, not to make errors of interpretation which, later on, would lead us to bad software architectures, things to review, etc.

So, there you have it, I have historical contacts through my involvement, particularly in the Facture-X standard, which allowed me to have access. And with Philippe, we had already discussed this, to say to each other, if we, as free software players, who are confronted with the same implementation, if we have difficulties, questions, that we can exchange with each other and call each other and help each other because we will be confronted with the same subtleties, the same problems of interpretation of things that are not clear in the specs and that, It will be a good test. Besides, do we manage to exchange, to call each other, to help each other in our respective implementations?

Philippe : For me, this is one of the missions of the PDPLibre association, which effectively brings together people from all types of communities, Dolibarr, hence publishers, indeed, other free software communities or proprietary publishers, to actually set up something so that we can co-develop. To be able to ask questions and discuss this issue.

Alexis : I, for example, had a thought lately.

When I implemented the Factur-X standard in Odoo, at the beginning, I implemented it in a module. Odoo, directly inside the module. And then, I said to myself, finally, I could take out a large part of the code that is inside the module, in a Python library to benefit the entire Python ecosystem. So other competing software, in quotes, of Odoo that will have to implement this Factur-X standard has a library that is at their disposal: it will help them implement the Factur-X standard. And that’s what I did. I moved my code into the library and then I started using my own library that I maintain today. And here, I ask myself the question, does it make sense, for example, in the implementation of APIs, AFNOR, PDPs, to have the largest possible part of the code in a Python library, which can then be used by other Python software? That could be helpful.

Alexis de Lattre

And by the way, in my Factur-X library, I see people who are not Python software, but who still use it by a command-line execution in software in other languages, because they haven’t found a library in their own language that generates Factur-X. And so, they use my Python library for that. So, we’ll see. But in any case, I’m thinking about it to pool these developments a little. At least within the Python ecosystem.

Advice for companies to avoid the reform

Walid : There is a whole last part that will be more consulting issues. What advice would you give to companies, VSEs, SMEs, so as not to be subject to this reform, even to other companies that are a little big, what would you say to these companies so as not to be subject to the reform?

Alexandre : At the community level, I’ll let you complete it, Philippe. The first thing is to possibly follow the Dolibarr community via the various social networks, to hang on, to follow the communications. Efforts will be made to disseminate communications to end customers, at least those who are among the customers of Dolibarr integrators. We will try to communicate the information to them, but what must be said is that already, we can be reassured, no need to rush and register at the level of the centralized directory.

So, PDP, I just learned today that it’s no longer a PDP, now we’re going to talk about an approved platform. It just came out today. So no need to register on an approved platform, via the centralized directory, no need to rush, you have to wait. Wait until the end of the year, the beginning of the year. In any case, when the module is available, we will recommend, maybe some PDPs to use at the beginning, and then the goal will be to expand the list.

One thing that will have to be done, Philippe will add to this, is of course to check this data. Of course, it will be necessary to check whether these forms are properly filled in, whether the SIRENs are properly completed. Lots of things to do on the subject. Because if we have 5000 suppliers and there is just the name and address of the registrant, it will be quite complicated. We have to go ahead. Start working on this data today, trying to qualify it, especially by checking that we have as much information as possible on each thing. Once that’s done, the next step, what I was saying, fourth quarter 2025, first quarter 2026, of course, try to have a version of Dolibarr that’s a little bit up to date. Dolibarr, for the moment, is set at the 18 minimum version.

Alexandre Spangaro

Well, afterwards, if there are any technical problems, that’s another story, but we have set ourselves the version 18 which, by the way, has been an LTS for a short time. And if you are on an old version of Dolibarr, find out how to update, contact your integrators to possibly schedule an update. The next version is version 22, which will probably be released in the fall, no obligation to rush to this version 22 because it will be a little young and there will probably be some bugs. Or rather, perhaps plan an earlier version, the 21 or the 20, which are relatively stable.

And once you’ve updated your Dolibarr, you’ve updated your data, you’ll just have to wait a little bit. And then, we will give you the information to deploy the multi-PDP module we were talking about earlier. And we’ll give you all the information you need to log in. Or to the PDP, which will have been appointed via the PDPLibre association. The goal in the end will be to offer the most reasonable rates, we will say, we will not say the lowest, we will say reasonable costs for an optimal quality of service. And that any society can succeed in its reform, in any case.

Walid : Philippe, do you want to add something?

Philippe : No, I think Alexandre said the essentials. But there is a lot of work to be done on the data, indeed, so far. Often, in databases, the SIREN number, SIRET, is important. This will become, among other things, the main routing information. There will be others. For some, a little more complicated. This will be the routing key, without SIREN, SIRET, you will not send an invoice.

Alexis : In addition to what Philippe and Alexandre have just said on the subject, yes, obviously, to fill in the SIREN and VAT number on the customer-supplier files. Obviously, if you have an old Dolibarr or an old Odoo, the modules for the reform will not backport them to versions that are too old, so you have to anticipate this migration and this version upgrade. All the companies that have Odoo wake up at the last minute by calling their integrator, saying “wow, I need to upgrade”, it will create a traffic jam.

And if I had one piece of advice too, it’s if you have use cases that are out of the ordinary, to talk about it with your integrator. There are on the AFNOR specifications, on the document, so now they have cut it down into different specifications, but this is the third specification, the XP. SPZ 12-014 , well these are the numbers of the documents, but it is the last in the list of the three AFNOR documents that are referenced on the tax website, on the page dedicated to this reform. There are in the appendix of this document the 36 use cases studied in detail by the administration, and it may be interesting at least to read the table of contents of this document to see if we are concerned by one of these use cases, it talks about discount invoice, deposit invoice, self-invoicing. This is about the cases of scenarios that are out of the ordinary: it’s interesting to see if you are concerned by one of these scenarios, and to talk about it well, to anticipate it, so that you don’t wake up at the last minute and say. “I have a scenario, in fact, it is not covered by the developments that have been made”: to be able to talk about it in advance of the phase with your Odoo integrator or your Dolibarr integrator, your integrator in general, so that the developments for these scenarios that are out of the ordinary are well planned.

Alexis de Lattre

In the developments that are going to be made, or if this is not the case, to organize oneself to, possibly to offer to sponsor them. But there are scenarios that are out of the ordinary, and we, on the basic version, can’t support 100% of the billing scenarios.

Philippe : There are scenarios, use cases, which still concern a lot of people, around expense reports and others, which will require a damn good organization, a lot of rigor in management. I will say no more.

Walid : I have a supplementary question. We touched on it earlier and you noted it in the plot. You have noted that you do not give in to commercial pressure from large publishers or accountants who risk, by default, choosing their publisher’s PDP solution, in total contradiction with the software within your structure. I would like you to clarify again, because it seems to me to be quite important and we have talked about it quite briefly. Later. Would anyone like to clarify this again, Alexandre?

Alexandre : I was the one who specified that in the plot. Why did I write this down? That’s what I was saying, it was the pressure, we’ve been talking about it for more than an hour. This is the pressure that publishers are putting on them at the moment.

Following the arrival of the centralized directory, which is now open, there are some who have started the tests of exchanging invoices and others. Just because we have set September 1, 2026 doesn’t mean we can’t start earlier. There are already exchanges and there will already be exchanges that will take place before that date. That’s what’s interesting. Similarly, on September 1, 2026, to send invoices, large companies will have to do so. But VSEs, SMEs or ETIs, where it will be September 1, 2027, nothing prevents them from exchanging before then.

To come back to the question, publishers are indeed putting pressure on them to try to get as many customers as possible on board their PDP, for cost reasons. The more invoices they have to send, the more they will be able to impose themselves. If there is a PDP where there are 10,000 invoices to send to start with, or we will say that it already has a minimum of 20 million invoices to send, it is not the same. It will inevitably have a more significant importance.

We had attacks. So, I mean nobody, but we have had commercial attacks that said: “Here, be careful with free software, etc. It’s going to be very complicated.” And so, that’s why we say that we are under commercial pressure. So, in free software, it’s different. Maybe we have a little more time to get going. That’s the main thing, it’s that at the finish line, we’re all there. Well, in any case, the starting line, we head for the starting line, only. And we’ll all be at the starting line on time.

So what I was saying is not to give in to signing up on an approved platform. I just changed the name, it’s no longer PDP since earlier. And so on these approved platforms, you don’t have to register today. This is what I put forward in my communications on the various social networks and even at the level of the Dolibarr community. The other element is that similarly, chartered accountants, I’m not going to say under pressure from their publisher because they have only one software, will offer, for convenience, I would say, to have their clients sign a mandate to register it by themselves, i.e. accounting firm, on an approved platform, that of their publisher. And so, afterwards, what will happen is that if you do that, you find yourself having to use, for invoicing, the SAS invoicing software offered by your accounting firm. I find it a little absurd because it means that if you don’t have software, that’s fine, there’s no problem. But on the other hand, if you already have one and you force the registration, then you can change. But if we force registration on an approved platform, it means that the accounting firm does not take into account the software that is already installed in the company, and therefore, it means that afterwards, Dolibarr will no longer be able to transmit the invoices, or at least, they will make the invoices for individuals, and then, afterwards, the accountant will be able to have fun with e-reporting. Finally, it will be two separate softwares, while waiting to re-register on the other approved platform that we may have designated or other, recontractualized. There will be many, many, many things. That’s my point of view, I’m not in favour of giving the mandate to an accounting firm on this subject. I prefer to keep control and I ask my customers to keep control.

Alexandre Spangaro

Creating the meta data file associated with the invoice

Walid : last supplementary question. Earlier, we talked about the fact that what was going to be sent was an invoice with an XML metadata file. Is it the invoicing software that will create this XML file or is it the PDP that will, through OCR, constitute this XML file?

Alexandre : We have a little bit of everything.

Alexis : At the time when there was the public invoicing portal, the State said that the public invoicing portal will accept three formats of structured invoices. So, two pure XML formats, the UBL format, Universal Business Language, and the Cross Industry Invoice format. So, there, it’s directly the invoice, it’s an XML file. And then, the third format is the Factur-X format.

An invoice in Factur-X format is a PDF invoice, with an XML file in Cross Industry Invoice format inside the PDF. So, one of the two formats I mentioned earlier. And so, those were the three formats accepted by the PPF.

And now that the PPF has disappeared, the State is saying: “These are the three formats that I accept when the PDP sends me a copy of the invoice”, this famous snitch function of the PDP, of the approved platform, which sends a copy of the invoice to the administration. The administration, for its part, is waiting for the invoice for one of these three formats. After that, I, the company that sends my invoice to my PDP, can send it in any format accepted by my PDP.

A priori, it accepts these three formats, of course, since they are the three basic formats, but the PDP can accept other formats. And he takes care of the conversion himself. And so, afterwards, if you send him a simple PDF, without XML in it, assuming that he is able to accept that format. This means that it will go into an OCR, etc. The problem with OCRs is that it’s never 100% reliable.

So, that would mean that there is an additional step of control. Data that has been recognized by the OCR and then validation by the company, doing that on an invoice from time to time, it’s fine, that’s what a lot of people on Chorus did by submitting simple PDFs, but here, when it concerns 100% of these invoices, when you have a little volume, It’s far too time-consuming.

The goal is to avoid going through this OCR step on the PDP portal, but to send in one of the formats that is directly recognized. So, a priori, one of these three formats. After that, there are people who broadcast in Edifact, etc. If their PDP will accept these formats a priori and they will convert it into one of the three formats accepted by the DGFIP for this function of sending the copy of the invoice to the tax authorities.

Alexandre : I’m going to give you a little bit of information to complete what Alexis says. There are the three formats and we can see there, with the first accesses to the sandbox, that some PDPs, for example, we won’t necessarily need to send them Factur-X, the format, directly. I’ve noticed that some PDPs, we’ll send them the info via API and then they’ll build up the file too. I saw that shape. Then, to then communicate it, follow the protocol, we will send the data and they will build the files themselves.

Closing Remarks from Guests

Walid : We’re not going to go much further on this subject. I will suggest to each of you that we make a final word before we leave. If you have any information, a message to convey. Alexandre, do you want to start?

Alexandre : Thank you all for listening. Thank you all, Walid, Alexis and Philippe. Always a pleasure to chat with you. I think we’ll be able to do a second episode in a short time. The subject is vast and varied. That’s the last word: sign up, follow the Dolibarr community, of course for those who are equipped with Dolibarr, and don’t hesitate to learn more and think critically. Find out more and then we will do our best at the level of the Dolibarr community to give you as much information as possible so that this reform takes place in the best conditions.

Walid : Philippe?

Philippe : A little, the same message, indeed. Be tuned, because you will be solicited as a user, probably to help us finance all this. Because, as we said, it’s still a lot of work, and we don’t have economic models in free software, which are necessarily hyper-adapted to develop and deal with these major regulatory constraints. And then, as we said, it is not the only one at the moment. That’s it, but in any case we’re here, we’re going to mobilize. We are mobilized, it will move forward.

Walid : Thank you, Philippe. Alexis, your last word?

Alexis : yes, in the last word, we’ll be in a meeting. It’s a big project, it’s probably the biggest reform in the accounting field in the last 30 years. In all the reforms we have passed, whether it is SEPA, FEC, Chorus, etc. This one really concerns all the bills. This is the biggest reform, I think, in the world of accounting in the last 30 years.

You have to stay on the lookout. There have been many twists and turns in recent years on this reform. We are not immune to the fact that with government instability, that there will be new twists and turns. We hope there won’t be any, but we’re not immune. So, we have to stay on the lookout and have a good dialogue. With its integrator, its Odoo integrator, its Dolibarr integrator, its integrator in general, to make the right choices and monitor it closely. Thank you for your welcome and for this podcast on the subject of the reform of e-invoicing.

Walid : Thank you. I think it will interest everyone in the end. I was interested in seeing what the challenges were, the discussions, and how everyone was adapting to all of this.

So, thank you very much for taking the time to explain where we are. For the listeners, as usual, I think you can rotate this episode, you can comment on it, you can also tell us where you are in relation to your own reflections. Of course, I invite you to follow the work of Dolibarr and the OCA on this subject. And then, if you liked it, maybe we’ll do other episodes in the same genre. Thank you very much to all and see you soon for a next episode.

Episode production

• Online recording on July 21, 2025
• Basis: Philippe Scoffoni, Alexandre Spangaro
• Editing: Walid Nouh
• Transcript: Walid Nouh

This article has been automatically translated from the original language into English.

License

This podcast is released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license or later