E-invoicing in France: what changes for art galleries

A shipper sends you its invoice for returning a work. It no longer lands as a PDF in your inbox: it goes through a platform. Since 1 September 2026, e-invoicing has applied to your art gallery as it does to every French business registered for VAT: you must be able to receive an electronic invoice.

The obligation to issue them applies to SMEs and micro-businesses, so to almost every gallery, from September 2027. This article explains what the reform changes for a gallery, where it gets complicated and what you can prepare now.

Who must issue, and from when?

Receiving first: since 1 September 2026, every French business registered for VAT must be able to receive an electronic invoice. A gallery that buys art transport, installation work or insurance may already be receiving them.

Issuing next: the obligation has applied since September 2026 to large and mid-sized companies, and applies from September 2027 to SMEs and micro-businesses, so to almost every gallery. You have until then to be ready to issue.

E-invoicing is not a PDF sent by email

A PDF sent by email is not an electronic invoice, and it will not become one in 2027.

An electronic invoice under the reform is a structured file: its data is machine-readable, in a standard format. Three formats are accepted in France: CII, UBL and Factur-X. Factur-X is the most comfortable for a gallery, because it combines a PDF that reads normally with, inside it, an XML file that a machine reads. You send what looks like an invoice; the administration receives data.

The second change matters more than the format: the invoice no longer travels directly between you and your client. It goes through an approved platform, which passes it to your client’s platform and reports the transaction to the tax authorities. You cannot send it yourself.

The third change is often discovered too late: the invoicing side only covers your sales to businesses. Your sales to private individuals fall under e-reporting, meaning the data from those sales and from your payments received is sent to the administration. A gallery sells a great deal to private individuals, so this part touches your core business.

The four cases where a gallery’s e-invoicing gets complicated

This is where general-purpose software shows its limits.

• The VAT margin scheme. Article 297 A of the French Tax Code allows, under conditions, only the margin to be taxed on the resale of a work acquired from a person not registered for VAT or from another dealer. It is the everyday scheme of the art market. The electronic invoice must state the scheme applied, and the amount sent to the administration must be consistent with it. A tool that only knows standard VAT will produce invoices that are formally valid and wrong for tax purposes.

• The VAT franchise. Many artists and small structures fall under Article 293 B. Their invoices carry no VAT, but they must carry the corresponding legal statement. This is not a layout option: it is structured data that the platform transmits.

• Deposits. A reserved work, payment in instalments, a balance on delivery: each deposit is an invoice in its own right, which travels as such and must be linked to the final invoice.

• Credit notes. A return, a cancellation, a price adjusted after negotiation: the credit note is a separate electronic document that references the original invoice. Reissuing a corrected PDF is no longer enough.

On top of these four cases comes an obligation specific to the art market, independent of the reform but living in the same data: the livre de police, France’s police register. The register must still be kept, dated and consistent with actual movements. An invoice issued with no matching entry in the register is a gap that nothing fixes after the fact.

What to check in your data now

The technical side is lighter than people think. The real difficulty is the data you do not have yet.

A valid electronic invoice requires:

• for each business client, a SIREN number or an EU VAT number;

• a complete and accurate address;

• for you, an up-to-date IBAN and compliant legal statements;

• for e-reporting, the actual date of payment, not the date of issue.

Open your client file. How many records have a SIREN number? How many have a complete address? If the answer is “a few”, that is where the work lies, not in choosing software. This information can be gathered over twelve months, in the normal course of exchanges, rather than in three weeks under deadline pressure.

Then look at your past invoices. The reform comes with retention obligations: an issued invoice must remain accessible and unchanged for years. A PDF on a hard drive or in an inbox is not an archive.

Three questions to ask before choosing a tool

Three questions are enough to rule out most candidates.

1. Is e-invoicing built in, or bolted on? Software that grafts a compliance module onto its invoices will have you entering data twice, or exporting and reimporting. A tool designed around the requirement produces a compliant invoice first time, because the data is asked for at the right moment, in the client record and the artwork record.

2. Are the art market’s schemes handled natively? Ask about the VAT margin scheme on the first call. Ask to see a sample invoice under that scheme, then what happens with a credit note on a margin-scheme sale. If the answer is vague, the answer is no.

3. Do you keep ownership of your data? The day you change tools, you must be able to leave with your invoices, clients, works and register, in a readable format. Have reversibility written into the contract: it is the question people forget and then regret.

Our position

MARMALADE was designed with this deadline in mind, not after it. The Factur-X format, the digital fingerprint of every invoice issued, durable archiving of documents and consistency with the police register are part of the foundation, not an optional module. The VAT margin scheme, the VAT franchise, deposits and credit notes are handled as normal cases, because in a gallery they are normal cases.

To see how this works with your own works and invoices, book a demonstration: we look at your real situation, not a mock-up.

Published on 8 September 2026, updated on 20 October 2026. It sets out the general framework of the reform and does not replace the advice of your accountant, who knows your situation.