France's e-invoicing directory (annuaire): how routing works

French e-invoices do not go to an e-mail address. They travel from the sender's approved platform to the recipient's approved platform. To know where to send each invoice, the platforms look the recipient up in one place: the central directory, or annuaire, run by the French State.

This page explains what the directory is, who runs it, how a business ends up listed and what happens when a customer cannot be found. Facts are from the 2026 finance law and the DGFiP, checked on 14 November 2026.

What the annuaire is

The 2026 finance law (loi n° 2026-103 of 19 February 2026, art. 123) states that "the State makes a central directory available to the approved platforms". The DGFiP's start-up guide explains its purpose: the directory "allows e-invoices to be addressed to the recipient's reception platform" and lists the information needed for that addressing.

In practice, the directory answers one question for the sending platform: for this customer, which approved platform receives its invoices? The DGFiP's guidance refers to identifiers such as the SIREN, the SIRET of the receiving establishment and the company name.

Who runs it: the State, fed by the platforms

When France dropped its plan for a free public invoicing portal, the State's role changed. The DGFiP says France chose not to create a single public portal, to avoid concentrating technical risk on one point of passage. The State now acts as regulator and runs three pieces of shared infrastructure: the central directory, a data concentrator that receives the tax data, and the exchange system.

The directory is made available to the approved platforms and is filled from the information those platforms transmit. Businesses do not edit it directly; their platform does.

How your business appears in the directory

Every VAT taxable person established in France has had to be able to receive e-invoices through an approved platform (PA) since 1 September 2026. Choosing that platform is what makes you reachable: the platform you sign up with supplies the data that routes your incoming invoices to it.

So the steps are simple:

1. Choose an approved platform. The official list on impots.gouv.fr showed 152 fully registered platforms on 9 November 2026. Our approved platforms guide explains how to choose.
2. Give the platform your SIREN and, if you have several establishments, tell it which ones should receive invoices.
3. Ask the platform to confirm that your routing data has been sent to the directory.

If you change platform later, your routing data has to change too. Ask both platforms how they handle the switch so that no invoice goes to the old address.

When a customer cannot be found

The directory is only as good as the data in it. The DGFiP's start-up guide tells senders who cannot identify a customer's platform to:

1. Check their data first: SIREN, SIRET, receiving establishment, company name, contract data.
2. Ask their own platform whether the problem is a wrong entry, a missing update or a routing issue.
3. Contact the customer to confirm the expected receiving details, and keep a record of it.

If the invoice is urgent, it can be sent through a usual channel such as e-mail to avoid blocking business, as a continuity measure rather than a separate invoice. It should then be sent electronically, or regularised, once routing works.

There is also a formal tolerance. BOFiP states that if a B2B customer is not in the directory, neither the issuer nor the recipient is fined for that invoice. The issuer sends it by other means and e-reports the transaction as if it were a consumer (B2C) sale.

If the directory itself is down

The DGFiP says the system is designed so that a brief outage of the directory does not block invoicing. Platforms can rely on copies of directory data they have already retrieved, and on technical addresses used in the exchanges, including Peppol addresses where available. A business does not have to fix a failure of a public tool itself, but it should document the incident and regularise affected invoices afterwards.

Annuaire vs Peppol Directory

French readers often meet both terms. The French annuaire is a State directory for routing invoices between French approved platforms. The Peppol Directory is a public search of Peppol participants run by OpenPeppol, used heavily in Belgium. They serve a similar purpose for different systems. See our Peppol Directory guide for the Belgian side, and the France e-invoicing guide for the full French reform.

If you are a micro-entrepreneur, our auto-entrepreneur guide covers your dates. This page is general information, not tax advice.