Guide · €49

Micro Admin 2026/27

The French admin nobody explained to you, in English: e-invoicing, invoicing clients abroad, URSSAF declarations and every deadline, from someone who has been doing it since 2018.

5 Sep 2026 · 4 min read · By Sophie Kazandjian

If your French is good enough for the boulangerie but not for the tax office, this is for you.

Here is how it usually goes. An accountant sets you up, years ago. The invoice template is right, the VAT line is right, you are told which box on which form, and you carry on.

Then the accountant drops out of the picture, because a micro-entreprise does not really need one, and the rules keep moving without you. The UK leaves the EU and the VAT line on your invoices quietly becomes the wrong one. A rule about putting "EI" after your name arrives in 2022 and reaches you as a setting in your invoicing app, if it reaches you at all. The €40 late-payment mention that has been compulsory since 2013 never made it onto the template in the first place. Nobody is paid to notice. You find out years later, from a forum thread at midnight, written by someone who was also guessing.

This spring the tax office emailed everyone about electronic invoicing. Mine sat unopened for a month. When I finally read it properly the answer turned out to be small: pick a free platform, tick one box, twenty minutes. Getting to that answer took three evenings of reading. Micro Admin is those three evenings written down and checked against the official sources on a stated date, so that you only need the twenty minutes.

What you get

E-invoicing, sorted is the first guide, fourteen pages. What that email was asking for. Why it applies to you even if you are under the VAT threshold and every client you have is abroad. Which free platforms do the job, each one checked against the official list, because two of the popular ones are not on it. Then the steps, in order, with a way to confirm it worked. It ends with what changes in September 2027 and why nobody is being fined this year.

Invoicing a UK client from France is the second, thirteen pages, and the one I needed in 2019. What has to be on the invoice, and there are nineteen things. Which VAT line to use and which one nearly everyone gets wrong. Whether you can invoice in pounds and in English (you can). What to do about Wise, and what to write on your declaration when the money lands. There is a full model invoice in both languages that you can copy.

Clients in the EU, and everywhere else is the third, twelve pages, for every client who is neither French nor British. It sorts them with two questions, business or private individual, inside the EU or outside it, and each of the four answers gets its own VAT line and its own paperwork. Three of the four are easy. The fourth, a business client in another EU country, is the one to read carefully: a VAT number before your first invoice, one word on the invoice, and a monthly return to customs that most people have never heard of. A client in Cairo or Chicago needs none of that, and the guide says what they may ask you for instead, from the American tax form to the countries that withhold part of your fee. There are model invoices for both.

The declaration tracker is a spreadsheet. You type in what you were paid and when. It tells you what URSSAF will ask for this month or this quarter, which deadline is next, and how close you are to the thresholds. It doubles as the livre des recettes you are meant to keep anyway. It has been tested with ACRE, with the versement libératoire and with the chamber taxes, so it should fit whichever of those you are on.

The calendar is every deadline to the end of 2027, as a two-page PDF for the wall and as files for your phone that remind you a week before and the day before.

Where the rules are unclear, and on a few points even the tax office has not decided yet, the guides say so. I would rather tell you that than pretend.

Is it for you?

Yes, if you are a micro-entrepreneur in France, you work in English, you sell services rather than goods, and at least one client is outside France. No, if you run a société, or you already pay an accountant to do all of this. Said plainly: this is general information, checked on a stated date. I am a British micro-entrepreneur, not an accountant, and I do not know your circumstances. That is also why it costs sixty-nine euros and not an accountant's hourly rate.

Why there is a year in the name

The rates change every January. So do the thresholds, and the e-invoicing rules move again in September 2027. When you buy the 2026/27 edition you get the January 2027 update by email, every figure re-checked once the new finance law is out, and a short note in March with the real income-tax dates. Next September there will be a 2027/28 edition, and you will get it at a returning-buyer price.

Questions

All my clients are in France. Is it still worth it?

The e-invoicing guide, the tracker and the calendar all apply to you. The two foreign-client guides will not, so you would be paying for three parts out of five. If that puts you off, wait for the January update and decide then.

My clients are in Germany and Ireland. Is that covered?

Yes, and it is the case that needs the most care: a VAT number before your first invoice, one word on the invoice, and a monthly customs return. Guide 3 walks through all three, with a model invoice.

I am under the VAT threshold. Do I really have to do the e-invoicing thing?

Yes. Being under the threshold means you don't charge VAT, not that you're outside the VAT system, so the rule catches you too. The guide explains why in a paragraph rather than a page.

I'm over the VAT threshold now. Is it still for me?

Yes. E-invoicing applies to you first, the UK guide has a line written for exactly your case, the third guide applies whatever your VAT position, and the tracker does your URSSAF declaration either way. The only thing that changes is which VAT line goes on your invoices, and the guides tell you.

What arrives, and how?

Three guides as PDFs, one Excel file, a printable calendar and two calendar files for your phone. They appear on the confirmation page the moment you pay, and the same links come by email so you can find them again in six months.

I am still in the UK and planning the move. Can I buy it?

It is written for people who already live in France, and the checkout is set up for French VAT. Email me first. A sale to the UK needs different handling and I would rather say so now than refund you later.

Can I have an invoice for my business?

Everyone gets a Stripe receipt with the VAT shown. Put your SIREN in at checkout and a proper invoice follows.

What if it is not what I expected?

Email me within fourteen days and I will refund you. Tell me in a line what you were looking for and did not find; it goes into the January update. I would rather that than a copy sitting unread in a folder called later.

Checkout is through Stripe, in euros, VAT included. The first thirty copies are €49, which is €40.83 plus €8.17 TVA, and the buttons on this page carry the code FIRSTTHIRTY already; after those thirty the price is €69, which is €57.50 plus €11.50 TVA. If it is not right for you, you have fourteen days from purchase to email me for a full refund, and that stands even though the legal withdrawal right for digital content ends the moment a download starts. If the files do not arrive or will not open, write to [email protected] and I will send them again. Your email address is used to send you Micro Admin and its January update, and for nothing else. Website terms.

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