Invoicing in France

[arachez]

Hello everyone,

I am working for a SASU in France and cannot figure out a way to invoice my clients legally on Upwork. European law requires that I produce an invoice for services I provide to my clients but I am not certain how I can do that on Upwork? Has anyone been confronted to the same situation?

Specifically I am wondering about:

Can I just invoice clients myself?

How should I deal with hourly fees?

Is it legal to make an invoice based on the amount transferred to my account after the client has paid?

If not how can I make an invoice before payment?

What about currency exhange rates? 

I am a bit worried this situation might not be tolerated by the french tax entities. My thanks in advance for your help and advice.

Regards,

Arnaud

[vladag]

Hi Arnaud,

Please check the information Joachim shared in this thread, speak with a local tax advisor and feel free to follow up with any additional questions so other freelancers from France could advise.

[versailles]

Arnaud, you need to speak with your accountant, they may have useful suggestions for you. Upwork bills clients on your behalf, but they won't give you a copy of the invoice (sigh). You'll have to make do with this.

[arachez]

Thanks for your answer Rene. Unfortunately I don't have an accountant yet and am doing accounting myself until I have a stable revenue. If you or anyone have been confronted to this situation I'd love to hear how you handled it.

[versailles]

I'm incorporated under a different form (AE), so my accounting requirements are way laxer than yours. Basically I don't bother with invoices.

[arachez]

I see thanks for sharing this with me Rene. I'm still looking on the net if I can find a way to handle this. Not the funniest part but I guess I can't escape it 🙂 Thanks for taking the time to answer my question again!

[versailles · Accepted solution]

But if you want to be on a safe side, it may be worth to spend few € to speak with an accountant. You already earned some money here so I would advise you to play safe. You don't want to pay tax penalties for something that could be fixed before it goes wrong.

[nicolas_french]

Hi everyone,

Hi more specifally Rene K 🙂

Woud you be so kind as to visit this link and see if you could answer some questions ?

https://community.upwork.com/t5/Europe/VAT-amp-France/gpm-p/313100#M270

Thans a lot! 

[versailles]

---

@Nicolas G wrote:

Hi everyone,

Hi more specifally Rene K 🙂

Woud you be so kind as to visit this link and see if you could answer some questions ?

https://community.upwork.com/t5/Europe/VAT-amp-France/gpm-p/313100#M270

---

 Done. You're not gonna to love it. Next time be careful what you wish for. I'm a professional **Edited for Community Guidelines**.

[alessandra_bee]

Hi Arnaud.
I saw that you also had problems with invoicing in France.
I am also an auto-entrepreneur in Paris and I wanted to know if you have found an answer to your questions ...
I am looking in several posts and conversations and I see so many questions with no solution

Thank you so much for your attention!

BR

Alessandra

[mathildemass]

Hi, 

I'm confronted to the same problem here, did you guys find a solution? I'd be more than glad to hear from you. 

[alessandra_bee]

Hi!

After discussing with my accountant he suggests I work as follows:
- I keep the invoices that Upwork provides me (therefore not numbered in chronological order as I normally do with customers outside of Upwork).
-I consider my client UPWORK and therefore an "American" client, even if officially I work for a French client for example. So I don't declare my Upwork entry to "douane" at the end of the month (as I normally do with European clients).
-For my "declaration trimestriel" it depends in which regime you work: I personally have a "microbic" so "je ne déduis aucun frais" and consequently, I do not subtract the 20% reserved for Upwork (unfortunately) so I declare the sum at 100% (and not at 80 % that actually collected).
- regarding the exchange rate: in the "declaration trimestriel" and year-end tax return I use the exchange rate used on the day the Upwork invoice was created.

I hope this can help you... and, most of all, I hope my accountant is not wrong 🤞!!

[deborah-ponzio]

It's similar to what my Italian tax accountant said to me. Except that he has asked me to translate each invoice to individual Upwork clients in Italian, maintain the Upwork invoice numbering and keep a record in excel. So my invoicing would not be addressed to Upwork but to each individual client. He has also explained that those translated invoices are purely for my local records, shall not be resent to clients. Translating, converting and recording all those invoices is my headache for this holiday period. I cannot deduct Upwork's commission neither the exchange rate fluctuations, but I have a local tax deduction of 20% on income under my tax regime.

My next question is: what's the better option to save on currency conversion from USD to Euro? Paypal or direct bank transfer? 

I would be grateful for any advice on that 😉

[alessandra_bee]

Yes, the French and Italian systems are very similar (I am Italian, moved to France since 2 years 😉

It's crazy that you have to do all the translations... I hope they don't ask me that in the future even here in France!!

I've never tried to make payments with PayPal so I don't know how to give you any suggestions (maybe in that case you save $ 1 in transfer costs).

With bank transfer, I usually wait to make the payment on the day where the exchange rate is more favorable (if I do not have an urgent need of liquidity).
But lately, in the last few weeks, the exchange is suuuper bad !!!

[deborah-ponzio]

Yes I saw that!!! Terrible 😞