The parties and their addresses

Two families of rules cover the parties, and they cause refusals that look absurd when the invoice is French from end to end. They are not: the standard is European, and it never assumes the country.

The address blocks (rules BR-08 and BR-10). The check is first on the existence of the address block attached to the seller, then to the buyer, even reduced to a country code alone. If the block is there, the error is elsewhere, and the next two rules say where.

The country code (BT-40 and BT-55, rules BR-09 and BR-11). The seller's postal address, then the buyer's, must carry a country code, even for an entirely French invoice. It is the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code, FR for example, and an empty element is treated as absent. This is the rule that fails most often on invoices that never left the country, because the country is obvious to the sender and invisible to the machine.

Identifying the seller (rule BR-CO-26). Any one of three identifiers is enough, but one is required: the seller's identifier (BT-29), their legal registration identifier (BT-30), where a SIREN or SIRET is declared with its scheme identifier, or their VAT number (BT-31). The name and address do not stand in for it, and a seller with no VAT number identifies through BT-30.

The VAT number's prefix (rule BR-CO-09). The check is only on the first two characters. A French VAT number is written FR, then the key, then the SIREN: a SIREN or SIRET entered on its own fails for want of the prefix. That is a data-entry error rather than a substantive one, and two characters fix it.

These five rules share something worth keeping in mind: they check a shape, not an existence. Nobody is called to find out whether the SIREN exists. What is checked is that the field is there, in the right place, in the form the standard expects.

Open your invoice and the report names the rule, quotes its official text and explains it. Nothing is sent: the check runs in your browser. If what you want is what the header must contain, see the required fields.