French Credit Note (Avoir) Template for B2B Invoices 2026

Under Article 242 nonies A of Annex II to the CGI, a credit note must reproduce all standard invoice fields: a sequential credit-note number, the issue date, full seller and buyer details (SIRET registration number, address, legal form), an explicit reference to the original invoice (number and date), a description of the corrected goods or services, negative net amounts (HT — hors taxes, i.e. excluding VAT), the applicable VAT rate and corrected VAT amount, and the precise reason for correction. The missing reference to the original invoice is the field most frequently flagged during French tax audits.

The seller deducts the credit-note VAT amount from its CA3 return for the month in which the credit note is sent to the buyer. Proof of transmission — an email with read receipt or a recorded-delivery letter — is essential: effective delivery of the credit note to the buyer is a substantive legal condition for the VAT adjustment, not a mere formality. The buyer must correspondingly repay the VAT it had deducted on its own CA3 return for the same month.

No specific legal deadline applies to domestic B2B credit notes. However, the correction must be made before the tax authority's right of reassessment expires under Article L. 176 of the Livre des procédures fiscales (LPF — French Tax Procedures Code): 31 December of the third year following the year in which VAT became chargeable, counted from the declaration year rather than from the original invoice date. To minimise accounting and tax risk, it is strongly advisable to issue the credit note within the same fiscal year as the original invoice.

No. You may use a dedicated series (e.g. AV2026-001, AV2026-002) provided it is strictly chronological, with no gaps or duplicates. The French tax authority accepts distinct prefixes (AV, NC, CR) as long as the series is unambiguously identifiable and never reused. The credit note must always state its own sequential number as well as the number of the invoice it corrects.

Yes. A credit note remains the legally correct document even when the original invoice has already been settled. Depending on the commercial agreement, it may result in a bank-transfer refund, a deduction from the next invoice, or a credit to be applied against future purchases. The chosen settlement method must be documented in writing — by email or a contract amendment — to maintain a clear audit trail.

Article 1737 of the CGI provides for a fine of €15 per missing or inaccurate field on a corrective invoice, with a minimum of €15 per document. If a VAT reassessment follows, late-payment interest at 0.20% per month and a surcharge of 10% to 40% may be added, depending on the degree of bad faith found by the tax authority.