The reform changes the way invoices circulate, not only their format. Here is what it means for an accounting firm, and what can usefully be prepared without waiting for the date.

One clarification first, because it shapes the rest: we give no date in this article. The reform’s timetable has slipped several times, and publishing a deadline that will then move serves the reader badly. What follows describes the mechanism, which is stable, and what can be prepared regardless of the timetable.

What it is about, in one minute

Today, an invoice circulates as a document: it goes out by email, it arrives as an attachment, and somebody re-enters it or drops it into a tool. The reform replaces that transport with a structured exchange: the invoice becomes data, it passes through approved platforms, and the tax authority receives certain information along the way.

Two consequences follow, and they are the only ones that matter for a firm. Re-entry disappears, which is good news. And the data becomes binding: a badly formed invoice no longer goes out, whereas today it goes out anyway.

What changes concretely for a firm

The first change is not accounting, it is relational. A firm today receives its clients’ documents in disorder: by email, as photos, at the end of the quarter, sometimes piled into a shared inbox. That disorder is absorbed by human work.

When invoices become data that circulates on its own, that absorbing work changes in nature. It does not disappear: it shifts towards checking, and towards supporting the clients whose tools do not keep up.

The second change concerns the rhythm. A continuous flow replaces quarterly surges. It is more comfortable once in place, and it assumes an organisation that no longer depends on one person being available on a given date.

The third concerns the clients themselves. Some of them invoice today from a spreadsheet or an old piece of software. They are the ones who will make up the firm’s workload, not the others.

The three jobs to prepare, whatever the date

Map the clients by invoicing tool

It is the least expensive and most rewarding job, and it waits on no regulatory decision. Knowing how many clients invoice with what makes it possible to size the real effort, which is almost always concentrated on a minority.

That mapping is done once and then serves everything: prioritising support, costing the workload, and deciding what to handle in-house.

Clean up the client data

A structured invoice does not go out if a mandatory field is missing or inconsistent. Company identifiers, addresses and VAT details are approximate in some databases today, and nobody notices because nothing checks them.

The clean-up is tedious, and it is done in two passes, an automatic one on what a rule can detect and a manual one on what calls for judgement. It is exactly the work we describe on the CRM integration page, and it never loses its value, timetable or no timetable.

Decide who owns the subject in-house

A project with no named arbiter does not move. That point looks minor next to the other two, and it is the one that makes projects slip. The person appointed does not need to be an expert, they need to be able to decide without referring the question elsewhere.

What the reform changes for the firm’s clients

A firm does not face the reform alone: it faces it through its clients, and that is where most of the coming workload sits. Three profiles stand out clearly.

Those already invoicing from up-to-date software. For them the change is almost invisible: their publisher adapts the tool, the invoice goes out differently, and the firm has nothing particular to do. That is usually the majority, and it is not where the time goes.

Those invoicing from a spreadsheet or a text document. They are the ones who will make up the workload. They will have to adopt a tool, which means a decision, a choice, learning it and moving their client data across. A firm that has not mapped this population will discover the subject too late, and will have to handle it all at once.

Those with old, unmaintained software. The trickiest case, because the client believes they are equipped. The question that settles it is simple: does the publisher still release updates? If the answer is no, the situation is that of the previous profile, with data to extract on top, from a tool that does not make leaving easy.

That classification is the only genuinely urgent work, and it depends on no date. It turns a vague regulatory subject into a list of names, with an order of treatment. A firm that has done it knows how many clients it has to support; a firm that has not is waiting for a deadline without knowing what it will cost them.

It also opens a commercial opportunity few firms take: supporting a client in choosing and setting up their invoicing tool is a service in itself, and it presents itself at the moment the client wants it most.

Why we built CoBIos

Working on these jobs, we found that the difficulty was almost never the invoice itself. It was in what surrounds it: collecting the documents, chasing the clients who send nothing, tracking what is missing, and the firm’s own visibility on how far behind it is.

Accounting tools handle accounting well. They handle the relationship with the client badly, and that is where the time is lost. That observation produced CoBIos, built with a commercial court registry as its first testing ground, and not the other way round.

We describe that pilot anonymously, as a matter of principle: naming a client publicly requires their agreement, even when the case is real and went well.

What not to do

  • Wait for a date to start. The three jobs above keep their value even if the timetable moves again, which is not ruled out.
  • Choose the platform before mapping the clients. That is the reverse of the order that works, and it leads to paying for features that suit nobody.
  • Treat the subject as a compliance exercise. A reform experienced as a constraint produces the minimum; the same reform taken as an opportunity to remove re-entry produces a lasting gain.

Framing this kind of project is at the heart of our digital strategy work: identifying the decisions to be taken, their order, and what each will cost to keep running.