The Annuaire

The Annuaire is the central directory of invoice recipients, managed by the French tax authority's public portal (PPF). When a supplier wants to send an invoice, their platform looks up the buyer's SIREN in the Annuaire to find which certified platform to route it through.

Every VAT-registered French company already exists in the Annuaire. Creating the inbound endpoint in Compliance Network claims the customer's Annuaire entry and activates them as a reachable invoice recipient.

Inbound compared to outbound

Address format options

Questions to ask the customer before proceeding

• Does your accounts payable team handle invoices centrally, or do different sites or departments need separate invoice streams?

• Do you self-bill (issue invoices on behalf of your suppliers)? If so, do you want a dedicated address for those, separate from purchase invoices?

• Are you planning to use more than one invoicing platform? If yes, they need a separate address per platform. A single address can only be assigned to one platform at a time.

For most private sector customers, the answer to all three questions leads to SIREN. Recommend the SUFFIXE variant only when the customer has a clear, specific reason for multiple addresses.

Before you begin

Make sure you've done the following:

• Configured ERP System ID for e-invoicing in Compliance Network.

• Completed account setup. See Set up your account for France.

ERP system communication

ERP System Communication links an ERP System ID to the network and defines how documents are delivered to the customer's system. Configure it at the organization level before creating endpoints.

Each organization needs a minimum of two communications: One for invoice, and one for lifecycle. Both must use the same ERP System ID.

Before you begin

• ERP System Communications must be configured for this organization. See ERP System Communications.

• The France e-invoicing product must be assigned to the company. See Set up account for France.

Create an outbound endpoint in Compliance Network

Follow the same steps as for the inbound endpoint with these differences.

• Step 4: Select fr_invoice_outbound_1.0.

• Step 7: Set the validity start date. Use at least the following day (J+1). Same-day dates are not accepted in production.

• Step 8: Skip the Invoices tab. Outbound does not use Invoice or CreditNote subtypes.

• Step 9: Configure lifecycles only.

Create an outbound endpoint through the API

The request follows the same structure as the inbound endpoint. Change only productId and supportedDocuments.

"productId": "fr_invoice_outbound_1.0",
"supportedDocuments": [
  {
    "type": "Lifecycle",
    "subTypes": ["Lifecycle"]
  }
]

Set validityPeriod.start to at least the following day. All other fields (codeComponents, erpSystemId, headers, and URL) are identical to the inbound request.

Successful response

{
  "status": 201,
  "message": "Created",
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "id": "789abc12-...",
    "code": {
      "value": "123456789",
      "scheme": "0225"
    },
    "registeredDirectories": ["Peppol"]
  }
}

Unlike the inbound response, registeredDirectories contains only Peppol. No Jurisdiction entry is expected or required for outbound.

Why a migration key is required

When a company is registered with a PA, that registration is held at the PEPPOL SML (Service Metadata Locator) and SMK (Service Metadata Publisher Key) DNS level. The previous PA owns the Access Point (AP) entry. Sovos can't create a new registration for a company that already has one. The PEPPOL network blocks duplicate registrations.

To transfer ownership, the previous PA must issue a migration key. The migration key is a PEPPOL network construct that authorizes Sovos to claim the company's existing AP registration. Without it, the inbound migration can't be completed.

For France, Sovos creates the Annuaire PPF entry as part of the same request, following the standard registration flow. You don't need added steps for the Annuaire registration when a migration key is present.

If the migration key is invalid, expired, or has already been used, the platform returns an error and creates no partial state in the PEPPOL network, the Annuaire, or the Compliance Network database.

Before you begin

The company (or their ISV partner) must obtain the migration key from their previous PA before starting endpoint creation on Sovos. Sovos can't request or generate a migration key on behalf of the company.

Contact the previous PA and request a PEPPOL migration key for the company's participant identifier. The migration key comes from the previous PA only. Sovos and the PPF don't issue it.

ThePEPPOL SML defines the following rules for migration keys. Make sure the key you receive meets these requirements before submitting the endpoint creation request:

• At least 8 characters and no more than 24 characters.

• At least two lowercase letters (a to z).

• At least two uppercase letters (A to Z).

• At least two digits (0 to 9).

• At least two characters from this set: @ # $ % ( ) [ ] { } * ^ - ! ~ | + =.

• No whitespace characters.

Migrating multiple endpoints with one key

If multiple endpoints within a company configuration share the same endpoint code, provide the peppolMigrationKey only when creating the first endpoint.

The migration key triggers the PEPPOL migration for that endpoint code and transfers DNS ownership to Sovos. After the migration completes, the key cannot be used again. Submitting the same key for another endpoint with the same endpoint code returns an error.

For example, if you create separate inbound and outbound endpoints with the same endpoint code:

1. Create the first endpoint and provide the peppolMigrationKey.

2. Create the second endpoint with the same endpoint code, without a peppolMigrationKey.

Create an endpoint with a migration key using the API

After you have the migration key, supply it as part of the endpoint creation API request using the optional peppolMigrationKey field. The endpoint creation request follows the standard flow in all other respects. Both the synchronous (POST /endpoints) and asynchronous (POST /endpoints/async) methods support this field.

For the API request details, including the peppolMigrationKey field reference, see Create an endpoint for a company.

Create an endpoint with a migration key using the Network Services portal

You can also enter the migration key directly in the NS portal when creating the endpoint:

1. Go to Settings > Companies, then select the company.

2. Click Endpoints, then click New endpoint.

3. Under General, in the Migration key field, enter the migration key provided by the previous PA.

4. Complete the remaining endpoint fields and save.

What you can update

After creation, you can update the following fields through Compliance Network or a PUT request:

• validityPeriod (start and end dates)

  Note:

  If you set the current day as your start date, Sovos treats it as the following day (d+1) due to the Annuaire's requirements.

• supportedDocuments

• erpSystemId

What you cannot change

The address (codeComponents) cannot be changed after creation. The API enforces this: the PUT request schema does not accept the codeComponents field. The start date in validityPeriod also cannot be changed once it has passed. You can only update it if it is still in the future.

If a customer's address needs to change, follow this process.

1. Remove the existing endpoint.

2. Create a new endpoint with the correct address.

To remove an endpoint through the API, send a DELETE request.

curl --location --request DELETE \
  'https://api-test.sovos.com/v2/configurations/workspaces/organizations/{orgId}/companies/{companyId}/endpoints/{endpointId}' \
  --header 'x-correlationId: SET-TO-UNIQUE-VALUE' \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer TOKEN'

A successful deletion returns 200 OK or 204 No Content. After deletion, the company can no longer receive documents through this endpoint.

Risk: the transition gap

Between the moment an inbound endpoint is removed and the moment a new one becomes active, the customer's address is either unregistered or pointing to an inactive entry in the Annuaire. Any supplier who looks up the customer during this window and tries to send an invoice may receive a routing error. Coordinate the removal and re-creation closely, and advise the customer to notify key suppliers of any expected downtime.