on 4 September 2026 To invoice a public administration in France, you no longer open a government portal and retype what your software already knows. DoliPlus sends the invoice for you, and here is what that changes:
- no portal to log into, and nothing to retype;
- your customer’s SIREN number is enough to identify them;
- the service code and commitment number have their own place on the invoice;
- each status comes back onto the invoice, so you always know where it stands;
- the PDF travels with the invoice automatically.
In short, public sector invoicing becomes an ordinary step of your invoicing routine. DoliPlus is the enhanced cloud edition of Dolibarr, and this capability is built into the invoice itself.
Invoice a public administration: what actually changes
Until now, selling to a town hall, a hospital or a school meant a second workflow. You issued the invoice in your software, then you opened a public portal and entered the same information again. Therefore every invoice cost twice the work, and every mistake cost a rejection.
DoliPlus removes that second workflow. You issue your invoice as usual, then you send it. Moreover, the acknowledgement travels back to the same screen, so you never wonder whether the invoice arrived.
Can you really do without the public portal?
Yes, and the reason is simple. French public bodies accept invoices sent through an approved platform, exactly as they accept invoices typed into their own portal. DoliPlus talks to such a platform for you.
Consequently, the portal becomes optional rather than mandatory. You keep it for exceptional cases if you wish, but your day-to-day invoicing no longer depends on it.
Do you need your customer’s SIRET, or is the SIREN enough?
The SIREN is enough. This point matters, because it removes the most common objection: chasing a 14-digit number that your customer does not always give you.
In practice, you record the SIREN on the customer record, as you would for any other company. DoliPlus then identifies the recipient from it.
What should you ask your public customer for?
Some public bodies require a service code, a commitment number, or both. These references come from their purchase order — in other words, from your customer, never from your software.
On your invoice, both references have a dedicated place: the “Electronic invoicing — public sector” section, which holds a “Service code” field and a “Commitment number” field. You fill them in while creating the invoice, like any other information.
Furthermore, DoliPlus spares you double entry whenever it can. Without a service code, it reuses the customer reference of the invoice. Without a commitment number, it reuses the one from the linked order — provided there is only one, since beyond that the right choice would become ambiguous.
If your account holds several companies, each of them has these two fields on its own invoices. Thus the company that works with the public sector fills in its service code and its commitment number locally, with its own settings, without waiting for the others. In other words, you can invoice a public administration from any of your companies, under the same conditions.
What do you need to prepare on your side?
One point concerns you directly: your own SIRET, in 14 digits. The public sector identifies the issuer of an invoice by this number. We set it up with you when your account goes live, once and for all.
Note the nuance, because it is reassuring: this requirement applies to you, the issuer. Your customer’s number, on the other hand, may perfectly well stop at their SIREN.
Finally, the PDF of your invoice travels with the transmission automatically, since the public sector requires it. As a result, you have no document to attach by hand.
Going further
- Follow the status of every invoice you send: See this chapter
- Qualify your business contacts by their company number: See this chapter
- Report your cross-border transactions: Learn more
- Receive your supplier invoices electronically: Learn more
Related Entrées
