Approved platform:
how to choose one when you run a recruitment agency or an IT consultancy

An approved platform (plateforme agréée, formerly PDP) is the provider registered by the tax authority that sends and receives your e-invoices, and sends invoicing and payment data to the tax authority. Every company subject to VAT in France has used one to receive invoices since 1 September 2026, and will use it to issue from 1 September 2027 if it is an SME.

For a recruitment agency or an IT consultancy (ESN), the choice comes down to a few criteria. This article ranks them in order of importance.

Article checked on 11 November 2026. For the full timeline, see our article on mandatory e-invoicing.

What an approved platform does, and what it does not do

An approved platform carries invoices and data: it receives your suppliers' invoices, sends yours to your clients in a structured format, sends the relevant data to the tax authority and tracks the status of each invoice. It knows nothing about your placements, your fees or your CRAs (timesheets).

What it does:

• it lists you in the central directory, so your suppliers know where to send their invoices;
• it receives your suppliers' invoices and makes them available to your accounts;
• it issues your invoices in the format expected by your client's platform;
• it sends the tax authority the invoicing data and, for services, the payment data;
• it passes statuses along: submitted, rejected by the platform, refused by the client, paid, plus optional ones such as received or accepted.

What it does not do: calculate a fee, build a deposit and balance schedule, pick up the days from a CRA or chase a client who has not paid. These steps stay in your business tools, which then have to hand the invoice over to it.

The criteria for a recruitment agency or an IT consultancy

Five criteria are enough, in this order: registration on the DGFiP list, your accountant's opinion, how your invoices reach it from your tools, how statuses come back, then price. The advanced features of offers built for key accounts are rarely useful to an agency of fewer than fifty people.

1. Registration

Check the exact name on the list published by the DGFiP on impots.gouv.fr. Some publishers describe themselves as "compatible" or "connected to an approved platform": that is a different role, a useful one, but it is not registration.

2. Your accountant

They will process the invoices received and issued every month. If they already work with a platform, starting from that one avoids adding another link to the chain. Also ask them how they get the payment data, which matters for VAT on a fee.

3. How the invoice gets there from your tools

An agency prepares its invoices in its recruitment software, from the placement. An IT consultancy prepares them from the validated CRA. The platform must receive these invoices without re-entry: through a sync with the software that prepares them, or through an import. An invoice copied out by hand is where SIREN number and amount errors get in.

4. Statuses coming back

An invoice rejected by the client, or paid, must show up where you track your fees. Otherwise, you chase a client who has paid, or you wait for payment of an invoice the client rejected three weeks earlier.

5. Price

Offers are charged as a flat fee or by volume. For a few dozen invoices a month, the difference between two platforms is small compared with the time spent correcting a rejected invoice.

The case of an IT consultancy billing key accounts

Key accounts already issue their e-invoices and have their own platform. They often ask their suppliers for a purchase order number, an exact SIREN number and sometimes a receiving department. An IT consultancy's platform must be able to carry this information through to the client's platform, and the IT consultancy must enter it once on the assignment.

The purchase order number is the most common reason for rejection at key accounts. It is entered on the assignment or the placement, so it is copied onto every invoice for the period.

In Marvin

Marvin is not an approved platform. It prepares the invoice from the placement or the validated CRA, with the fees, the payment schedule, the client's billing details and the purchase order number, then, for a client established in France, sends it as a draft to Pennylane, without duplicates. For other software, the data can be exported as CSV.

Payments and reminders are tracked in Marvin, alongside the placements. See our invoicing software for recruitment agencies.

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