Rent invoicing for an SCI

The société civile immobilière (SCI) is the workhorse of French property ownership. Families use one to hold a building, investors use dozens to hold a portfolio, and funds often sit several layers of SCIs and holding companies above their assets. Whatever the structure, each SCI is a separate legal person with its own tenants, its own bank account and its own books, and its rent has to be invoiced in its own name.

This guide covers what an SCI's rent invoice needs, how VAT fits in, how numbering works when one team runs many companies, and the mistakes that tend to surface at year end.

Who invoices whom

The landlord on the lease is the company that invoices. If an SCI owns the building and signed the lease, the invoice comes from that SCI, carries its details and is paid into its account. It does not come from the asset manager, from the parent holding company or from whichever company happens to share the bank login.

This sounds obvious, but in a group with many entities it is the most common source of errors: a lease transferred from one SCI to another while invoices keep coming from the old one, or rent paid into a sister company's account and never moved across.

Invoice, call for payment or receipt

French landlords use three related documents, and it helps to keep them apart.

• The invoice is the formal document required when the rent is a supply between businesses, and in particular when it is subject to VAT.
• The call for payment (avis d'échéance) tells the tenant what is due for the coming period. Many residential landlords use it instead of an invoice.
• The rent receipt (quittance) confirms that a period has been paid in full. For residential lettings the tenant can ask for one, free of charge.

An SCI letting commercial or office space to businesses will normally issue proper invoices, because its tenants need them for their own accounts and to deduct VAT where it applies. Whether an invoice is strictly required for a VAT-exempt letting is a question for your accountant, but issuing one is the safer and more common practice.

What the invoice must show

A French invoice between businesses carries a set of mandatory details (mentions obligatoires). For rent, the ones that matter most are:

• a unique number from a continuous sequence, and the date of issue;
• the SCI's name, address and SIREN, and its VAT number if it is registered for VAT;
• the tenant's name and address (and, increasingly, its SIREN);
• the period covered and a description of each line: rent, service charge provision, property tax recharge and so on;
• for each line, the amount before VAT, the VAT rate and the VAT amount, then the totals;
• the payment due date;
• the late payment penalty rate and the fixed indemnity for recovery costs due between businesses;
• the early payment discount terms, or a statement that there is none;
• where no VAT is charged, a short statement of why.

Missing details can lead to fines, and they cause practical trouble long before that: a tenant whose accounts team rejects the invoice simply does not pay it. France is also moving to mandatory electronic invoicing between VAT-registered businesses, phased in from September 2026. Check with your adviser how the timetable and the scope apply to your entities' lettings.

VAT on rent: the basics

The VAT position depends on what is let and to whom, and it is set lease by lease.

• Residential lettings of unfurnished homes are exempt from VAT. No VAT is charged and none is recovered on costs.
• Bare commercial and office lettings are exempt by default, but the landlord can opt to charge VAT when the tenant is itself a business. With the option, VAT is charged on the rent and the SCI can recover the VAT it pays on works and costs for that property.
• Other cases (furnished lettings, lettings with services, lettings to non-taxable tenants) follow their own rules.

The option has real consequences: once made, it binds the SCI for a period and changes how its costs are treated. The scope and duration of the option, and whether it is worth making, are decisions to take with your tax adviser. What matters on the invoicing side is that each lease records its VAT position correctly and that every invoice for that lease reflects it, including the explanatory wording when no VAT is charged.

Numbering across many companies

Each SCI needs its own continuous invoice sequence. Two SCIs must not share a sequence, because each one is a separate taxpayer and an inspector will look at each sequence on its own. Within one SCI, the sequence must run without gaps or duplicates.

The rules allow more than one series per company, for example one per year or one per activity, provided the method is consistent and each series is continuous on its own. A common pattern is a company prefix followed by the period and a running number, so that every invoice can be traced to its issuer at a glance.

Common mistakes

• Invoicing from the wrong SCI after a lease moves between companies.
• Sharing one numbering sequence across several SCIs, or restarting a sequence by hand in January.
• Printing the wrong bank details, so rent lands in another company's account.
• Charging VAT on a lease with no option, or forgetting to charge it on one with an option.
• Leaving the exemption wording off invoices that carry no VAT.
• Correcting an issued invoice by editing it instead of issuing a credit note.

Step by step, each month

1. Check that every active lease is attached to the right SCI and that each SCI has the right bank account and invoice series.
2. Generate the period's invoices and review the exceptions: new or dropped lines, changed amounts, leases that have ended.
3. Approve and issue the invoices, which gives each one its final number.
4. Send them to tenants.
5. Match incoming payments against invoices, company by company.
6. Follow up unpaid balances and send statements where needed.

How PropertyOne handles it

PropertyOne is built for portfolios that hold their assets through many companies, so each SCI or holding company is a first-class entity rather than a label.

• Each holding company has its own invoice series with its own prefix and a continuous counter that never resets. Numbers take the form prefix, issue period and sequence, so an invoice always shows which company issued it. A company can run several series when it needs to.
• An invoice carries a placeholder reference until it is issued, and only then draws its legal number. Discarded drafts never leave gaps.
• Each lease records its VAT treatment (exempt, exempt with an option to tax, reverse charge or standard), and VAT rates sit on each rent line. Legal notices held on the lease, such as exemption wording, print on every invoice and are frozen onto it at generation.
• The company's primary bank account prints on its invoices, and payments are reconciled per bank account, so money is matched to the company it belongs to.
• Each month's billing run is reviewed before anything is issued, with flags for skipped periods, lines added or dropped, amounts that moved, rises past the indexation cap and leases that have ended.
• Invoice PDFs are produced in French and English. A tenant's account is kept per holding company, with a statement you can download or email.