Find e-invoicing addresses using SIREN numbers

# Find e-invoicing addresses using SIREN numbers

The Agence pour l'Informatique Financière de l'État (AIFE) provides an online service, via the Chorus business directory, for looking up e-invoicing addresses using your customers' SIREN numbers.

This service lets you:

• find out your customers' invoicing addresses;

• update your database;

• identify customers who haven't yet appointed an accredited platform (PA) to receive invoices.

Prerequisite: build the list of SIRENs to search in .CSV or .TXT format

To use this bulk search feature, you first need to prepare a .CSV or .TXT file on your computer containing the list of SIRENs you want to search for.

The file must contain only SIRENs (9-digit codes) stacked in a single column, with no punctuation or separators.

To create a file of this type, you can, for example, right-click in your file explorer. When the context menu appears, select "New > Text document", which creates a blank .TXT file.

Open the file and enter one SIREN on the first line. Press "Enter" on your keyboard to go to a new line, then enter a second SIREN on the second line of the file, and so on until you've listed all the SIRENs you want to search for.

Be careful not to enter anything in the file other than digits. If a SIREN starts with zeros, they must be included explicitly in the file. The content of the file should appear as a column of SIRENs of identical width. If you notice a line that's shorter or longer than the others, check that you haven't accidentally added or removed digits.

Save your changes by going to the "File" menu > "Save". The .TXT file is now ready to use.

To be usable, your file must be less than one megabyte. If your file exceeds this size, you'll need to split it into several separate files to be able to use it.

Run a search

Once you've built the list of SIRENs to search for, go to the homepage of the Chorus Pro e-invoicing directory.

After completing the CAPTCHA, click the "Valider" button at the bottom of the screen.

The Chorus Pro portal asks you to import the file of SIRENs to analyze. Click the "Ajouter un fichier" button.

A window opens allowing you to specify the location of the list of SIRENs to search for. Select the CSV or TXT file to upload it to the Chorus Pro service portal. The screen shows the size of the file you want to analyze. If the file is larger than 1 megabyte, the search won't be able to complete.

Once the list of SIRENs has been retrieved by the portal, click the "Soumettre" button to start searching for the listed SIRENs in the Directory.

If successful, the message "Your SIRENs have been verified" is displayed. Click the download icon to retrieve the search report, which is provided as a CSV file.

View and use the results of a SIREN list search

The results of a SIREN list search are provided as a flat file (CSV or TXT format) containing several columns. We recommend converting this file to spreadsheet format (for example with Excel or OpenOffice) to work with it more comfortably. The conversion method varies depending on the software you use and its version. Please refer to the documentation for your office suite for the exact steps that apply to your situation if you're using different software or a different version than the one described below.

Examples of converting to spreadsheet format in Excel 2021 and LibreOffice v25.8.4.2

As an example, we describe the approach for Excel 2021, which illustrates the conversion process.

1. Save your results file locally on your computer (and note where you saved it).

2. Open a blank Excel spreadsheet.

3. In the menu bar, go to "Data" then click the "Get Data" block: this opens a context menu. Choose the option "From Text/CSV".

4. The file explorer opens in an overlay window: select the location where you saved your results file to start the conversion.

5. A new window opens showing a preview table built by splitting columns based on the "comma" separator (in other words: each time a comma appears between two pieces of data, they're split into 2 separate columns). This default option is the best fit for defining the columns. Confirm by clicking the "Load" button.

The table is converted in Excel with one column per data type.

For comparison, in LibreOffice you can perform the same type of conversion by opening a blank LibreOffice file, then clicking "Open" in the menu bar, and pointing to the location of the results file on your computer. A gray "Text Import" window opens, allowing you, as with Excel, to define and confirm how the data should be split. At the bottom of the window, a preview lets you check the result. The proposed "separator" is detected automatically, as in Excel. If it isn't, select "comma".

Note that in LibreOffice, unlike Excel 2021, you can select columns in the preview window to specify the type of data displayed. The selected column turns black and a dropdown list appears. For the SIREN column, we recommend choosing the "Text" option rather than "Standard" from the dropdown list, then confirming your choice. This prevents SIRENs starting with 0 from having those zeros automatically stripped during the spreadsheet conversion.

Depending on the version and spreadsheet software used, some data may indeed be interpreted as redundant and removed during the spreadsheet conversion. The most common removals are leading zeros to the left of a number. Most spreadsheet software lets you work around this problem by letting the user interpret the digits as "text". To learn more about the method that applies to your software, refer to your office suite's documentation.

Reading the results table

The file is read row by row. It has 5 columns, and for each SIREN searched, all existing address lines linked to that legal entity. For a given SIREN, you may therefore get several rows (one per invoicing address).

For example, in the illustration given, for SIREN 005611074, the search returns three invoicing rows: one row at SIREN level that is inactive as of the search date, one row at SIREN_SIRET level that is active, and one row at SIREN_Suffix level ("TESTsanssiret") that is inactive.

The columns in the results file are interpreted as follows:

Using the results in Salesforce

Once the electronic billing address has been retrieved from the Annuaire, it must be imported into Salesforce and entered in the "Electronic Billing Address" field (fiix__ElectronicBillingAddress__c) on the Account object.

This field is made available through the Frisbii e-invoice package extension.