If you sell with WooCommerce from France and keep computerised accounts, sooner or later you will have to produce a FEC. It is worth knowing what it is, what it must contain and how to get it without re-keying your orders.
What is the FEC?
The FEC (fichier des écritures comptables) lists every accounting entry of a financial year, line by line. Its format is set by article A47 A-1 of the French tax procedure code: 18 columns (journal code, entry number, date, account, label, debit, credit…), amounts with a decimal comma, in a text file. Businesses that keep their books with computer software must be able to hand it to the tax authorities during an audit.
This article is general information, not accounting or legal advice. Check your obligations with your accountant.
What your shop has to put in it
Every WooCommerce order becomes double-entry bookkeeping: total debits equal total credits. One order can produce up to three documents.
- The invoice: the customer account is debited for the total including VAT; sales, shipping, any fees and VAT are credited; discounts go to a dedicated account.
- The payment: the bank (or the payment gateway account) is debited, the customer account is credited, on the payment date.
- The credit note: each refund reverses the invoice on the same accounts.
The mistakes that cost you
- Entries unbalanced by one cent: when prices are entered including tax, WooCommerce stores more than two decimals; without whole-cent calculation, an invoice can be silently dropped.
- Wrong decimal separator: the FEC expects a comma, not a dot.
- Documents outside the period: a payment received in February for a January order belongs to February.
- Forgotten refunds: without a credit note, turnover is overstated.
- Duplicates: exporting the same order twice skews the trial balance.
Generate your FEC with Accounting Export for WooCommerce
The FEC is included in the free version of Accounting Export for WooCommerce, with whole-cent calculation, credit notes, OSS VAT and duplicate protection.
- Open WooCommerce → Accounting Export, Wizard tab, and apply the chart of accounts of your country (the French PCG by default).
- Have your accountant validate the accounts, then enter the bank account of each payment gateway.
- Choose the source of the document number (General tab).
- In “Generate an export”, pick the FEC format and the period, then click Preview to check the entries.
- Start the export: it runs in the background and the file appears in the history.
For a FEC meant for the tax authorities, export the whole financial year in one go if you can: entry numbering is specific to each file.
The FEC is free. The 12 other formats (Sage, EBP, Pennylane, DATEV…) are included in the Premium plans, with a 14-day trial.
