Central Directory (Annuaire)

The Annuaire is the centralized public registry managed by the French government (Portail Public de Facturation — PPF) that acts as the single source of truth for routing electronic invoices. Its primary role is to map every company operating in France to its chosen receiving platform (Plateforme Agréée), allowing sending platforms to correctly identify where an invoice must be transmitted.

Since private businesses cannot query the PPF Annuaire directly via API (the government only exposes a manual web browser interface), A-Cube bridges this gap by offering a dedicated endpoint to programmatically search the directory.

To guarantee maximum performance and avoid latency during invoice transmission, A-Cube maintains a synchronized local copy of the entire PPF Annuaire, updated every 24 hours. Every query goes through this local database.

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Querying the Annuaire

GET /french-directory

Returns a paginated collection of directory entries matching the provided filters. At least one query parameter should be supplied to narrow results.

Query Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
siren	string	9-digit national company identifier — exact match
siret	string	14-digit establishment identifier — exact match
name	string	Company name — case-insensitive substring match (e.g. ?name=acube matches "ACUBE PARTNER SARL")
page	int	Page number (default: 1)
itemsPerPage	int	Items per page (default: 30)

Response Object

Each item in the collection has the following structure:

Field	Type	Description
displayName	string	Company name as registered in the Annuaire
countryCode	string	ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code (e.g. "FR")
type	LEGAL_UNIT | OFFICE | null	Whether the entry represents a legal unit (SIREN level) or an office (SIRET level)
siren	string | null	9-digit SIREN number, if available
siret	string | null	14-digit SIRET number, if available
networkIdentifiers	array	List of electronic routing identifiers registered on the Annuaire

Each networkIdentifiers item:

Field	Type	Description
type	siren | siret | routing_code | suffix	Identifier type
value	string	The electronic address used for invoice routing (e.g. "0225:324730001")
validFrom	string	ISO 8601 date from which the identifier is valid (e.g. "2026-01-01")

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Example: Search by SIREN

GET /french-directory?siren=123456789

{
  "hydra:member": [
    {
      "displayName": "ACUBE CLIENT SAS",
      "countryCode": "FR",
      "type": "LEGAL_UNIT",
      "siren": "123456789",
      "siret": null,
      "networkIdentifiers": [
        {
          "type": "siren",
          "value": "0225:123456789",
          "validFrom": "2026-01-01"
        },
        {
          "type": "suffix",
          "value": "0225:123456789_freetext",
          "validFrom": "2026-01-01"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "hydra:totalItems": 1
}

Example: Search by Company Name

GET /french-directory?name=acube

{
  "hydra:member": [
    {
      "displayName": "ACUBE PARTNER SARL",
      "countryCode": "FR",
      "type": "LEGAL_UNIT",
      "siren": "987654321",
      "siret": null,
      "networkIdentifiers": [
        {
          "type": "siren",
          "value": "0225:987654321",
          "validFrom": "2025-07-01"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "hydra:totalItems": 1
}

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Errors

Status	Cause
503 Service Unavailable	The upstream French directory service is temporarily unavailable. Retry after a short delay.

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Usage in Invoice Issuance

Before sending an outbound invoice, use this endpoint to:

1. Verify that the recipient has a valid and active entry in the Annuaire.
2. Identify the correct network identifier to place in the invoice's receiver address field.
3. Confirm that your invoice format is compatible with the receiver's registered identifiers.

The networkIdentifiers[].value field (e.g. "0225:987654321") is the electronic address that must be used in the invoice to ensure correct routing to the recipient's platform.