The FEC (Fichier des Écritures Comptables, the French accounting entries file) is a standardised computer file that gathers, for a given financial year, all the accounting entries recorded, sorted in chronological order of posting. Since 1st January 2014, article L47 A-I of the French Tax Procedures Code has required any business keeping its accounts on computerised systems to be able to hand this file over to the tax authorities — the DGFiP — at the very start of a tax audit. This applies both to companies and to self-employed professionals taxed under an actual-profit regime.
The FEC format is strictly defined: a flat text file (fields separated by a tab or the “|” character) or, more rarely, XML, containing 18 mandatory columns presented in a set order. These include the journal code and label, the entry number and date, the account number and label, the reference and date of the supporting document, the debit and credit amounts, as well as reconciliation information.
The tax authorities check the file's compliance using their Test Compta Demat tool, which verifies the structure, the balance of the entries and the consistency of the dates. Any anomaly — a missing field, unbalanced entries, gaps in the numbering — can lead to the file being rejected, treated as non-probative accounting, and expose the business to a fine.
Beyond the legal obligation, a clean FEC demonstrates that the entries are complete, ordered and unaltered. Producing it relies directly on the French general chart of accounts, whose account numbers it reuses. eyeot's accounting can export a financial year's entries in the FEC format expected by the DGFiP, alongside the journal, the trial balance and reconciliation operations.