VAT4U submits French VAT refund claims through an automated bot that replicates the steps a person would take logging into the French tax portal directly. This article walks through the entire process — from what the bot does automatically, through every checkpoint on the portal itself, to what happens after you submit.
Before you start
Three things need to be in place before a claim can be successfully pushed to the French portal:
A mandate, if submitting as a representative. If VAT4U (or another representative) is submitting on your behalf rather than you submitting directly, a mandate must be granted first — an authorization done directly in the French portal that allows the representative to submit refund claims specifically, without giving access to anything else in the account. There's a guide within the French portal itself that walks through granting this. If the customer hasn't granted this yet, their profile simply won't appear when the representative logs in.
VAT number and tax number (SIREN/SIRET) correctly entered on the customer's profile. These are two separate fields, and both are needed. The tax number is not just your VAT number with the "FR" prefix removed — it can be longer, and contain different characters entirely. The tax number is what actually connects your profile to the French portal, so if a submission fails to find your record on the portal side, this is the first thing worth checking.
The correct "Preferred portal language" set in VAT4U's General Settings — not the general top-level language switcher, but a separate, dedicated portal-language setting. If this doesn't match the language the robot expects, the robot will fail even if every other field is filled in correctly. This is a common, easy-to-miss cause of submission failures.
What the robot does automatically
1. The bot logs in. It uses the same saved login credentials (email and password) you'd use to access the French portal's professional space yourself.
2. The bot finds the authorized customer. Only customers who have already granted the mandate will appear — the bot can't push a claim for a customer it doesn't have authorization for.
3. The bot fills in and pushes the claim. At this point, the claim lands in the portal in draft status. This means the bot's part is done, but the claim has not yet been submitted to the tax authority — someone still needs to review and finalize it manually.
Step-by-Step: Reviewing and finalizing on the TAX portal
1. Once your claim has been created in VAT4U, click on the “Submission” tab. A robot will begin processing the claim directly to the French TAX portal.
2. After the robot finalizes the claim submission to the French TAX portal, a notification will appear on your screen.
3. Log into the professional space. Go to the French tax portal and click through to "connection to the professional space" (the business-facing login, as opposed to the individual/personal one). Enter the saved email and password.
4. Open the customer's file ("dossier"). Once logged in, you'll see the dossier — essentially a list of every customer profile that has granted you access. Select the correct customer if you have more than one, and click Valider ("valid," i.e. validate) to confirm.
5. Check the tax number is present. Inside the customer's profile, under their VAT information, there's a separate field for the tax number (SIREN/SIRET). If this is missing or incorrect, this is worth fixing before going further — it's the field the French portal actually uses to match the claim to the right business.
6. Navigate to the EU VAT refund section. From inside the customer's profile, go to remboursement de TVA UE ("refund of EU VAT"). This opens a new window.
5. Find the draft claim in the applications list. You'll see every application/claim made for this customer, each with its own status: Demande traitee (Request processed), En cours (In progress or Under review), and Brouilon (Draft) — the one you're looking for, since that's the claim the bot just pushed.
6. After opining the draft claim, you can review data entries in TAX portal and compare them with VAT4U:
THIS IS NOT A MANDATORY STEP
It’s your decision to compare and verify the data entered into the TAX portal. This is presented here as a recommended practice, particularly for claims with a high VAT refund potential. |
The country of refund, the currency, and the claim period.
The customer/applicant information page. This shows the customer's full details. When the representative submits the claim on customers behalf, the email address on this page should be the representative's (VAT4U's), not the customer's, so that portal communications are received correctly.
The bank account page: This shows whose bank account the refund will be paid into — normally the applicant's (the customer's) account, unless the representative has been separately authorized to receive refunds directly, which varies by customer agreement.
The invoice lines: This page lists every invoice line in the claim. For claims with many lines, they're grouped in blocks (e.g. lines 1–10, 11–20) rather than shown all at once. Each line can be opened via "Edit entry" to see full detail: sequence number, country of refund, invoice date and number, amounts, whether it's a full invoice or a simplified invoice, the expense category code, the description text sent to the tax authority, and the supplier's information.
Review the import documents page, if relevant. This only applies if the claim includes intra-community acquisitions or import documents. If not applicable, this page will simply show no entries.
NOTE ON NUMBER FORMATTING Depending on the portal's display language, amounts may show with the comma and decimal point swapped (e.g. 1.680 vs 1,680) compared to how VAT4U shows the same figure. This is just a formatting difference based on locale, not a data error — the underlying amount is the same. |
7. Review the declaration page. Every portal requires a set of mandatory declarations. This is filled in by the bot by default, but it's worth understanding what's being declared here, since some declarations only make sense for certain representative arrangements (for example, whether the representative is acting as a tax advisor — this affects whether the tax authority expects a Power of Attorney on file).
8. Review the notification/communication preferences. This determines where the tax authority sends future communications: to the applicant directly, or to the authorized representative. If VAT4U is submitting as a representative, this should point to VAT4U rather than the customer.
Final review and submission
Review the final summary screen. Before submitting, the portal shows a complete summary: the claim period and country of refund, the claimant and representative details, the bank account, the number of invoice lines and total VAT amount claimed, the declaration answers, the communication email address, and the full list of attachments. This is the last chance to catch anything before it's sent.
Once you're satisfied everything is correct, you can click the "SEND" button. submit the claim to the portal.
Save the confirmation letter. After submitting, the portal issues a confirmation along with a reference number. Save this confirmation in VAT4U (for example, as a PDF, named with the claim's ID) even if it's rarely needed afterward.
Finally, also in VAT4U, store the reference number against the claim and update the claim's status to Claimed.
If a correction is needed later
If a tax authority comes back saying something on the claim was wrong (for example, an invoice number that doesn't match their records), the correction is made in VAT4U — not directly on the portal — since individual submitted lines can't be edited there. Once corrected, the claim is regenerated and pushed again by the bot.
Because the original reference number is already stored in VAT4U, the portal recognizes the new submission as a corrective claim linked to the original one, rather than a brand-new claim — and the reference number itself stays the same across the original and the correction.
Good to know
DRAFT STATUS ≠ SUBMITTED A claim reaching draft status in the portal means the bot completed its part successfully — it does not mean the claim has been submitted to the tax authority yet. Manual review and finalization in the portal, through the checkpoints above, is still required. |
Tax portals change over time. The French portal occasionally introduces changes (like an added verification step) without notice, which can cause the bot to fail until VAT4U team updates it to handle the change. If a submission fails unexpectedly, this is worth checking before assuming there's a data issue with the claim itself.
Multiple draft claims can exist at once for different customers — the tax number (not the VAT number) is the quickest way to tell them apart in the applications list.