Wedding planner accounting: what you have to keep, and what you should actually read

A wedding planning studio runs two sets of books. The first is the one the tax office requires, and under the French micro-entreprise regime it fits on a single page. The second answers the only question that concerns you: did this wedding actually pay? Most planners keep the first one properly and have never built the second.

The symptom is easy to spot. You know to the cent what you collected this year, because URSSAF asks you every month or every quarter. But if someone asks which of your six weddings this year lost money, you hesitate. In this business, there is almost always one.

What the tax office actually asks for

Under the micro-entreprise regime the list is short by design. The regime was built so that you would not need an accountant. You keep a chronological record of collected income, with the amount, the source, the payment method and the reference of the supporting document on every line. You issue compliant invoices carrying the wording that VAT does not apply under article 293 B of the tax code, for as long as you sit under the VAT threshold. You keep every invoice and receipt for ten years. And you open a dedicated bank account once your turnover passes €10,000 for two consecutive calendar years, though an ordinary separate current account is enough and no paid business account is required.

What you are not required to do matters just as much. No balance sheet, no profit and loss statement, no annual tax package, no legally mandated accountant. The purchase register applies to goods resale and accommodation, so it does not concern a planner selling services alone.

One recent deadline changes a habit. Since 1 September 2026, every VAT-registered business in France, including those under the franchise threshold, must be able to receive electronic invoices through an approved platform. The obligation to issue them extends to micro-entreprises and very small companies on 1 September 2027. In practice, vendor invoices will stop arriving as loose PDFs by email, and it is better to have chosen your platform before the date chooses it for you.

Incorporating changes the story entirely. A SASU, EURL or SARL means full accounting, a balance sheet, a P&L and an annual filing. An accountant is not strictly compulsory, but in practice it becomes one. The trade-offs are covered in how to become a wedding planner in France.

What it does not ask for, and what that costs you

None of those obligations tells you whether you are profitable. The income record stacks payments in the order they land. It mixes the deposit for the September wedding, the balance from the June one, and a refund from a vendor. At year end you get a total, and a total cannot be steered.

The accounting the craft requires comes down to one unit: the file. Each wedding is a project with its own income, its own costs and its own duration. What you track, wedding by wedding: the amount invoiced to the couple, what was actually collected and when, the expenses committed for that wedding, and the hours spent if you manage to log them. The margin then appears on its own.

A wedding can be a complete success for the couple and a straight loss for you. Those two pieces of information never reach you through the same channel.

Overheads can be allocated crudely, and crude is enough. Professional liability insurance, website, software subscriptions, travel, training, local business tax: add them across the year, divide by the number of weddings handled, and attach that figure to each file. It is not an accountant's allocation key. It is a key that gives you an honest order of magnitude, and an order of magnitude is enough to decide with.

Disbursements, and where planners get caught

Many planners front money for their couples. A florist deposit, furniture rental, printed menus. If those sums pass through your account and land in your turnover, you pay social contributions on them and drift toward the ceiling of the micro regime without having earned an extra euro.

French law has a mechanism for this, and it is strict. For advanced sums to sit outside your turnover, four conditions must hold at once under article 267 II-2 of the tax code: a written mandate signed by the couple before the spending, stating its nature and budget; a supplier invoice issued in the couple's name rather than yours; reimbursement at the exact amount, with no markup; and a full account of the spending with receipts attached.

Miss one condition and the mechanism collapses. The sum becomes a rebilled expense and enters your turnover. The most common failure is also the most ordinary one: the vendor invoice carries your name because you were the one who called. That alone flips the money to the wrong side. The habit to install from your first file is to fold the mandate into your contract, and to ask every supplier to invoice the couple directly. Contract wording for this sits alongside the other clauses worth getting right: see essential wedding planner contract clauses.

VAT, and the day it arrives

The franchise en base exempts you from charging VAT up to a given level of activity. For 2026, the base threshold for services is €37,500 of turnover, with an upper threshold at €41,250. Between the two, the exemption holds for the current year and is lost the following 1 January. Above the upper threshold, the exemption ends immediately: VAT is due from the day you cross it. The single €25,000 threshold that was announced and then suspended has been dropped and does not apply.

The day VAT arrives, your advertised price changes nature. Your clients are private individuals and recover nothing. A €3,000 fee becomes €3,600 including VAT, or stays at €3,000 and costs you €500 of margin. That decision belongs upstream, not in the month you cross the line. It connects to the wider question of how your prices are built, covered in wedding planner pricing.

Cash flow is the real subject

This business collects in summer and spends all year. Balances land between May and September; insurance, subscriptions and contributions land twelve months out of twelve. A studio can post a good year and still run dry in February.

A deposit is not available income. It is money received for work you have not done yet, and sometimes for costs you are about to commit. The only useful marker is projected cash at three months: what you hold, minus what will leave, plus what will arrive with a date attached. Everything else is a feeling.

The three numbers to check every month

First: collected against invoiced. The gap measures what is owed to you. If it widens two months running, your follow-ups are not keeping pace.

Second: the margin on the last closed file. Not the yearly average, the last one. That is the file reflecting your current rates and the way you work now. The wedding-level calculation is developed in profitability per wedding.

Third: cash at three months. It governs your investment decisions and your ability to turn down a bad file. When several weddings overlap, it is also what tells you whether you can take the next one: see managing multiple weddings at once.

Tooling

A spreadsheet does the job early, and does it well. Two tabs, one per file and one for overheads, carry you through three or four weddings a year. The limits show up later: double entry between client tracking and financial tracking, no consolidated view, and formulas that break at the moment you need them most.

The ÆTHERNA accounting module was built for that transition. It tracks collected revenue, costs per wedding and general overheads, net margin and a P&L per file, with optional VAT that switches amounts between excluding and including tax, and a rolling twelve-month cash view. No financial transaction passes through the platform: it records, it does not process payments.

Four questions planners ask

Do I need an accountant under the micro regime? No, the law does not require one. A one-off consultation when you incorporate or when VAT arrives is still worth the fee.

When is a deposit declared? When it is collected. The micro regime works on money actually received, not on invoices issued.

Can I deduct real expenses under the micro regime? No. A flat allowance is applied instead, set at 50% for commercial services. Tracking your costs remains essential to know your real margin, even though they are not deductible.

When should I consider incorporating? When your real costs clearly exceed the flat allowance, when you approach the €83,600 turnover ceiling, or when you want to employ someone.

This article describes the general framework and is not accounting or tax advice. Your position depends on your legal status, your activity and where you operate: have it validated by a professional before acting on it.

Sources: service-public.gouv.fr, accounting obligations for micro-entrepreneurs; economie.gouv.fr and Bpifrance Création, micro regime thresholds for 2026 to 2028; article 293 B of the French tax code, VAT franchise thresholds 2026; article 267 II-2 of the French tax code and BOFiP, disbursement rules; DGFiP, electronic invoicing timetable for 2026 and 2027.

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