Specialist accounting for French engineering consultancies (BET): progress billing, Syntec index, Research Tax Credit (CIR), VAT on intellectual services, margin by project. Hayot Expertise Paris.
An accountant for engineering consultancies (BET) masters what sets a BET apart from a digital services company: progress billing on assignments, tracking of work in progress (TEC) and revenue earned but not yet invoiced (FAE), the Syntec index used to revise fees, and eligibility for the research tax credit (CIR) and JEI status. The goal: profitability readable project by project.
| Criterion | Generalist firm | Hayot Expertise (engineering specialist) |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue recognition | Revenue follows the invoicing schedule, completed-contract method by default, result driven by the delivery date | Percentage of completion evidenced within the meaning of article 622-5, one method applied to all long-term contracts and disclosed in the notes |
| R&D tax credit (CIR) | Overhead allowance still computed at 43%, base copied from the engineering invoiced to the client, patent and technology-watch costs still included | Base recomputed with the 40% allowance applicable to expenditure incurred since 15 February 2025, research separated from the client assignment, time booked per engagement, form 2069-A-SD filed |
| Syntec index | Price revision clause dormant, never applied, sometimes drafted on an index that does not exist | Revision computed as P1 = P0 x (S1 / S0), invoiced and tracked contract by contract, linking coefficient checked for contracts signed before August 2022 |
| Margin | Overall margin read once a year off the financial statements | Margin at completion re-estimated engagement by engagement at each monthly review, cost completion compared with revenue completion |
| WIP and accrued income | Discovered at the year end, work in progress sometimes valued at selling price | Tracked during the year, work in progress at production cost, accrued income backed by evidenced completion |
| VAT | Whatever regime is in place applied without question, tax sometimes remitted on uninvoiced accrued income | Collection-versus-debits arbitrage costed against your payment terms (CGI 269-2-c), VAT aligned on the invoice and the payment, 2026 e-reporting anticipated |
The following case is a teaching model, not a client file. A thermal and fluids engineering firm, fifteen engineers, Syntec collective agreement (IDCC 1486), year end 31 December. In September it signs a fixed-price study of €120,000 excluding VAT, deliverable in June of the following year, invoiced 30% on order and the balance on delivery of the final report. At the year end, timesheets show 480 hours incurred against a 1,200-hour budget, so 40% completion, and the cost budget is holding. The outcome at completion is reliably estimated within the meaning of the three tests of article 622-5 of French GAAP: contract revenue is known (signed fixed-price contract), attributable costs are identified (time booked to the engagement and valued at cost per hour), and the tracking tool validates the percentage of completion.
Revenue recognised at the year end is €48,000, being 40% of €120,000. As the 36,000 euro deposit already invoiced falls short of the revenue earned, accrued income (FAE) of €12,000 is booked. Had the third test of article 622-5 failed, for want of time booked to the engagement, article 622-4 would have capped revenue at the costs incurred: zero margin on the contract, and a jagged result driven by the delivery date. Separately, the same firm has isolated in its timesheets the work carried out to lift a technical barrier, outside the client assignment. On R&D staff costs of €100,000, the flat-rate overhead allowance of 40% adds €40,000, giving a base of €140,000 and a research tax credit of €42,000 at the 30% rate (disregarding depreciation), declared on form 2069-A-SD filed with the tax return. The same timesheets carry both the percentage of completion and the tax credit base.
An accountant for a French engineering consultancy (bureau d'études techniques, or BET) recognises revenue as each contract progresses, through work in progress and revenue earned but not yet invoiced. It secures the research tax credit and JEI base from project time sheets, activates the Syntec index price revision clause, and tracks margin project by project. Bookkeeping, tax and payroll follow.
These four professions are regularly confused, including by accounting firms, although they share neither the same billing model nor the same accounting risks. A bureau d'études techniques sells an intellectual engineering service: calculation notes, sizing, structure, building services, thermal studies, industrial process. It commits engineer hours to a technical deliverable, usually for a fixed price, on assignments that run several months and cross the year end. Fixed price plus duration: that combination triggers everything below.
| Business | What it sells | The dominant accounting issue |
|---|---|---|
| Engineering consultancy (BET) | A fixed-price engineering study | Percentage of completion, work in progress, research tax credit |
| IT services company (ESN) | Consultant man-days, time and materials | Daily rate, bench time, Syntec payroll |
| Architect | A regulated design assignment | Fees by phase, insurance, self-employed or corporate regime |
| Works supervisor (maître d'œuvre) | Supervision of the works | Public procurement, ten-year liability |
A BET is not a construction company: everything that touches the building site (multiple VAT rates on works, reverse charge on subcontracting, retention money, the industry holiday fund) belongs to the construction sector, and a construction-site chart of accounts answers none of a consultancy's real questions.
A BET signs a fixed-price study, invoices it against a negotiated schedule (on order, on the preliminary design, on delivery), and its year ends in the middle. The revenue of the year is neither what was invoiced nor what was collected: it is what was produced.
The Plan comptable général (PCG), the French general chart of accounts (ANC regulation 2014-03) and the source of French GAAP, treats these as long-term contracts, in articles 622-1 and following.
Article 622-3 sets the principle: when the outcome at completion can be estimated reliably, revenue and margin are recognised at the pace at which the study is produced. Article 622-4 organises the fallback: when it cannot, recognised revenue is limited to the costs incurred and the contract comes out at a nil result: prudence, not a penalty.
Is the outcome reliably estimated? Article 622-5 gives three criteria:
Our reading. The third criterion is the one nobody reads and everybody suffers: it does not ask for an intention, it asks for a tool. Without project-level cost accounting and time sheets posted by engineer and by contract, a consultancy cannot justify a percentage of completion: it falls into article 622-4, margin flattened to zero on every open contract at the year end. Those same time sheets carry the research tax credit base. One failure, time not posted to a project, brings down both.
Two accounts carry the weight, under their French names in the trial balance. Travaux en cours (TEC), work in progress, records production carried out and not yet recognised as revenue, at production cost and never at selling price. Factures à établir (FAE), accrued income, records revenue earned, matching genuine progress, but not yet invoiced. Symmetrically, deferred income (produits constatés d'avance) neutralises an instalment invoiced ahead of the work actually done. An English-speaking reader should note that both sit on the balance sheet, and that it is their movement across the year end, not the invoicing schedule, that drives the revenue figure. The method chosen applies to all the entity's long-term contracts and is disclosed in the notes to the accounts.
One mechanism deserves particular attention, because it is the only one that reveals a loss-making engagement before delivery: the provision for a loss at completion (provision pour perte à terminaison). As soon as an overall loss becomes probable on a contract, meaning its forecast cost at completion exceeds the price left to invoice, article 622-6 of the PCG requires the whole expected loss to be provisioned, not merely the portion of the current year, whether the firm uses completion or percentage of completion. That is what catches a fixed price drifting before it eats the margin of the healthy contracts.
The underestimated risk is not tax, it is banking: recognition on completion gives a saw-tooth result, hostage to the delivery date of two or three contracts, and the banker reads volatility.
For a supply of services, VAT is due on collection by default, and exigibility on the debits exists only by option (French tax code, CGI article 269-2-c). An engineering firm therefore remits the tax only once it has been paid, unless it has expressly opted for the debits, in which case the tax becomes due on invoicing.
This combines with percentage-of-completion recognition in a way many files miss: accrued income is not an invoice. The revenue earned booked as FAE at the year end is accounting revenue, but it has not yet been invoiced, so it makes no VAT due, even under the debits regime. VAT follows the invoice and the payment, not the accounting progress. Confusing the two leads either to remitting a tax that is not due, or to forgetting one that is.
The collection-versus-debits arbitrage is concrete for a BET whose clients, often public bodies, pay at 60 or 90 days. Staying on collection protects cash: the tax is remitted only once the client has paid. Opting for the debits simplifies the follow-up and lets a B2B client deduct on receipt of the invoice, but advances the VAT before collection. In every case, a deposit collected makes the VAT due immediately, even on the debits.
The e-invoicing reform now weighs on that choice. From 1 September 2026, a BET still on collection will have to report its payment data (e-reporting), which makes that regime heavier for high invoice volumes. We size the cash effect against the simplicity before any option is filed.
The Syntec index is published monthly by the Fédération Syntec, the French federation of engineering, digital and consulting firms. Contrary to a widespread belief, it is not published by INSEE, the national statistics institute: confusing the two produces clauses that cannot be applied.
It measures the cost of essentially intellectual labour, which makes it the natural index of an engineering contract, used contractually for price revision. The usual formula is P1 = P0 x (S1 / S0), S0 being the reference index at signature and S1 the index of the revision month. A linking coefficient exists for contracts signed before August 2022: check the index base before calculating.
A BET signs a multi-year study in year N on a given engineer cost, and delivers in year N+2 with salaries that have risen meanwhile. Without a revision clause, wage inflation comes out of its margin. In the files we take over: no clause, a clause never applied for lack of follow-up, or a clause drafted on an index that does not exist. Price revision is a margin item: calculate it, invoice it, monitor it.
The crédit d'impôt recherche (CIR) is the French research tax credit, offset against corporate income tax. For a BET it is both an opportunity and a trap: the activity produces technical knowledge, but the service sold to the client is not, in itself, research. What qualifies is the removal of a scientific or technical obstacle, not the application, however skilled, of known methods to a client project. Separating the two in the recorded time is the only way to make the base defensible. Beside it, the crédit d'impôt innovation (CII) covers prototypes and pilots of new products.
The parameters as at 1 January 2026 (French tax code, CGI article 244 quater B):
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| CIR rate | 30% up to €100 million of research expenditure, 5% above (50% in the overseas departments) |
| Flat-rate operating expenses | 75% of depreciation charges + 40% of staff costs |
| CII rate (mainland France) | 20%, base capped at €400,000 a year, so €80,000 of credit at most |
| Filing | Form 2069-A-SD, attached to the liasse fiscale, the annual French tax return package |
Two changes must be built into the calculation, or the credit is overstated. The flat rate on staff costs fell from 43% to 40% for expenditure incurred since 15 February 2025. Several items have also left the base: patent filing, maintenance and defence costs, technology watch (previously capped at €60,000), and the doubling of the base for young doctorate holders. The Finance Act for 2026 maintained the scheme, without reforming the rates.
One confusion deserves to be denied without hedging, because it circulates as far as investor business plans: there is no enhanced CIR rate attached to JEI status. The only enhanced rates are geographic; for the CII they concern the overseas departments (60%) and Corsica (35% or 40%). A consultancy that builds its cash forecast on a "JEI-boosted" credit will discover the gap when the refund arrives.
Size it up with our CIR and JEI simulator, then secure the base and the documentation with our innovation funding assignment.
A BET has a feature that sets it apart from a laboratory or a software publisher: on the same day, its engineers work on billable client assignments and, sometimes, on removing a technical obstacle. Both come out of the same minds, the same offices and the same time sheets. That porosity is exactly what makes the base fragile when it is not traced.
The border between the assignment and the research. A fixed-price study, however technically demanding, remains the application of known methods to a particular case: difficulty alone does not make it eligible. What is eligible is the work carried out to remove a scientific or technical uncertainty that the state of the art does not allow you to resolve, in the sense of the Frascati Manual, the OECD reference the tax authority relies on to assess this kind of obstacle. A consultancy that declares a percentage of its engineering revenue, without having isolated the corresponding hours, is presenting a base it will not be able to defend.
Hours, not invoices. The base is built from staff costs allocated to research, increased by the functioning lump sum (75% of depreciation charges and 40% of staff costs). The starting point is therefore a record of time by engineer, by project and by type of task, kept continuously. Reconstructing hours from memory at the year end, a few weeks before the tax return is filed, is the scenario that ends badly.
A base that has changed. Three items have left the base: the cost of filing, maintaining and defending patents, technology-watch spending, and the doubling of the base that young doctorate holders used to attract. The functioning lump sum also fell from 43% to 40% of staff costs for expenditure incurred from 15 February 2025. A file rolled forward from one year to the next, without picking up these changes, overstates the credit and manufactures its own reassessment. The credit is declared on form 2069-A-SD, filed with the tax return.
The jeune entreprise innovante (JEI) is the French young innovative company status (CGI, article 44 sexies-0 A). It is within reach of many consultancies, provided you reason on the current regime, not the one still described online.
The expenditure condition is now a minimum of 20% of the year's tax-deductible expenses devoted to research. The former threshold of 15% applies only to financial years ended before 1 March 2025. Between 5% and 20% of research and development expenditure, the company falls under the jeune entreprise de croissance (JEC) status, which adds a condition on economic performance indicators. Other conditions: under eight years old (created since 1 January 2023), a European-sense SME (fewer than 250 employees, turnover below €50 million or balance sheet below €43 million), capital at least half held by individuals, no creation by concentration or restructuring.
The benefit has changed nature. The exemption from corporate income tax is abolished for JEI companies created on or after 1 January 2024. What survives, and matters for a BET whose engineer salaries make up most of its costs, is the exemption from employer social security contributions (social insurance and family allowances) on staff assigned to research, within a double cap: 4.5 times the minimum wage per employee (€8,401.58 per month) and 5 times the annual social security ceiling per establishment (€240,300 a year, for a 2026 ceiling of €48,060). This social exemption, like the local business-tax and property-tax exemptions granted by local authorities, stays open to companies created before 31 December 2028: the Finance Act for 2026 extended the creation window to that date. A consultancy incorporated in 2026 is therefore still eligible, contrary to a widespread claim that closed the window at the end of 2025.
The research tax credit and JEI status can be combined: one works on tax, the other on payroll. Documented properly, the combination changes the cash trajectory of a young consultancy.
Most BETs fall under the Syntec collective agreement (IDCC 1486), and their engineers are often on a forfait annuel en jours, an annual fixed number of working days rather than counted hours. The point specific to a BET: the fixed-day contract removes the need to count hours, not the need to track time spent per project. Two different objects: one from employment law, the other from article 622-5 of the PCG and the credit base. The director who says "my engineers are on fixed-day contracts, so I do not track time" loses both.
The statutory accounts of an engineering consultancy say very little that is useful. Margin is won or lost project by project, on contracts whose drift nobody measures before delivery. The indicators below are the ones we put in place, and they do not exist in a standard chart of accounts.
Our fees depend on the structure (sole engineering consultant or company), the volume, and high-value work such as the research tax credit. They are set in the engagement letter, with no surprises.
| Profile | What is covered | Fees |
|---|---|---|
| Sole engineering consultant (BNC) | Bookkeeping, 2035 return, VAT, day-to-day advice | from €258 excl. VAT/month |
| Engineering firm (small company) | Bookkeeping, VAT, closings with completion, financial statements and tax return, light payroll | from €350 excl. VAT/month |
| Growing engineering firm | Monthly closings, project margin, Syntec payroll, dashboard | on quotation |
| CIR and JEI eligibility review | Project review, post-2025 Finance Act scope, documentation plan | on quotation |
A costed quotation is sent within 24 working hours after a first conversation.
Our conviction. In an engineering firm, everything hinges on a single discipline: posting time to each engagement. It is what allows percentage-of-completion recognition under French GAAP, what builds a defensible research tax credit base, what makes margin readable project by project. One and the same slackening brings down all three. Our job is not to keep accurate books once a year, it is to install, from the order letter onward, the setup that turns your accounts into a decision tool rather than a late statement of fact.
The firm is led by Samuel Hayot, Expert-Comptable et Commissaire aux comptes (chartered accountant and statutory auditor), registered with the Ordre des experts-comptables of Île-de-France and with the CNCC. Cabinet Hayot Expertise, 58 rue de Monceau, 75008 Paris. A solo firm, no staff: the person you talk to is the person who handles your file.
In concrete terms: project-level cost accounting and time tracking, revenue recognised as contracts progress with the documentation required by article 622-5, TEC and FAE at the year end, a secured CIR and CII base, JEI conditions and the employer contributions exemption, price revision through the Syntec index, plus bookkeeping, tax and payroll.
A first conversation is enough to say, on your documents, whether your open contracts are recognised correctly and whether your time tracking satisfies both the PCG and the tax credit.
Updated 16 July 2026. Informational content reviewed by a chartered accountant registered with the Ordre des experts-comptables of Île-de-France.
Hours booked to an engagement / hours paid
tracked monthly, trending upward
(Contract revenue - costs at completion re-estimated) / contract revenue
re-estimated at every monthly review, no unexplained drift
Hours incurred / hours budgeted, compared with the percentage invoiced
gap explained contract by contract, earliest warning signal
(Work in progress + accrued income) / revenue for the year
monitored during the year, never discovered at the year end
Hours spent lifting a technical barrier / total hours recorded
traceable per engagement and documented, separate from sold services
Contracts revised / contracts carrying a revision clause
reviewed at each contractual revision date
The French engineering and BET sector counts around 6,500 firms generating roughly €18 bn in turnover. 80% are SMEs with fewer than 50 staff. Most BETs work in construction (structural, MEP, electrical) and infrastructure. The Syntec collective agreement (IDCC 1486) covers the entire sector and imposes specific HR constraints (salary grids, forfait-jours, healthcare and provident schemes).
At every monthly close, identify the work performed but not yet invoiced and book it as FAE (revenue earned but not invoiced). Provision losses-on-completion as soon as an overrun is detected. This rigour delivers a faithful result and prevents VAT surprises.
As soon as an engineer works on an innovative project (new method, proprietary software, applied research), open an analytical R&D code and start timesheets. The CIR is filed with the annual tax return, but the supporting evidence is built throughout the year.
Include a Syntec-indexed price-revision clause in every contract longer than 12 months. Calculate and invoice the revision at each anniversary. In 2024-2025, the index moved 4-6% per year — material amounts on large mandates.
Draft a company agreement (or rely on the Syntec CBA), schedule annual reviews, document any overruns. Without compliance, you expose the BET to costly tribunal disputes (overtime back-claims over three years).
Retention amounts (5% of the contract) are not revenue until released. Track them per contract in a dedicated third-party account. Systematically chase the client at the end of the 12-month period to recover the funds.
Calculate the realised hourly rate (net fees / actual hours) and the subcontracting ratio for every project in progress. Monthly monitoring catches drift before it consumes the project's entire margin.
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Samuel Hayot is a French chartered accountant and statutory auditor registered with the Paris professional bodies.
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Yes, provided the outcome at completion can be estimated reliably. Article 622-5 of French GAAP (ANC regulation 2014-03) sets three tests: total contract revenue must be clearly identifiable, total costs attributable to the contract must be clearly identifiable, and the firm must have management tools, cost accounting and internal control able to validate the percentage of completion. Without timesheets booked to each engagement, the third test fails. Article 622-4 then applies: revenue is capped at the costs incurred, so the margin on every contract open at the year end is squeezed to zero.
They are not interchangeable. Work in progress values, at production cost, output already produced but not yet recognised as revenue. Accrued income records revenue earned, matching evidenced completion, that has not yet been invoiced to the client: it is revenue. Symmetrically, a deposit collected ahead of production is neutralised as deferred income. A recurring error in the files we take over: work in progress valued at selling price instead of production cost, which books a margin that has not yet been earned.
No. The Syntec index is published monthly by the Syntec Federation, not by INSEE. The confusion is common and costly: a revision clause indexed on a non-existent INSEE index cannot be applied, and we regularly have to redraft such clauses. The index measures the change in labour cost for essentially intellectual services, which makes it the natural index for an engineering contract. The usual revision formula is P1 = P0 x (S1 / S0), S0 being the reference index at signature and S1 the index of the revision month. A linking coefficient exists for contracts signed before August 2022.
No. The CIR does not cover the engineering you invoice to the client, however sophisticated: it covers the lifting of a scientific or technical barrier. Applying known methods to a client project, even a demanding one, is not enough. The only way to make the base defensible is to separate, inside the timesheets, hours of sold services from hours of research. The rate is 30% on research expenditure up to 100 M euros and 5% above, and the flat-rate overhead allowance is 75% of depreciation plus 40% of staff costs. The claim is filed on form 2069-A-SD with the tax return.
No. There is no enhanced CIR rate attached to innovative young company (JEI) status, and this misconception circulates as far as business plans. The only enhanced rates are geographical: 50% for research expenditure incurred in the French overseas departments. For the innovation tax credit, the rate is 20% in mainland France, on a base capped at €400,000 per year, so €80,000 of credit at most, with enhanced rates reserved for the overseas departments (60%) and Corsica (35% or 40%). The CIR and JEI status do combine, but each under its own rules.
Research expenditure must represent at least 20% of the tax-deductible expenses of the year. The former 15% threshold only applies to years ended before 1 March 2025. Between 5% and 20%, the company falls under the growing young company regime, subject to economic performance indicators. The benefit has changed too: the corporate income tax exemption is abolished for JEI created on or after 1 January 2024. What remains is the exemption from employer social security contributions on research staff, capped at 4.5 times the minimum wage per employee and 5 social security ceilings per establishment.
Yes. The annual day-count arrangement, widespread among engineers under the Syntec collective agreement (IDCC 1486), removes the obligation to count hours under employment law. It does not remove the need to track time spent per engagement, which belongs to an entirely different body of rules: article 622-5 of French GAAP, which requires a tool validating the percentage of completion, and the research tax credit base, which requires hours booked to a project. Answering that engineers are on a day-count contract, so time is not tracked, forfeits both.
No. The overall margin of an engineering firm is an average: it hides the contracts that are drifting and reveals them only on delivery, when it is too late to renegotiate. What can actually be steered is the cost completion rate (hours incurred against hours budgeted) compared with the revenue completion rate, the margin at completion re-estimated at each monthly review, and the utilisation rate, that is hours booked to an engagement against hours paid. The latter silently absorbs profitability. In practice, the gap between cost completion and revenue completion is the earliest warning signal.
On collection by default. For a supply of services, VAT is due when deposits or the price are collected, exigibility on the debits existing only by option (French tax code, CGI article 269-2-c). A point often missed in engineering firms: accrued income booked at the year end is accounting revenue, but it has not been invoiced, so it makes no VAT due, even if you have opted for the debits. VAT follows the invoice and the payment, not the accounting progress. A deposit collected, by contrast, makes the tax due immediately, even on the debits.
Through a provision for a loss at completion. As soon as an overall loss becomes probable on a contract, meaning its forecast cost at completion exceeds the price left to invoice, article 622-6 of French GAAP requires the whole expected loss to be provisioned, not merely the portion of the current year, whether you use completion or percentage of completion. It is the only mechanism that catches a fixed price drifting before delivery, while there is still time to act. An engagement left without a provision inflates one year's result on a loss already incurred.
Yes. The Finance Act for 2026 extended the creation window to 31 December 2028 for the employer social contributions exemption and for the local business-tax and property-tax exemptions. Contrary to a widespread claim that closed the window at the end of 2025, an engineering firm created in 2026 remains eligible, provided it devotes at least 20% of its tax-deductible expenses to research and meets the other conditions (under eight years old, independent SME). Only the corporate income tax exemption has gone, and only for companies incorporated on or after 1 January 2024.
It depends on the structure and the assignments. For a sole engineering consultant taxed as a BNC, bookkeeping, the 2035 return and VAT start at around €258 excluding VAT per month. For an engineering company, closings with completion, the financial statements and the tax return sit from €350 excluding VAT per month. A growing firm, with project cost accounting and Syntec payroll, and a CIR or JEI eligibility review, are quoted individually. Fees are set in the engagement letter and a costed quotation is sent within 24 working hours.
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