Export a FEC for your accountant

What is it for?

The FEC (Fichier des Écritures Comptables, "file of accounting entries") is a text file that lists, line by line, all the entries of a financial year. Many accounting firms' software can import it: your accountant gets your sales, purchases and payments without re-entering them. Billora generates it from the entries of the general journal: the file contains exactly the same entries as the screen, with no recalculation.

Example. Atlas Conseil exports its 2026 financial year. The file 001234567000012FEC20261231.txt has one line per entry line: invoice FA-2026-0012 of 1,200 DH incl. VAT gives three lines (debit 3421 Clients 1200,00; credit 7124 Ventes de services 1000,00; credit 4455 TVA facturée 200,00).

1. Who can export a FEC?

All roles: owner, administrator, collaborator, accountant (even read-only) and viewer. This is deliberate: the main use is for the accountant to get the file themselves. The export remains possible while an account deletion is scheduled, because it changes nothing.

In a custom permission group, the permission is called « Exporter un FEC indicatif (écritures comptables) » (resource « Exports », family « Pilotage »).

2. Open the export

1. Open Reports, section « Fiscal & conformité », then the card « Comptabilité (journal, grand livre, balance) ».
2. Click the tab « Export FEC ».

Shortcuts: the box « Besoin d'un FEC pour votre comptable ? » on the Fiscal export page (button « Export FEC (indicatif) ») and the link « Export FEC (indicatif) » in the accountant space open this tab directly. They do not appear if your subscription does not include indicative accounting.

The notice "Export indicatif au format FEC (norme française) : à faire valider par votre comptable. Ce fichier n'est pas un document officiel pour la DGI." (indicative export in FEC format, French standard, to be validated by your accountant, not an official document for the DGI) stays displayed at the top of the tab.

3. Choose the financial year, period, separator and encoding

Option	Choices	When to use it
« Exercice »	The calendar year (1 January to 31 December).	A FEC normally covers the whole financial year.
« Période »	« Année entière » (recommended), a quarter or a month.	Only for a test or a specific need. Numbering stays that of the financial year and a warning flags the partial period.
« Séparateur »	« Tabulation (recommandé) » or « Barre verticale | ».	Try the vertical bar if your accountant's software rejects the tab. These are the two separators provided for by the standard.
« Encodage »	« UTF-8 (recommandé, conserve l'arabe) » or « ISO-8859-15 (anciens logiciels) ».	Choose ISO-8859-15 only for old software: characters it cannot represent (Arabic, for example) are replaced by « ? » and counted in a warning.

Changing an option clears the previous check: run « Vérifier » again.

4. Check before downloading

Click « Vérifier ». Billora calculates the entries and shows a report without creating the file:

• the period and the time of the calculation, the file name;
• the number of « Écritures » (entries) and « Lignes » (lines), the « Total débit (MAD) » and the « Total crédit (MAD) » (always equal);
• the number of entries per journal;
• the warnings (orange) and, if any, the blocking errors (red).

Warnings (they do not block the export)

Warning	What it means
Partial period	« Un FEC couvre normalement l'exercice entier » (a FEC normally covers the whole financial year): you are exporting only part of the year.
Missing ICE	The file name uses the tax identifier (IF), otherwise « BILLORA ». Fill in the ICE in the company settings.
Suspense account	Some entries use a « compte d'attente (écarts à régulariser) » (suspense account): the source document is inconsistent, to be settled with your accountant.
Default account	Some lines are on a default account. The « Corriger » link opens the chart of accounts.
Unallocated payment, unassigned supplier credit note, total different from the lines, opening balance without a date	The same points of attention as the journal (see the general journal article).
Document without a reference	A payment entered without a reference has no document number: the entry number is used in the PieceRef column, which is mandatory in the format.
Display currency	Some documents have a display currency other than MAD: the file is entirely in MAD, with no foreign-currency amount.
Cancelled invoices	Draft or cancelled invoices are not in the file (as in the journal); an invoice cancelled by a credit note appears with its credit note.
Carried-over balances	The balances of customers, suppliers, cheques to collect and unallocated amounts are carried over from prior financial years in the AN journal (1 January entries); expenses, income, VAT and cash are not carried over.
Replaced characters	With ISO-8859-15: typographic dashes, apostrophes and quotation marks are converted to plain characters; characters with no equivalent (Arabic) are replaced by « ? » and counted. Choose UTF-8 to keep everything.
Empty label, shared auxiliary account	An empty mandatory label is replaced by the account, journal or entry number. Two third parties with different names share the same auxiliary account (same ICE on two records): give each a distinct code in the chart of accounts.

Blocking errors

Five checks prevent the file from being generated: an unbalanced entry (debit different from credit), a line without an account number, an invalid date or one outside the period, a non-continuous numbering (gap or duplicate in a journal); a negative or non-integer amount is also refused. The journal engine normally guarantees that none of these cases happens: these checks are a safety net. If one appears, the message ends with « Export bloqué. » ("export blocked") and the download button does not appear: contact support, giving the period.

5. Download the file

1. After « Vérifier », with no blocking error, tick « J'ai compris : export indicatif, à faire valider par mon comptable. » (I understand: indicative export, to be validated by my accountant). The button stays greyed out until the box is ticked.
2. Click « Télécharger le FEC ».

The file is generated on demand and never kept by Billora. Each export is recorded in the activity log (« FEC indicatif exporté ») with the period, separator, encoding and the numbers of entries and lines, but not the content. You can download at most 5 files per minute (« Vérifier » does not count toward this quota): beyond that, the message « Trop de générations de FEC en peu de temps. Réessayez dans une minute. » appears.

6. What the file contains

The first line gives the standard's 18 column names, then there is one line per entry line. Amounts have a decimal comma and no thousands separator (1234,56); dates are in YYYYMMDD format; lines end with CRLF; UTF-8 has no BOM. The file contains no comment line (it would break the import): the indicative notice stays on screen. Tabs, vertical bars and line breaks in labels (a customer name, for example) are replaced by spaces.

Column	Content
JournalCode, JournalLib	Code and label of the journal (VT, AC, BQ, CA, OD, AN; editable in the chart of accounts).
EcritureNum	Journal and 6-digit entry number (VT-000001), continuous per journal since 1 January.
EcritureDate	Date of the entry.
CompteNum, CompteLib	Number and label of the account in the chart of accounts.
CompAuxNum, CompAuxLib	Auxiliary account and name of the third party (customer or supplier); empty otherwise.
PieceRef, PieceDate	Number and date of the source document (invoice, credit note, expense, bank deposit…).
EcritureLib	Label of the line.
Debit, Credit	Amounts in MAD; 0,00 on the empty side.
EcritureLet, DateLet	Always empty: lettering (matching) does not exist yet, and wrong lettering would be worse than none.
ValidDate	Same date as EcritureDate (an issued and numbered document is frozen in Billora). To be validated with your accountant.
Montantdevise, Idevise	Always empty: all amounts are in MAD.

7. File name

The name is identifier + FEC + end date of the period + .txt, for example 001234567000012FEC20261231.txt. In France the identifier is the SIREN; Billora uses your company's ICE (15 digits), otherwise its tax identifier (IF), otherwise « BILLORA ». This transposition is not part of the standard: rename the file if your accountant's software requires it.

8. Common error messages

• « Le fichier FEC ne peut pas être généré : des contrôles bloquants ont échoué. » (the FEC file cannot be generated: blocking checks failed) — see « Erreurs bloquantes » above.
• « La période doit tenir dans une seule année civile : l'exercice comptable est l'année civile. » — choose a period within a single year.
• « Cette période contient trop d'écritures pour être affichée : choisissez une période plus courte. » — export by quarter.
• « Trop de générations de FEC en peu de temps. Réessayez dans une minute. » — wait a minute.

9. What is not covered

• The limits of the general journal apply: fixed assets, payroll, stocks, VAT returns, carry-over of expenses, income, VAT and cash from prior financial years (only third-party opening balances are carried over).
• Lettering and foreign-currency amounts are absent.
• Moroccan accounting software does not always use the FEC as a native format: ask your accountant which import format they prefer. The CSV and Excel exports of the journal remain available.

Frequently asked questions

Is the FEC mandatory in Morocco?

Billora does not claim so: the FEC is a French standard (Livre des procédures fiscales, art. A47 A-1). In Morocco, the obligation we cite is keeping documents for 10 years (art. 211 of the CGI). Ask your accountant whether they want this format.

Is it an official document for the DGI?

No. It is an indicative export, calculated from your documents with a simplified chart of accounts, to be validated by your accountant. For a tax audit, see the fiscal export.

My accountant says the file is rejected. What should I do?

Generate it again with the vertical bar « | » as separator, then with ISO-8859-15 encoding if their software is old. If it is still rejected, give them the file name and the exact message from their software: some columns (lettering, currency) are deliberately empty.

Why did the FEC of a past month change?

Because entries are not frozen: they are recalculated from your documents. Export after the period is closed.

Next steps

• View the general journal, the general ledger and the trial balance
• Customize the chart of accounts
• The accountant space