Guide: URSSAF After Registration — ACRE, Your Online Account, and the First Nine Months
This guide is informational. It explains how the process works and helps you prepare for a conversation with a professional, or for filing on your own. It is not legal, tax, or accounting advice.
What you'll get
- what ACRE is and why you have to apply for it separately from the guichet unique form
- when your personal account on autoentrepreneur.urssaf.fr actually opens
- why your first revenue declaration is delayed by 90 days, and what happens if you miss it
- how much you’ll actually pay: 2026 contribution rates by type of activity
- the revenue thresholds beyond which you fall out of the micro-entreprise regime
- what URSSAF’s free programme for the first nine months is good for
This guide picks up where the guide on registering via INPI left off: you already have your SIRET. What comes next plays out on URSSAF’s side, not INPI’s — with its own deadlines, its own paperwork, and its own money. None of this is covered by the guichet unique: it passed your file along, and that’s where its job ends.
ACRE: an application that isn't automatic
ACRE (Aide à la création ou reprise d’une entreprise) isn’t a separate payout — it’s a reduced rate of social contributions for your first months of activity. On URSSAF’s own diagram from the previous guide, that’s step 2, “J’effectue mes démarches Urssaf”: it comes right after filing with the guichet unique, but it’s handled separately, on URSSAF’s side, not automatically alongside registration.
You have to apply yourself, within 60 days of setting up the business. The application needs proof the business exists (your SIRET) and documents proving you qualify — the exact list depends on your situation (for example, whether you were registered as unemployed when you started). URSSAF has 30 days to respond; if it doesn’t, ACRE is granted by default.
One limit: you can’t get ACRE if you’ve already been granted it within the past three years — regardless of which business it was for.
How much you save depends on when you set up the business, and right now that’s worse than it was six months ago. Before 1 July 2026, ACRE halved your contributions — you paid 50% of the normal rate. Since 1 July 2026, that’s been cut back: ACRE now only reduces contributions by 25%, meaning you pay 75% of the normal rate. If you’re registering now, plan on the second, less generous option — the 50% rate only still applies to those who set up their business before that date.
The reduction runs until the end of the third calendar quarter following your start date — in practice, 9 to 12 months depending on which month of the quarter you started in.
Your online account: when it opens and what you need
As explained in the registration guide, getting a SIRET and getting access to URSSAF’s services are two separate events, on different timelines. Your auto-entrepreneur account only opens after a separate affiliation notice — not before, even if you already have your SIRET in hand.
Once that notice arrives, the account is created on URSSAF’s “Créer mon auto-entreprise” page — the same page that showed the five steps. Below the step cards is a separate form specifically for setting up your online account:
Besides the website, there’s also a mobile app, “AutoEntrepreneur Urssaf” — the same account, but on your phone: filing declarations and paying contributions both work through it too.
Your first declaration: why not right away
When you set up your account, you need to choose how often you’ll file — monthly or quarterly. That choice renews automatically each year.
There’s a detail that trips up a lot of newcomers: your first declaration isn’t due right away. 90 days have to pass from your start date before the first reporting period (a month or a quarter) closes and you’re required to report. Even if your revenue for that period was zero, you still have to file — just with an amount of €0. Missing that first declaration isn’t a minor technicality: it’s precisely during those first three months that certain settings, like ACRE, can still be adjusted — after that, some of those options close for the current year.
Deadlines for quarterly filing: January–March — declare by 30 April; April–June — by 31 July; July–September — by 31 October; October–December — by 31 January. For monthly filing: by the end of the month following the reporting period.
What you declare is the revenue you actually received, excluding tax (HT) — the money that actually came in during the period, not the invoices you issued. You can’t deduct expenses from that figure — the micro-entreprise regime calculates tax and contributions on revenue, not profit.
How much you'll pay: 2026 contribution rates
The rate depends on your activity:
- Selling goods — 12.3%
- Services, BIC (commercial and trade) — 21.2%
- Services, BNC (non-regulated liberal professions) — 25.6%
- CIPAV (regulated liberal professions) — 23.2%
The BNC rate isn’t unusually high by accident: since July 2024 it’s been raised in stages (it used to be 21.1%) to fund independents’ supplementary pension scheme (RCI), and 2026 marks the final step of that increase.
On top of these figures comes the professional training contribution (CFP): 0.1% for selling goods, 0.2% for services (BIC and BNC), 0.3% for tradespeople.
If you have ACRE, these rates are multiplied by 0.75 (if you registered after 1 July 2026) or by 0.5 (if your business was set up before that date), for as long as the reduction described above lasts.
Revenue thresholds: when you fall out of the regime
Micro-entreprise has an annual revenue ceiling beyond which the regime no longer applies:
- €203,100 for a commercial activity (selling goods);
- €83,600 for services and liberal professions.
For a mixed activity (both selling and services), total revenue can’t exceed €203,100, of which no more than €83,600 can come from services.
What counts is revenue actually received, not invoiced — the money that actually came in. Going over the threshold in a single year changes nothing, you stay on micro-entreprise. Going over it two years running means you’re out of the regime starting the following year. If the business was set up partway through the year, the threshold is prorated: the threshold × the number of days active ÷ 365.
Separate from these thresholds, there’s a VAT threshold (franchise en base): €85,000 for trade, €37,500 for services. These are two different things — you can go over the VAT threshold and start charging VAT while still staying on micro-entreprise, as long as your total revenue is still under the regime’s ceiling.
The free "Mes Premiers Mois avec l'Urssaf" programme
URSSAF offers free, personalised support for your first nine months of activity — the programme is called “Mes Premiers Mois avec l’Urssaf” (“My First Months with URSSAF”). It includes a rundown of useful information after setting up your business, a subscription to a monthly newsletter for new business owners covering those nine months, and an introductory video on how everything works.
It’s not advice tailored to your specific situation, but a ready-made set of resources and reminders — free, and straight from the source, worth signing up for as soon as your account is open.
When to bring in an accountant
What’s covered here is enough for a standard situation — one activity, revenue well under the thresholds. It’s worth consulting an expert-comptable if: you have a mixed activity with revenue close to €83,600 or €203,100 and need to know exactly what falls under which cap; your right to ACRE isn’t clear-cut (say, you’ve already had it before, or your status when you started is borderline); you’re combining several activities at different rates and want to be sure your declaration is calculated correctly. What comes next isn’t about URSSAF anymore — it’s about whether to hand the registration itself over to a service like Indy instead of doing it yourself through the guichet unique — in the next guide.
ACRE is not the only deadline that is easy to miss. On the penalty for a forgotten declaration, automatic closure after 24 months at zero and other unwelcome surprises, see our guide to micro-entrepreneur surprises.
Rules and amounts in France change. As of publication on 8 August 2026, the information matched the official sources linked in the text. Webinkub accepts no responsibility for legislative changes, or for decisions made on the basis of this material. Before filing, check the current requirements on the official sites — and if your situation is non-standard, consult an expert-comptable or an avocat.
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