NAF code of an accounting firm: 69.20Z, then 69.20Y in 2027

What is the NAF code for an accounting firm?#

The NAF code of an accounting firm is 69.20Z, "Activités comptables" (accounting activities). It is also written 6920Z, without the dot. On January 1, 2027, it becomes 69.20Y.

The NAF (the French classification of economic activities) is the Insee grid that sorts economic activities. The APE code (main activity exercised) is the code from that grid that Insee assigns to a business. NAF code and APE code are therefore the same five-character code: four digits and a letter.

This code classifies an activity, not a diploma. A firm gets 69.20Z because accounting is its main activity, not because its manager holds the title of expert-comptable (France's regulated chartered-accountant profession).

Our data confirms it: of the code's 42,094 active locations, nearly 2 in 3 are linked to a firm in the directory of the Ordre des experts-comptables (France's professional body of chartered accountants), called "the Order" below (details further down).

What 69.20Z covers, and what belongs under another code#

69.20Z belongs to division 69, "Legal and accounting activities". It shares this division with legal activities, but it forms a group of its own, 69.2.

According to the Insee entry for 69.20Z, the code covers:

• recording businesses' commercial transactions;

• preparing or auditing financial accounts;

• examining accounts and certifying their accuracy;

• tax returns for individuals and businesses;

• advising and representing clients before the tax authorities, excluding legal representation.

The entry adds the activity of approved management centers (centres de gestion agréés). The products tied to the code go beyond the balance sheet: financial audit, bookkeeping, payroll records, tax advice for businesses.

Three nearby activities stay outside 69.20Z. Each has its own code:

• 63.11Z for data processing and tabulation. A provider that enters data in bulk, without keeping accounts, falls under this code.

• 70.22Z for management consulting on accounting systems and budgetary control. A consultant who designs a budget dashboard is not classified as an accounting firm.

• 82.91Z for invoice collection. Chasing a client's unpaid bills is not accounting in the NAF sense.

These boundaries matter when a firm has several lines of work. Insee records the main activity. A firm that mostly does management consulting can therefore carry 70.22Z, even if it also keeps accounts.

This is rare among firms registered with the Order. Of the 24,948 firms in its directory that we linked to an active location in the Sirene directory, 24,499 (98%) have a location under 69.20Z. The other 449 mostly carry 70.22Z (172), 69.10Z for legal activities (81), 66.30Z for fund management (38) or 64.20Z for holding companies (36).

What changes on January 1, 2027: 69.20Z becomes 69.20Y#

The NAF is changing version. According to Insee, "starting January 1, 2027, NAF 2025 will be the new reference classification for assigning APE codes". The new code is recalculated automatically.

For an accounting firm, the switch is simple.

The correspondence table published by Insee sends everything in 69.20Z to a single code, 69.20Y. It labels this link "Unique": no activity of 69.20Z goes to another code. The firm changes how its code is written, not how it is classified.

The directory confirms it almost everywhere. As of September 24, 2026, Insee has already entered 69.20Y as the 2027 code for 41,951 of the 42,094 active locations under 69.20Z. For 143 of them, it proposes another code, mostly 82.10Y for office administrative support activities (54) and 70.20Y for management consulting (43). Conversely, 157 locations classified elsewhere today will receive 69.20Y, mostly from legal activities (69.10Z, 40). The crosswalk itself sends no other code to 69.20Y: these gaps are location-by-location corrections. In all, 42,108 locations carry 69.20Y for 2027.

The title gets longer: 69.20Y is called "Accounting, bookkeeping and auditing activities; tax consulting". Its entry cites two activities that the 69.20Z entry did not name: invoicing services and the calculation of duties and taxes. It no longer mentions approved management centers.

These are two entries worded differently, not a change of scope. The crosswalk remains the reference: all of 69.20Z goes to 69.20Y.

Neighboring codes follow the same move. Management consulting goes from 70.22Z to 70.20Y, collection from 82.91Z to 82.91Y. The 69.20Y entry adds a cross-reference for accounting software: publishing it falls under 58.29Y, programming it under 62.10Y.

The correspondence table can be downloaded from the Insee page Vers une nouvelle nomenclature : la NAF 2025. There you can find the future code of any activity, not just accounting. Our guide to what changes for all NAF codes in 2027 covers the other trades.

Where to read your firm's APE code, and the 2027 one#

The APE code appears on the Sirene directory registration notice (avis de situation) (Insee's register of businesses). The notice is free and downloadable online. It is the document that describes the business.

The code exists at two levels.

The company has its own code, tied to its SIREN number (the French company ID, nine digits). Each location also has its own, tied to its SIRET number (the French ID of a business location, fourteen digits). A firm with several offices can therefore have one code per location.

For the 2027 code, Insee planned an intermediate step. In 2026, NAF 2025 first enters the statistical directories. The sirene.gouv.fr site shows each business its future code and lets it request a correction.

A code you think is wrong can therefore be challenged before the switch. According to sirene.gouv.fr, a request made online with a ProConnect account, the professionals' login on public websites, is processed within 24 hours. If your current code itself does not match your activity, Insee also lets you request a review. In 2026, 69.20Z is still the one that applies to your administrative procedures. For an accounting firm, the expected gap is almost zero: 69.20Z should give 69.20Y, but 143 locations under the code received another code; check yours.

If you are looking for another company's code, the guide to NAF and APE codes shows how to find it in a minute.

How many active locations carry this code?#

In the Sirene directory of September 24, 2026, 42,094 active locations carry code 69.20Z. They belong to 34,120 companies. 33,661 are headquarters, 8,433 are secondary offices, or 1 in 5. 41,959 are in France, including 1,542 overseas, and 135 abroad.

This figure counts registrations under the code, not accounting firms. A single firm can have several offices, and the code also gathers bookkeepers who are not registered with the Order, management associations and holding companies. We count locations here, meaning each business address; company figures published elsewhere are compared in the "What other sources say" block.

Among the locations classified under 69.20Z today, 4,912 were created in 2025 and 3,755 closed the same year: every year since 2015, creations have exceeded closures. 2025 creations are 44% higher than 2020's. A move counts as both a closure and a creation.

How many locations are firms registered with the Order?#

Nearly 2 in 3. We matched the code's 42,094 active locations against the directory of the Ordre des experts-comptables, read on November 6, 2026. 26,326 locations, or 62.5%, are linked to an entry in that directory. For another 2,337, the directory holds an entry with a similar name on the same street that we had not yet linked; Scalon rechecked 22 of them a second time and found the same firm 18 times. Applying the rate found in that recheck to these 2,337 entries gives about 28,200 locations, or 67%. To count the firms themselves, and see who holds the market, see our study on the number of accounting firms in France.

The share depends heavily on the form of the business. Out of 100 locations of SARLs (French limited liability companies), 76 are linked to a firm of the Order; out of 100 of SAS (French simplified joint-stock companies), 73. Out of 100 locations of sole proprietors, only 27: that is 8,165 locations, nearly 1 in 5 under the code.

And the other locations under the code?#

We read the websites of 156 locations under the code that are not linked to any firm of the Order, among those whose site shows their SIRET or SIREN number. 77 of them nonetheless present themselves as an accounting firm, and the recheck of the "other activity" answers found 3 more: some of the unlinked locations are therefore real firms. 11 present themselves as an accounting and management association or a management center. Among the rest, Scalon mostly found payroll providers (9), statutory auditors or audit firms (8) and consulting firms; for 21, the page read does not reveal the activity, and 10 were in fact those of another company. 22 of the 156 sites even cite a registration with the Order. For comparison: of 77 sites of locations linked to the Order, 70 present themselves as an accounting firm.

What do you find when you target code 69.20Z?#

Mostly small businesses, very unevenly spread. 30,682 of the 34,120 companies with at least one active location under 69.20Z, 9 in 10, have only one under this code. At the other end, 115 companies have 10 or more under this code; together they hold 3,012, 7% of the code's locations. The largest, the Société fiduciaire nationale d'expertise comptable (the Fiducial network), has 532.

Fewer than half of the locations employ staff: 19,002, or 45%. Of the 15,920 for which the directory gives headcount, here is how many have each size:

Paris concentrates 5,594 locations, 266 per 100,000 residents, more than four times the French average (61). Île-de-France, Corsica and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur are the three best-served regions, with more than 88 locations per 100,000 residents; Meuse is the mainland département with the fewest, at 22. The five départements with the most are Paris (5,594), Bouches-du-Rhône (1,992), Hauts-de-Seine (1,775), Rhône (1,768) and Gironde (1,244).

To reach them, the phone remains the most common channel. Of 998 locations under the code chosen at random, 73% have a public phone number, 35% a website and 32% an email address. Half of their executives are 51 or younger, and more than 1 in 5 is 60 or older.

Method#

What other sources say#

Cite this study#

Sources#