Introducing UBL XML format

Owned by Nick Patrikeos
Dec 20, 2022
2 min read

What is UBL ?

Defined by OASIS Open, UBL, the Universal Business Language, defines a royalty-free library of standard XML business documents supporting digitization of the commercial and logistical processes for domestic and international supply chains such as procurement, purchasing, transport, logistics, intermodal freight management, and other supply chain management functions. UBL has also become foundational to a number of efforts in the transport and logistics domain, including the European Common Framework (European Commission), DTTN (Port of Hong Kong), TradeNet (Port of Singapore), Electronic Freight Management (US), and Freightgate (globally). In 2014 the European Commission declared UBL 2.1 was officially eligible for referencing in tenders from public administrations (one of the first non-European standards to be so recognized).

In this document, we are only interested in describing the UBL XML standard and in particular the representation of electronic invoices in the Australian context. Such electronic invoices have these characteristics:

  • Each core element of an e-invoice is part of the EN16931 semantic data model, established as a European Standard. EN16931 includes only the essential information that an e-invoice needs to ensure legal compliance.

  • The syntax of the UBL document must be compliant with the UBL schema

  • Each country can “customise“ the standard according to its own requirements.

More information about UBL XML can be found here https://www.xml.com/articles/2017/01/01/what-is-ubl/

Example of a UBL Invoice

The figure below is a subsection of UBL invoice where each number on image represents:

  1. Invoice type code 380 indicates it is an invoice.

  2. Charge amount is negative to correct the original invoice.

  3. All document level (LegalMonetaryTotal) amounts are negative.

  4. Start of invoice line 1.

  5. Price amount must always be positive and is not changed.

  6. Start of invoice line 2.

Australia/NZ UBL Specifications

This course will use the specific requirements for Austraia and New Zealand. Material related to the specs can be found in https://github.com/A-NZ-PEPPOL/A-NZ-PEPPOL-BIS-3.0.

For example, samples can be accessed from this folder https://github.com/A-NZ-PEPPOL/A-NZ-PEPPOL-BIS-3.0/tree/master/Message%20examples