Universal Business Language (UBL) is an open library of standard electronic
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...
business documents for procurement and transportation such as
purchase order
A purchase order is a commercial document and first official offer issued by a buyer to a seller, indicating types, quantities, and agreed prices for products or services. It is used to control the purchasing of products and services from externa ...
s,
invoice
An invoice, bill or tab is a commerce, commercial document issued by a sales, seller to a buyer relating to a sale transaction and indicating the product (business), products, quantities, and agreed-upon prices for products or Service (economic ...
s,
transport logistics and
waybill
A waybill ( UIC) is a document issued by a carrier giving details and instructions relating to the shipment of a consignment of goods. Typically it will show the names of the consignor and consignee, the point of origin of the consignment, its d ...
s. UBL was developed by an
OASIS
In ecology, an oasis (; ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment'ksar''with its surrounding feeding source, the palm grove, within a relational and circulatory nomadic system.”
The location of oases has been of critical imp ...
Technical Committee with participation from a variety of industry data standards organizations. UBL is designed to plug directly into existing business, legal, auditing, and records management practices. It is designed to eliminate the
re-keying of data in existing fax- and paper-based business correspondence and provide an entry point into
electronic commerce
E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manageme ...
for small and medium-sized businesses.
UBL is owned by OASIS and is currently available to all, with no royalty fees. The UBL library of business documents is a well-developed markup language with validators, authoring software, parsers and generators. As of June 2021, the latest approved OASIS Standard is UBL Version 2.3, which includes a total of 91 business document types. All UBL minor versions are fully backwards compatible back to UBL Version 2.0.
UBL traces its origins back to the
EDI standards and other derived XML standards.
Ontologies are used to describe markup languages for business workflows. UBL is only one option to map e-business processes into an
OWL
Owls are birds from the order Strigiformes (), which includes over 200 species of mostly solitary and nocturnal birds of prey typified by an upright stance, a large, broad head, binocular vision, binaural hearing, sharp talons, and feathers a ...
description.
Downloads
Current
UBL 2.3 https://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/os-UBL-2.3/UBL-2.3.html (Published 15 June 2021)
UBL 2.2 - http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/os-UBL-2.2/UBL-2.2.html (Published 9 July 2018)
UBL 2.1 - http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/os-UBL-2.1/UBL-2.1.html
UBL 2.1 as ISO/IEC 19845:2015 - http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/
Historical
UBL 2.0 - http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/os-UBL-2.0-update/
UBL 1.0 - http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/cd-UBL-1.0/
UBL 2.1 (ISO/IEC 19845:2015) and UBL 2.2
OASIS UBL Technical Committee and ISO/IEC 19845 Maintenance Agency
The OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) Technical Committee is responsible for the creation and maintenance of the OASIS Standard and has been designated the maintenance agency for ISO/IEC 19845. The maintenance governance procedures describe how committee and non-committee members contribute to the development of the specification.
Business processes described and supported in UBL
Business process support originating with UBL 1.0 (2004)
Ordering, Fulfilment, Billing
Business process support added in UBL 2.0 (2006)
Catalogue, Quotation, Payment, Statement, Transport Services, Certificate of Origin
Business process support added in UBL 2.1 (2013)
, Vendor Managed Inventory, Intermodal Freight Management, Utility Billing, and Collaborative Planning, Forecasting, Replenishment and e-Invoice / e-Archive and e-Ledger in Turkey
Business process support added in UBL 2.2 (2018)
Weight Statement, Business Directory,
Standard document types defined by UBL
Document types originally defined in UBL 1.0 (2004)
Order, Order Response, Order Response Simple, Order Change, Order Cancellation, Despatch Advice
dvance Ship Notice Receipt Advice, Invoice
Document types added in UBL 2.0 (2006)
Added document types for sourcing: Catalogue, Catalogue Deletion, Catalogue Item Specification Update, Catalogue Pricing Update, Catalogue Request, Quotation, Request for Quotation
Added document types for fulfillment: Bill of Lading, Certificate of Origin, Forwarding Instructions, Packing List, Transportation Status, Waybill
Added document types for billing: Credit Note, Debit Note, Freight Invoice, Reminder, Self Billed Credit Note, Self Billed Invoice
Added document types for payment: Remittance Advice, Statement
Added supplementary document types: Application Response, Attached
Document
Document types added in UBL 2.1 (2013)
Added document types for : Awarded Notification, Call for Tenders, Contract Award Notice, Contract Notice, Guarantee Certificate, Tender, Tender Receipt, Tenderer Qualification, Tenderer Qualification Response, Unawarded Notification
Added document types for Collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment: Exception Criteria, Exception Notification, Forecast, Forecast Revision, Item Information Request, Prior Information Notice, Trade Item Location Profile
Added document types for Vendor Managed Inventory: Instruction for Returns, Inventory Report, Product Activity, Retail Event, Stock Availability Report
Added document types for Intermodal Freight Management: Goods Item Itinerary, Transport Execution Plan, Transport Execution Plan Request, Transport Progress Status, Transport Progress Status Request, Transport Service Description, Transport Service Description Request, Transportation Status, Transportation Status Request
Added document type for Utility billing: Utility Statement
Added supplementary document types: Document Status, Document Status Request
Document types added in UBL 2.2 (2018)
http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/UBL-2.2.html
Added document types for : Enquiry, Enquiry Response, Expression Of Interest Request, Expression Of Interest Response, Qualification Application Request, Qualification Application Response, Tender Contract, Tender Status, Tender Status Request, Tender Withdrawal, Unsubscribe From Procedure Request, Unsubscribe From Procedure Response
Added document types for transportation: Weight Statement
Added document types for business directories and agreements: Business Card, Digital Agreement, Digital Capability
Document types added in UBL 2.3 (2021)
Added document types for transportation: Common Transportation Report, Export Customs Declaration, Goods Certificate, Goods Item Passport, Import Customs Declaration, Manifest, Proof Of Reexportation, Proof Of Reexportation Reminder, Proof Of Reexportation Request, Transit Customs Declaration.
UBL 2.1 as ISO/IEC 19845:2015
The OASIS UBL 2.1 specification has been approved as ISO/IEC 19845 as of 2015-12-15:
* http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=66370
UBL 2.2
The OASIS UBL 2.2 specification has been approved as an OASIS Standard as of 2018-07-09.
UBL 2.3
OASIS UBL Version 2.3 has been approved as an OASIS Standard as of 15 June 2021.
Subsets and customizations of UBL
Danish subsets: OIOXML and OIOUBL
In December 2003 Denmark legislated the mandatory use of a customization of UBL 0.7, using the
OIOXML specification, for electronic invoicing for government procurement starting February 2005. In March 2010 Denmark legislated the mandatory use of a customization of UBL 2.0, using th
OIOUBLspecification.
In 2011 the Danish government documented savings of €500,000,000 having used UBL.
Northern European Subset - NESUBL
As part of the Northern European cooperation on e-commerce and e-procurement, representatives from
Denmark
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...
,
Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...
,
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...
,
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
,
UK and
Iceland
Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...
set up a working group for developing a Northern European subset of UBL 2.0 documents. The main focus of NES is to define the
semantic
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...
use of UBL 2.0 as applied to specific
business process
A business process, business method or business function is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks by people or equipment in which a specific sequence produces a service or product (serves a particular business goal) for a parti ...
es. To achieve this the UBL 2.0 standard is restricted on additional levels by using "profiles" that apply to defined business situations. The use of individual elements is specifically described to avoid conflicting interpretation. Additionally each country has developed guidelines that describe the application of the NESUBL subset to domestic business practices. The goal is to enable companies and institutions to implement e-commerce by agreeing to a specific profile and thus eliminate the need for bilateral implementation. Additional countries have shown interest in joining the work. The NESUBL subset was published in March 2007.
Since its publication, NESUBL subset has influenced government eProcurement initiatives across Europe, for example in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, The Netherlands, Turkey. It is also the basis for an eProcurement initiative, , by the European Commission, Directorate General's of the European Commission, starting with the Directorate General for Information Technology (DIGIT). It is also the basis of the syntax for business documents created by the CEN/BII (Business Interoperability Initiative).
European-wide deployment of UBL in PEPPOL
PEPPOL
Peppol (''Pan-European Public Procurement Online'') is a set of specifications for establishing and also the primary implementation of a federated electronic procurement system for use across different jurisdictions. Through Peppol, participa ...
adopts the work products o
CEN/TC434an
CEN/TC440that include UBL customizations and syntax serializations of different document types for European business processes. The goal of PEPPOL is to enable public procurement across borders within the EU.
It was reported that CEN/TC434 has unanimously agreed to endorse UBL as one of two syntaxes complying with the forthcoming European Norm on e-Invoicing and will be listed in a specific CEN Technical Specification.
These efforts suppor
Directive 2014/55/EUon electronic invoicing in public procurement in Europe.
On March 3, 2017 thi
summary update of recent announcementswas published, including references to Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Italy (Emilia-Romagna region), Netherlands, Norway, Sweden.
Spanish UBL version based in CCI
In Spain, UBL is being used primarily for electronic invoice encoding. The UBL Spanish Localization Committee has been actively developing UBL awareness and has created implementation guidelines to allow easy adoption of UBL based on previous work done by CCI.
UBL Turkish Customization
Th
UBL Turkish Localization Subcommitteecustomized the UBL 2.0 to be used in process in Turkey
Czech UBL Customization - ISDOC
The SPIS consortium (currently name
ICT unie created an UBL 2.0 customizatio
ISDOCto be used for e-Invoicing in the
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...
. The recently released ISDOC 6 supports e-Requests too.
Peruvian UBL Customization - SUNAT
SUNAT the national customs and tax administration for Peru, supports a customization of UBL 2.0. Plans have been announced by SUNAT to migrate to UBL 2.1
Belgian UBL Customization - e-fff
In December 2011 the Belgian government specified a customization of UBL to maximize the interoperability of the electronic invoice between Belgian actors.
Swedish UBL Customization - Svefaktura
the joint project of the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SKL), Financial Management Authority (ESV) and the government contracting authority specifie
a UBL customization.
As of November 1, 2018 it will be mandatory for Swedish electrical authorities to use PEPPOL.
Colombian UBL Customization - DIAN
DIAN the Colombian national tax and customs directorate, implements UBL 2 as the XML document format for electronic invoicing.
Norwegian UBL Customization - EHF
Difi the Norwegian agency for Public Management and eGovernment, has chosen to use CEN BII as a base for the EHF formats and the Universal Business Language (UBL) as a foundation for the implemented syntax.
Dutch UBL Customization - UBL-OHNL and Simplerinvoicing
UBL-OHNL is a Dutch government-specific customization for submitting documents via Digipoort.
Simplerinvoicingis a community of e-invoicing, ERP and accounting software providers making e-invoicing in UBL available for everyone. It includes access to th
PEPPOLnetwork for secure and reliable transfer.
In response to the Europea
Directive 2014/55/EUthe Dutch government has mandated XML Invoicing for all contracts signed after January 1, 2017 using the UBL-OHNL customization via Digipoort or the Simplerinvoicing customization via PEPPOL.
Australia and New Zealand use of UBL
As part of a national initiative to increase the proportion of businesses participating in the Australian digital economy th
Digital Business Councilendorsed an Interoperability Framework in 2016. The initial version of the framework includes a set of policies, standards and guidelines to promote the economy-wide adoption of . A subset of UBL 2.1 for the invoice and business response document was included in this initial release. The subset was initially based on a working draft of th
work under th
CEN/TC 434 - Electronic Invoicing project
In 2017 OASIS established
localisation subcommitteeto promote the harmonised use of UBL and to support the broader market adoption across Australia. The subcommittee facilitates an open dialogue for information sharing and collaboration, under the auspices of OASIS transparent governance and operating procedures.
Further guidance and support is facilitated by third parties such as
DCAF Online- a contemporary and transparent approach to businesses having visibility of the digital standards and frameworks their service providers support
are listed an
are available to support the economy-wide adoption of digital procurement.
In February 2019 "the two countries’ intention to jointly adopt the Pan-European Public Procurement Online (PEPPOL) interoperability framework for trans-Tasman e-invoicing" was announced by the Prime Ministers of New Zealand and Australia.
Italian use of UBL
The future of e-invoicing in Italy will facilitate the correct implementation of the national Technical Rules for Interoperability between e-Procurement platforms (Circolare 3 AgID) and the automation of the end-to-end procurement process, based on PEPPOL or, where a PEPPOL specification is not available, by implementing a CEN BII profile using the OASIS UBL 2.1 syntax. In the long term, likely by 2022, the objective is to migrate to a single global standard, UBL, still supporting the other mandatory syntax with translations, and phasing out the national format.
Singaporean use of UBL
Singapore has established the first PEPPOL Authority outside of Europe with the Info-communications Media Development Authority (IMDA) to help businesses in Singapore to benefit from digitalisation and better position themselves to plug into the international marketplace.
United States and Canadian use of UBL
On October 4, 2018 the Business Payments Coalition e-Invoicing Subcommittee, an open technical committee consisting of US, Canadian, and Mexican interests in electronic invoicing and facilitated by the US Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, released its first review of the semantic model of an invoice, expressed using the business objects of OASIS UBL 2.2.
National adoptions
* on February 17, 2017 Canada formally adopted UBL 2.1 as Canadian national standard CAN/CSA-ISO/IEC 19845:16 (paid content identical to free content from OASIS download web site cited above)
Corporate support of UBL
* MSC Belgium documented their adoption of UBL 2.1 for sales invoices as of March 15, 2016
* EDF France documented their adoption of UBL 2.0 for orders as of March 23, 2010
* IBM documents their support of PEPPOL UBL for e-Invoicing
Industry support of UBL
Textile Clothing and Footwear industry - eBiz-TCF
eBIZis a UBL customization available for the Textile Clothing and Footwear industry.
The e-Freight Framework
* a joint effort to create "One Common Framework for Information and Communication Systems in Transport and Logistics" from FREIGHTWISE, e‐Freight, INTEGRITY, Smart‐CM, SMARTFREIGHT, EURIDICE, RISING, DiSCwise, , COMCIS, eMAR and other projects, developing a reference model and logistics information exchange "document" that are now part of UBL 2.1 - ISO/IEC 19845
Danish Industry
* ClearView Trade offers a portal for customers to obtain export documents using UBL
Products supporting UBL
* Akretion has created open source UBL modules for open source Odoo (formerly OpenERP) and has produced
demonstration video in OGG Video format* Crane Softwrights Ltd. offers
go2UBLoffers a service of converting PDF documents into UBL documents
* the backbone document format for th
Tradeshiftplatform is UBL
UBLReadyis an online validation service for UBL documents and for certifying the readiness of organizations according to the UBL Ready configuration
xa-elegansis a web application that accepts and runs rules over UBL documents as part of th
Internet of RulesCentiga is a cloud-based accounting software that utilises UBL to offer free invoicing services. The software is integrated with the majority for Norwegian banks, which means that one can control the economy as a whole in one place.
bBilleris a real world Ethereum Blockchain DAO for Double Entry Book-keeping and accounting using the International standard OASIS UBL Universal Business Language.
Semineis a Norwegian AI platform provider that provides automated double entry accounting for business documents received in the UBL format. The platform can be integrated with any ERP solutions using their open API.
Charlie-Indiais a tech startup providing a white-label e-invoicing platform; users of the services built on the platform can exchange invoice data in the OASIS UBL format.
Tools for working with UBL documents and models
* Crane Softwrights Ltd.'
ods2obdgcan
gc2obdndrtools are used by the UBL committee
to create UBL document schemas from a spreadsheet expression of business objects described using the
UN/CEFACT Core Component Technical Specification 2.01
iSURF eDoCreator 1.0allows creation and customization of UBL document schemas.
ph-ublOpen Source Java library for reading and writing UBL 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 and UBL-TR documents. Licensed under the
Apache 2.0 License
UBL LarsenC# .NET 4.0 library for reading and writing UBL 2.0 documents.
UBL Vocabulary Development
Th
documents how the UBL Technical Committee applies th
specification for defining a business document creating XSD schemas on the basis of business objects described using the UN/CEFACT
Core Component Technical Specification 2.01.
The committee has published a reference
for one to create one's own UBL subset schema by starting from the same resources used by the committee to publish the UBL distribution.
The committee announced the first public review of the OASIS Business Document Naming and Design Rules Version 1.1 proposed OASIS Standard with new rules for creating JSON validation artefacts for JSON documents, complete with the OASIS Committee Note
of all UBL 2.1 document types as JSON schemas and all UBL 2.1 example documents as JSON documents, beginning February 1, 2017 and closing April 1, 2017.
References
{{OASIS Standards
Markup languages
XML markup languages