["Universal Business Language Version 2.3"](_blank)
/ref> which includes a total of 91 business document types. All UBL minor versions are fully backwards compatible back to UBL Version 2.0.
Originally tracing it origins back to the EDI standards and other derived XML standards, UBL has evolved to include a broader range of syntaxes such as JSON, thereby enhancing global harmonization and interoperability. UBL now defines a syntax-neutral information model that can be restricted or extended to meet the requirements of particular industries, sectors, and communities, thus providing interoperability between systems and vendors when used as a generic interchange format.
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 2.4 - https://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/UBL-2.4.html (Published 20 June 2024)
UBL 2.3 - https://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/UBL-2.3.html (Published 15 June 2021)
UBL 2.2 - https://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/UBL-2.2.html (Published 9 July 2018)
UBL 2.1 - https://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/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.
Document types added in UBL 2.4 (2024)
Added document types: Business Information, Purchase Receipt
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
OIOXML is a project by the Danish government to develop a number of reusable data components serializable in various formats, although currently the only method of serialization for OIOXML data is in the XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is ...
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
OIOUBL
specification.
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
Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...
, Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...
, Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...
, Finland
Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...
, UK and Iceland
Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...
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 is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...
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 performed by people or equipment in which a specific sequence produces a service or product (that serves a particular business g ...
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 Specification (technical standard), specifications for establishing and also the primary implementation of a Federation (information technology), federated E-procurement, electronic pro ...
adopts the work products o
CEN/TC434
an
CEN/TC440
that 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/EU
on electronic invoicing in public procurement in Europe.
On March 3, 2017, thi
summary update of recent announcements
was 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 Subcommittee
customized 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
ISDOC
to be used for e-Invoicing in the Czech Republic
The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...
. 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
The Norwegian Agency for Public and Financial Management (DFØ)
has chosen to use Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 and UBL for implementation of national format for invoicing. Additional specifications using UBL as syntax based upon Peppol BIS are also used in the Norwegian market.
DFØ follows the direction once set out by Norwegian Agency for Public Management and eGovernment (Difi) in using UBL and results from CEN BII (restarted as CEN TC434) as basis for national implementation of post-award document exchange.
Dutch UBL Customization - UBL-OHNL and Simplerinvoicing
UBL-OHNL is a Dutch government-specific customization for submitting documents via Digipoort.
Simplerinvoicing
is a community of e-invoicing, ERP and accounting software providers making e-invoicing in UBL available for everyone. It includes access to th
PEPPOL
network for secure and reliable transfer.
In response to the Europea
Directive 2014/55/EU
the 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 Council
endorsed 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 subcommittee
to 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 fro
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
eBIZ
is 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
go2UBL
offers a service of converting PDF documents into UBL documents
* the backbone document format for th
Tradeshift
platform is UBL
UBLReady
is an online validation service for UBL documents and for certifying the readiness of organizations according to the UBL Ready configuration
xa-elegans
is a web application that accepts and runs rules over UBL documents as part of th
Internet of Rules
Centiga
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.
bBiller
is a real world Ethereum Blockchain DAO for Double Entry Book-keeping and accounting using the International standard OASIS UBL Universal Business Language.
Semine
is 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-India
is 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.
Conta
Conta is a web-based invoicing platform that utilizes UBL to deliver cost-free invoicing services within the Australian market.
Tools for working with UBL documents and models
* Crane Softwrights Ltd.'
ods2obdgc
an
gc2obdndr
tools are used by the UBL committee
iSURF eDoCreator 1.0
allows creation and customization of UBL document schemas.
ph-ubl
Open 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 Larsen
C# .NET 4.0 library for reading and writing UBL 2.0 documents.
Kyktir
universal file viewer with an UBL viewer included.
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
A cornerstone of the UN/CEFACT standardisation activities is the Core Component Technical Specification (CCTS). Core Components are the syntax-neutral and technology-independent building blocks that can be used for data modeling. Major benefits of ...
2.01.
The committee has published a reference
References
{{OASIS Standards
Markup languages
XML markup languages