Universal Business Language

Current

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/

UBL 2.2 Public Review - http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/UBL-2.2.html

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

The following supported processes and document types are defined in UBL 2.1. UBL 2.1 is completely backward-compatible with UBL 2.0 (that is, all schema-valid instances of UBL 2.0 are also schema-valid instances of UBL 2.1).

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)

eTendering, 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 proposed to be added for UBL 2.2 (2017)

Weight Statement, Business Directory, eTendering

Document types originally defined in UBL 1.0 (2004)

Order, Order Response, Order Response Simple, Order Change, Order Cancellation, Despatch Advice [Advance 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 eTendering: 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 proposed for UBL 2.2 (2017) - http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/UBL-2.2.html

Added document types for eTendering: 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

UBL 2.1 as ISO/IEC 19845:2015 - http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/

The OASIS UBL 2.1 specification has been approved as ISO/IEC 19845 as of 2015-12-15:

UBL 2.2 public review - http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/UBL-2.2.html

The first public review of UBL 2.2 was announced to begin February 1, 2017 and end March 17, 2017, with a target final publication of December 2017.

UBL 2.3 requirements gathering - per governance rules at http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/UBL-Governance/v1.0/cn01/UBL-Governance-v1.0-cn01.html

The UBL Technical Committee agreed to begin accepting new suggestions for consideration in a future UBL 2.3, with a target final publication of December 2019.

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 the 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, Sweden, Norway, Finland, UK and Iceland 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 use of UBL 2.0 as applied to specific business processes. 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, ePrior, 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, the Pan-European Public Procurement Online project now maintained by OpenPEPPOL, adopts the work products of CEN/TC434 and 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 support Directive 2014/55/EU on electronic invoicing in public procurement in Europe.

On March 3, 2017 this 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 - UBLTR

The UBL Turkish Localization Subcommittee customized the UBL 2.0 to be used in eInvoice process in Turkey.

Czech UBL Customization - ISDOC

The SPIS consortium (currently named ICT unie) created an UBL 2.0 customization ISDOC to be used for e-Invoicing in the Czech Republic. The recently released ISDOC 6 supports e-Requests too.

Australian UBL Customization - DBC

The Australian Digital Business Council has published a national standard for e-invoicing that includes the use of a UBL customization. It is anticipated to save Australian business AU$7-10B per year.

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

SFTI, the joint project of the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SKL), Financial Management Authority (ESV) and the government contracting authority specified Svefaktura, 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.

Simplerinvoicing is a community of e-invoicing, ERP and accounting software providers making e-invoicing in UBL available for everyone. It includes access to the PEPPOL network for secure and reliable transfer.

In response to the European 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.

National adoptions

Corporate support of UBL

Textile Clothing and Footwear industry - eBiz-TCF

Products supporting UBL

Tools for working with UBL documents and models

UBL Vocabulary Development

The OASIS UBL Naming and Design Rules Version 3.0 documents how the UBL Technical Committee applies the OASIS Business Document Naming and Design Rules Version 1.0 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.