UBL (Universal Business Language)

UBL (Universal Business Language) is an open, royalty-free XML standard from the OASIS organization for the exchange of business documents and one of the two XML syntaxes that allow the European standard EN 16931 for e-invoices.

Origin and structure

The Technical Committee „OASIS Universal Business Language TC“ maintains the standard. The UBL 2.1 version has been an OASIS standard since November 4, 2013. For invoicing, UBL 2.1 defines the document types Invoice, Credit Note, Debit Note, and Application Response.

A UBL invoice starts with the root element ubl:Invoice. A credit note has its own root element ubl:CreditNote. Header data such as invoice number and date are directly included in the root element. The items follow as a flat list of cac:InvoiceLine elements.

Deployment

Peppol builds on UBL. Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 uses UBL as the syntax, and the XRechnung can also be created as pure UBL XML. In the four-corner model, the ERP system of the sender typically generates the document in UBL. According to the article (as of November 2025), UBL is one of the planned technical standards in France.

In the SAP Business One context

The Electronic File Manager (EFM) in SAP Business One uses an UBL mapping for the XInvoice. This mapping translates the tables for the invoice header (OINV) and positions (INV1), as well as tax codes and custom fields, into the UBL structure. Each database field is associated with a Business Term (BT) of EN 16931.

Demarcation

CII (Cross Industry Invoice) is the second syntax approved by EN 16931. UBL and CII are equivalent in content: they describe the same fields in a different XML structure. Unlike UBL, a CII invoice uses the same root element as the invoice. ZUGFeRD and Factur-X use CII instead of UBL. See also EN 16931, XRechnung and Peppol BIS Billing 3.0.

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