UBL (Universal Business Language)

Disclaimer

All screenshots in the article were taken in the Dutch version of Yuki.

UBL is used to exchange invoices between companies in a structured way. UBL invoices are delivered from the source in a uniform (XML) format, allowing Yuki to process them automatically and accurately in the administration.

As a user, you don't need to do anything extra to process UBL invoices. Yuki recognizes the UBL invoice and ensures that the UBL and the (embedded) PDF are processed together, avoiding duplicate invoices.

This prevents errors and increases insight into the financial administration.

Using IDR+ technology, Yuki can even easily split the invoice amounts of UBL invoices into multiple lines without manual intervention, allowing them to be posted to multiple GL accounts.

In Yuki, you can both receive and send UBL invoices that comply with the internationally agreed-upon standard.

Create and send UBL invoices

Yuki can create a sales invoice with an UBL invoice as attachment and export/send it so customers of Yuki users are able to read it automatically in their accounting software so manual entry is not necessary. This is also used by factoring companies in order to take over invoices of Yuki customers.

Receive UBL invoices

Instead of scanning a purchase invoice and recognise it in Yuki in order to retrieve the invoice data it is also easier for Yuki to receive the data in UBL.

The UBL invoices can, depending on the type, be submitted in the following ways:

• UBL invoices with an embedded PDF
  (The embedded PDF will be extracted and made visible as document in Yuki)
  
  
  • via e-mail (by yourself or suppliers) to the email address of your administration(s)
  • upload
  • via Dropbox
  • via e-mail to ubl@yukiworks.nl or ubl@yukiworks.be.
    
    
• UBL invoices with UBL invoice and PDF as separate attachments
  (These will then be merged automatically to one document by Yuki when the file names are similar).
  
  
  • via e-mail (by yourself or supplier to the email address of your administration(s). 

The UBL invoices can also be retrieved automatically by Yuki:

• after registration (in portal and domain) for receiving UBL invoices. After the registration all UBL invoices will be retrieved from the relevant suppliers via InvoiceSharing.
  
  
• after registration (in portal or domain) with Peppol for receiving e-invoices. After registration all e-invoices will be retrieved from the relevant suppliers.
  
  
• via the Sales web service.  

Below the structure of the UBL export of documents processed by Yuki is described. It concerns the accounting purchase and sales invoice.

 For discussion and other info about the UBL invoice see the UBL Community.

Structure of UBL message (invoice)

The UBL structure is very extensive and can contain a lot of logistic data. Yuki uses a very limited set that is relevant for keeping the accounting records. In time this set might as well be extended when there are relevant functional applications available. 

For a detailed description of the restricted set used by Yuki, see article UBL invoice.

Below you see the Top Level structure of the UBL message. Here you mainly see the sections (CAC) within an invoice.

CBC means CommonBasicComponents (so lowest level, the elements) and CAC means CommonAggregateComponents (so sections).

<Invoice xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"

    <cbc:UBLVersionID>2.0</cbc:UBLVersionID>

    <cbc:ID>2015012</cbc:ID>

    <cbc:IssueDate>2015-01-10</cbc:IssueDate>

    <cbc:InvoiceTypeCode>380</cbc:InvoiceTypeCode>

    <cbc:DocumentCurrencyCode>EUR</cbc:DocumentCurrencyCode>

    <cac:AccountingSupplierParty>

    <cac:AccountingCustomerParty>

    <cac:PaymentMeans>

    <cac:TaxTotal>

   <cac:LegalMonetaryTotal>

    <cac:InvoiceLine>

</Invoice>