What is UBL (Universal Business Language)?

Universal Business Language (UBL) is an open standard for electronic business documents, such as e-invoices. It is designed to facilitate the exchange of structured business information between organizations in a standardized and interoperable manner and was launched in 2004. UBL provides a common framework for various types of business documents, including invoices, purchase orders, shipping notices, and more.

UBL is based on Extensible Markup Language (XML), which is a widely accepted format for structuring and encoding data. XML enables a standardized data representation in a hierarchical, structured, and machine-readable form.

The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) maintains UBL. It has gained global recognition and adoption, making it suitable for cross-border and international business transactions.

All message types in Peppol are based on UBL.