SV: [ubl-dev] UBL Credit Note vs. UBL Negative Invoice

[<plb@ebConnect.dk>]

Hi Svante

 

It was me together with Mark Leight, that worked as an consultant for Office of Government Commerce who forwarded the requirements for invoices back in 2006 where we build UBL 2.0.

I worked for the Danish National IT and Telecom Agency and was given the task to make a more international and proper implementation of the standard used in Denmark. The documents we added was based on a analyse from OGC. For the billing process we included

 

Invoice (was already there)

CreditNote

DebitNote

Selfbilled invoice

Selfbilled credit note

 

There are different busines rules applied for the different documents, and it would be a lot easier to make a accurate implementation by using the right document to start with. However it turned out that the UBL billing model were too complex for most backend system, and in some implementation preferred just to use the invoice for all purposes. During the TC434 implementation (which I was not a part of) I am quite sure that the official Danish view have been not to allow negative totals on any of these documents and instead flip the document type.

 

Having type codes on documents or a broader usage of documents vs many implementation of documents is a constant debate in UBL. We see this in the Order vs the Order Response and the Order Change and in a Catalogues process. I think the official UBL opinion is to leave it up the implementors, those who defines the subset for UBL.

 

I hope this enlightened you with some of the background for this. Otherwise you are welcome to come back to me with more questions.

 

Best regards

 

Peter L. Borresen

 

Fra: Svante Schubert <svante.schubert@gmail.com>
Sendt: 1. oktober 2020 16:35
Til: ubl-dev@lists.oasis-open.org
Emne: [ubl-dev] UBL Credit Note vs. UBL Negative Invoice

 

Dear developers,

 

I am new to the list, since decades working on ODF, but since a few years as well on EU e-procurement.

Recently I became an editor of CEN TC 434 (EU eInvoice standard) working group 1, which is focusing on the e-invoice semantics.

 

We discussed this week the usage of a UBL invoice with a negative amount, which is used in Netherland and Denmark. This negative invoice is equal to a Credit Note.

On the other hand, the CEN TC 434 decided last Wednesday not to allow a negative Credit Note (which would be similar to an invoice).

Now someone mentioned, that there might be still lines within a Credit Note with a negative amount as long the total is not negative. 

To be honest, I am getting kind of confused. ;-)

 

Although I was in the beginning surprised by the idea of using a negative invoice as a Credit Note, I do like this way as an easy implementation without additional "XML boilerplate". 

Could you provide me please with some background/references of the reason to create a set of XML for Credit Note instead of allowing negative invoices?

I might even give the likely heretical suggestion to drop the complexity of additional XML for a Credit Note in favour of using negative amount invoices to lower the complexity of the system.

 

What do you think?

Svante