Re: [ubl-dev] UBL for storing accounting data

["G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com>]

At 2009-03-04 22:19 +0000, Martin Kleppmann wrote:
>Just joined the list :-)

Welcome!

>I am developing an open source library in Ruby for dealing with
>invoicing and payments[1], focussing particularly on small, web-based
>businesses.

Kewl!

Were you aware there is a quiescent UBL subcommittee called the 
UBL-SBSC ... UBL Small Business Subcommittee:

   http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=ubl-sbsc

The committee is quiescent because of a lack of people resources to 
help specify a subset of UBL that might be considered "suitable" to 
small business users not already participating in a community's customization.

 From 2008-04-30 UBL TC meeting 
<http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl/200805/msg00000.html>http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl/200805/msg00000.html: 


   AGREED to suspend operation of the SBSC for the time
   being. It may be revived if interest increases.

Plus, there weren't tools then that there are now to help specify 
customizations of UBL.

>In developing this library, the question arose of how to
>integrate that data with accounting systems (e.g. use cases like: if
>somebody buys the product on my website, and they pay by card and are
>automatically issued with an invoice, how do those invoices and
>payment records get into the software which I use for bookkeeping).

Sounds straightforward to me (but, then, I'm one of the geeks on the 
UBL committee, not one of the business experts).

I bet the UBL transportation subcommittee would want to get in on 
such a specification by adding a couple of basic transportation documents:

   http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=ubl-tsc

The last time the SBSC was active we were talking with the TSC about 
creating a joint scenario incorporating documents from both the 
procurement subcommittee (PSC) and TSC.

>Therefore I think that the world needs an open standard for
>representing and interchanging accounting data. I would like to call
>it OAccounts (O for open) and I have written up a vague
>introduction[2]. And I have no interest in re-inventing the wheel,
>which brings me to UBL.

Sounds great!

It looks to me like you would specify a "generic" small business 
customization of UBL with only that subset of constructs the 
OAccounts community would deem useful.

>I think it would be possible to store most of the information which an
>accounting system requires in UBL documents of five types: Statement,
>Invoice, CreditNote, SelfBilledInvoice and SelfBilledCreditNote. (If
>you wanted to include stockkeeping, you could probably use the
>Catalogue stuff too, but I'm not using that at the moment.)

You could choose to have different profiles of UBL models in 
OAccounts ... each profile defining the documents to use for 
identified business processes.  It is possible to create different 
customizations of the same document for use in different business processes.

Rather than focus first on the documents, I suggest you first 
identify the business processes you want to support, and then decide 
for each business process which documents participate, and then 
decide for each document in each process which information entities 
participate.

>They may
>need a few minor extension, but I think that a lot of it could be
>vanilla UBL documents.

You may be surprised ... many people going into UBL thinking they 
need extensions eventually find what they need with the standard 
common library.

>I am planning to sketch out my ideas for a specification, and start
>work on a simple reference implementation, over the next few weeks.

What may help you for this are free hyperlinked HTML reports of the 
various document models of UBL, with both an aggregate report of all 
document models as well as individual reports incorporating only that 
subset of the common library used by the document type:

   http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/resources/ubl/index.htm#ubl2modelreport

>But those are just my ideas. What I would love to hear from you is:
>
>* Is there already some open standard for accounting data which I have
>missed?

Not that I'm aware of, but I'll let the business experts in the UBL 
community comment on that.

>* What is your reaction to using UBL in such a way? Abusing/bending
>the standard, or sensible application?

Absolutely sensible and, in fact, already started but in hiatus.

>* Do you think OASIS should be involved in this? I could imagine first
>trying out a few approaches in an informal setting outside OASIS, and
>when we've learnt what works and what doesn't, bring it back inside
>and standardise it properly (as a separate standard based on UBL?).
>But I'm new to OASIS so I don't know your usual way of doing things.

Can you join OASIS as an individual member, co-chair the SBSC 
committee and through the OASIS open process define an SBSC that 
would then be adopted as the definition for OAccounts?

I would continue to co-chair by working with the actual artefacts 
created by the SBSC based on the work you shepherd.  What the SBSC 
has been missing is the business subject matter expertise to direct 
the creation of the artefacts ... not the creation of the artefacts themselves.

>* Can you contribute? There are many ways you could help, from
>proofreading/commenting and helping spread the word to actively
>contributing by writing.

By you taking this under the auspices of the SBSC you would have the 
resources of the committee membership commenting on drafts you 
create.  And the community has ways of contributing comments to 
drafts.  And it would all be done under the open rules of OASIS.

I hope you'll consider this, and I also hope your initiative has 
caught the interest of others in UBL-Dev who might want to join the 
UBL TC and SBSC in order to participate.

Thanks, Martin!

. . . . . . . . . . . . Ken

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