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

[Stephen Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.com>]

Does XBRL-GL still live? It seemed abandoned a few years ago
when I was trying to use it with UBL. In short though

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl/200507/threads.html#00028

I was trying, back then, to use it to attach ledger info to the
respective invoice or order but I was using UBL 1.0 so we did
not have the improvement of having an extension point where
we could put the XBRL-GL xml.

This was actually my own reason for asking for an extension point to
be added to UBL 2.0 documents

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl/200507/msg00022.html

This was also a motivator (one of several) for seeking liaison between
UBL TC and XBRL.

At the time though XBRL-GL was not looking all that strong but I
find it does still have web presence though no updates, it seems
since 2005. That was when I was looking at it and it had some
issues of over-complexity of the schemas and some bugs in the
inherited schemas as far as I could tell which might not have been
fixed. In short does it have enough adoption to ensure it works
properly?
http://www.xbrl.org/int/gl/2005-07-12/gl-2005-07-12.htm

Anyway, the XBRL-GL doesn't provide for the order, invoice, etc.
It provides the journal, ledger data format for transfers between
ledgers or journal transfers within the same ledger over distributed
sites or finance systems. If an organsiation has multiple software
ledger systems in use then XBRL-GL can be used to transfer ledger
details between them. It expects that any instrument documents like
invoices and orders are either attached (embedded) to the ledger
(it provides an extension point for this) or that the ledger is attached
some other way to the document. Either way it still needs a way to
represent the business document associated with the transaction
of the ledger which both systems can understand (or auditors are
happy with, even if the systems don't have to understand the docs).
This could be UBL of course.

So the idea of creating a ledger transfer profile of UBL seems more
than sound to me it seems excellent!

What does remain a key question is whether XBRL-GL can provide
the associated ledger info or whether to extend UBL for that purpose.
That's a big question :-)

Best regards

Steve



-- 
Stephen D. Green

Document Engineering Services Ltd



http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+22:37 .. and voice





2009/3/5 Andrew Chilcott <andrew.chilcott@stpsolutions.com>:
> Re: Martin Kleppmann's post
>
>>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.
>
> Please have a look at XBRL General Ledger - it was developed precisely for
> this purpose and has been adopted by a number of major accounting software
> developers
>
> Andrew
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: G. Ken Holman [mailto:gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com]
> Sent: 05 March 2009 00:21
> To:
> Subject: Re: [ubl-dev] UBL for storing accounting data
>
> 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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> G. Ken Holman                 mailto:gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com
> Crane Softwrights Ltd.          http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/u/
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