UBL means Universal Business Language. It is an open standard for electronic business documents, including invoices and credit notes. OASIS maintains UBL through the Universal Business Language Technical Committee. The UBL specification is also published as ISO/IEC 19845.
Latest final UBL version
OASIS lists UBL 2.4 OASIS Standard from July 2024 as the latest final version. That is separate from the UBL versions a specific software service exports. SnelUBL product export documentation should therefore be read separately from the general standard version.
Dutch-market relevance
For companies working with Dutch customers, UBL is useful because accounting software can process structured invoice data more reliably than a human-readable PDF alone. A PDF is convenient for people; UBL XML is designed for software.
In practice, a UBL invoice contains supplier, customer, invoice date, invoice number, currency, amounts, VAT bases and invoice lines. That lets software perform checks that are harder with a standalone PDF: does the total match, does the VAT rate fit the base and can the invoice be linked to the right relation?
For Dutch-market businesses this is especially useful when suppliers do not yet send e-invoices. You may receive a PDF by email, while your accounting process benefits from structured data. A converter such as SnelUBL bridges that gap: the PDF remains available as a readable document and the UBL XML contains the data for processing.
Example structure
A UBL file is XML. In simplified form, it looks conceptually like this:
<Invoice>
<ID>2026-091</ID>
<IssueDate>2026-07-05</IssueDate>
<AccountingSupplierParty>...</AccountingSupplierParty>
<AccountingCustomerParty>...</AccountingCustomerParty>
<LegalMonetaryTotal>...</LegalMonetaryTotal>
</Invoice>
UBL, Peppol and e-invoicing
UBL is not the same as Peppol. UBL defines the document structure. Peppol is a network and rule set for exchange. The Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 documentation uses UBL Invoice and UBL Credit Note as syntaxes for invoice messages.
Convert PDF to UBL
A PDF to UBL converter is useful when the supplier does not include a UBL file. SnelUBL reads invoice data from PDF, DOCX or image and creates UBL XML. For common packages, start with PDF invoice to SnelStart UBL or PDF to UBL for Exact Online.
Read also: e-invoicing in the Netherlands, UBL vs Peppol and e-invoicing legislation.
Official sources
- OASIS Universal Business Language Technical Committee
- OASIS UBL 2.4 specification
- Peppol BIS Billing 3.0
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