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Submitting and processing invoices in UBL

The advantage of processing UBL invoices in Basecone

Team Basecone avatar
Written by Team Basecone
Updated over a week ago

You can easily process UBL invoices in Basecone. This differs from a few points of processing a 'regular' invoice. This article will give you more insight into these differences.

What is UBL?

UBL stands for Universal Business Language and is a standard language for electronic business. The UBL file consists of two files: XML and PDF. The embedded file (XML) contains all the data information in the PDF which is 100% recognized by Basecone. 


How do I submit a UBL invoice to Basecone?

An UBL invoice can only be submitted by e-mail to the unique e-mail address of the company. The e-mail adds the two files from which the UBL invoice is built: an XML file and a PDF file. The names of these two files should be identical (except the extension).

Good to know: UBL invoices via InvoiceSharing are delivered to Basecone.

📌 It is not possible to provide a UBL invoice in Basecone by the Upload-button (drag and drop) in the Home-screen. However, if it's an XML with an 'embedded PDF', you can upload the document via the Upload-button (drag and drop) in the Home-screen.

Which UBL-version does Basecone support?

Basecone supports the following UBL versions: 2.0 and 2.1. These versions are the most widely used. If your invoice is formatted in a UBL version that cannot be accepted by Basecone or if the UBL file is incomplete, you will receive the error message. If you received the delivery confirmation: Document is not supported. 

The XML and PDF are seen as one document, the UBL invoice. If you get the above-mentioned error message, the PDF will not be sent to the company for processing.


How is an UBL-processed in Basecone?

Basecone reads the data in the XML and displays it as a PDF. The document does not go through the "optical recognition". All relevant data is extracted from the XML file (such as bill number, invoice amount, VAT number, IBAN, etc.) and used in the booking proposal. The result is 100% 'recognition'.

Tip: It is possible to download both the XML and PDF files from the Basecone Archive.


UBL-invoice and posting-rules

We distinguish two scenarios:

  1. When a match cannot be made to a supplier or customer, the information will be extracted from XML through the booking rules. This applies to:- If there are total amounts in the XML file per VAT%, Basecone will propose a breakdown per VAT%; - If these total amounts are not per VAT%, the information based on the booking rules in the booking proposal will be based on the information that Basecone can extract from the XML by line.- By line, Basecone then takes Basecone into the ledger account, the project, the cost center, the VAT code, the amount and / or the description of the XML (if available and displayed in the way that supports Basecone) and shows it in the booking proposal.

  2. When a match can be made with a customer or supplier, there may be booking rules for this relationship in Basecone. The saved booking information per customer or supplier in Basecone then leads to the booking proposal and replaces the information from the XML. If there are no booking rules stored in the recognized customer / vendor in Basecone, the information about the booking rules from the XML is extracted in the same way as described above in scenario 1.

📌 If there are any saved posting-rules per customer / supplier, this will be taken than from the UBL information. If you do not want any saved booking rules to be applied, you should delete these per supplier / customer. You can do this in Basecone through Settings> Company> Actions (Edit)> Customers "or" Suppliers "tab, then click the icon on the right and delete the booking rules. If you have done this for an UBL invoice that already has a booking proposal, please reject the invoice from the validation screen and re-tag the invoice so that it matches with the new information.

If a supplier or customer is not recognized, no booking rules are applied. However, if you manually select a supplier or customer that has posting-rules, you will get a message: "There are standard booking rules available, want to apply?" After confirmation, the booking proposal will be made based on the saved posting-rules.


Adding posting-rules

Basecone also offers the ability to process UBL invoices through our InvoiceSharing partner. Via InvoiceSharing it is possible to set up multiple booking rules per company. InvoiceSharing automatically generates an UBL invoice automatically (within seconds) for each invoice received. The company-specific booking information is added to this, so that it will then be fully automated and fully broken down into the multiple booking rules.

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