IBX Connect - Business rules validation
With the XML standard UBL 2.0 IBX Connect has implemented two-step validation of business documents like Invoices and CreditNotes. First incoming UBL documents are validated against their XML schema and then against XSLT configuration files specifying code lists and country- or process specific business rules.
Standards for codelists and business rules
In IBX Connect Invoices and CreditNotes can be validated against currently three standards: the European CEN/BII-PEPPOL, the Norwegian EHF and the Danish OIOUBL standard. The codelists for language, currency, UoM, payment, tax and other codes are more or less the same, while e.g. the implementation of national tax rules can differ. Common for all three standards is the validation and notification process. Which standard is used for validation is configured per receiver or between sender and receiver in IBX Connect.
Validation warnings and errors
Not all violations mean that Invoices/CreditNotes are rejected. "Warnings" are still acceptable for delivering the documents to their receivers while "errors" are stopping those with a notification back to the sender. To test and improve their quality suppliers can use online validation services to validate Invoices/CreditNotes against a specific standard.
Synchronous server response
If the sender is directly integrated with IBX Connect then documents violating the validation rules are rejected, an HTTP response code 400 with a SOAP response stating "error in document" is returned and the connection is closed. If documents are received from other PEPPOL accesspoints then no such response is sent back synchronously to the sending AccessPoint.
Asynchronous application response via email
For the case that Invoices/CreditNotes are failing the validation both sender and receiver can be configured to receive an email with details for the rejected document and the reason for the rejection. Besides the actual validation error also eventually existing warnings are reported with this notification so that the sender can correct and resend the document. The notification to the receiver is important if the sender is using a different service provider to submit Invoices/CreditNotes to customers connected to IBX Connect. Whether this service provider is exchanging documents with IBX Connect via PEPPOL Access Points or based on any other interoperability agreement makes no difference. In either case the sender might be unknown on the IBX platform so that the customer supposed to receive the document should get in contact with the sender.