Standard business document

A Standard Business Document (SBD) consists of two parts:

Header

Provides semantic information needed for the routing, processing, and business domain context of documents.

Document

Contains the actual invoice or document in two possible formats:

Sovos Canonical Invoice (SCI)

A Sovos standard, which was created based on the Universal Business Language (UBL2.1).

Sovos Legal Document

The Base64-encoded local format for a specific country or document.

Header

The header, also called Standard Business Document Header (SBDH) provides the semantic information needed for routing, processing and business domain context of documents.

Sample information included in header:

• Sender contact and business information
• Recipient contact and business information
• Country
• Services

The header is also where you can customize the services required on the document. Most customers choose default, which applies the default process for a specific country and document. But in some instances, it is preferable to make use of only one or a few Sovos services. Possible options include:

Mapping

Map the Sovos Canonical Invoice to the required local format or vice versa.

Determination

Share data with Sovos Global Tax Determination to determine tax on given line items.

Signing

Apply an electronic signature.

Signature Validation

Validate the authenticity and integrity of a signature.

Transmission

Transmit to the government authority, including validation checks and controls.

Reporting

Share data with a Sovos filing solution to autopopulate the necessary tax return(s).

Distribution

Send the document to the recipient.

Archiving

Archive the invoice in a compliant manner.

Document

The document, also called Sovos Document (SD), contains the invoice or document details. Document is a generic term for any type of document: invoices, dispatch notices, credit notes, and all other variants. Customers may choose from two possible formats: the legal document specified by the country or the Sovos Canonical Invoice (SCI). Most Sovos customers choose the Sovos Canonical Invoice which is a universal format that can be applied to all supported countries, reducing implementation and ongoing maintenance costs.

Most customers choose to pass along additional data, beyond the minimum required by the country. For example, they might choose to include a business logo to display on the automatically generated invoice.

Providing more information beyond the minimum simplifies your integration across multiple countries and can unlock additional functionality in the Compliance Network.

Data mapping

Sovos Canonical Invoice (SCI) is a universal mapping schema based on UBL 2.1 standard and has over 1000 possible data points. SCI is designed to accept data from a wide range of financial and technical systems including transactional data, shipping data, procurement data, CRM and business process automation data.

SCI is robust yet flexible. A modular approach helps with navigating and searching for the right element, as needed. The UBL blocks are:

• Header

• Master data

• Invoice data

• Invoice details (item)

• Invoice level amount: aggregated totals

• Payment details

• Additional document details

• Reference details (optional to refer to an original document)

• eWaybill (optional to include delivery information)