Leading European Telcos collaborate to create Telco-specific e-invoicing CIUS
13 June 2019
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Laura Broers
Thousands of hectares of trees are cut down annually to allow us to send out invoices via traditional mail. We can stop this from happening by going digital and e-invoicing is an excellent step in the right direction.
How it all began: the European Directive on e-invoicing
The European Commission decided to introduce a European Standard for e-invoicing: Directive 2014/55/EU. EU countries were to comply with this Directive before April 18th of this year. This meant that Telcos were also obligated to start sending out UBL invoices through means of e-invoicing via a secure sender (PEPPOL).
The European standard defines a semantic data model for a core invoice, compliant to e-invoicing. This semantic model consists of more than 160 fields, making it suitable for all organizations and markets but also very heavy to handle. Suppliers and industries are allowed to make a selection of fields and business and register them in a Core Invoice Usage Specification, also called a CIUS. The content of a CIUS is then mapped onto an xml file according to the UBL2.1 specification, making it processable in most financial platforms because they also support UBL 2.1.
The power of collaboration: the Telco-specific NLCIUS
A Telco’s invoice is very detailed and complex, and we noticed that the Dutch Telcos were struggling to get their ducks in a row. A standard Telco specific CIUS was never created, even though we knew all the important elements of the invoice. Because Telcos had not yet created a specific CIUS, their customers were forcing them to create custom CIUS formats. To avoid this proliferation, we invited all Dutch Telcos, large processors and normalization institutes to visit our castle and discuss the elements of the semantic model that would be most suitable for our industry. This joint effort resulted in the NLCIUS.
The European Telco-specific CIUS
Naturally, we are proud of what was achieved by this nation-wide collaboration. In April of this year, we presented our NLCIUS format during the ETIS Community Gathering in Cyprus. Participants showed a lot of interest and we received many questions. We decided that we wanted to share the NLCIUS with other Telcos in Europe to create a European Telco-specific CIUS. During an ETIS webinar that was hosted by two of CALVI’s finest e-invoicing experts, leading European Telcos were brought together to create a European Telco CIUS. We are confident that this multi-stakeholder initiative is a blueprint for all Telcos, which will save you a great deal of time and effort in the implementation of e-invoicing.
Feel free to download our documentation regarding the European Telco CIUS, which has been re-named as the ETIS CIUS. This documentation includes the NLCIUS specification, the ETIS CIUS blueprint and its components. If you have any question or want to share your thoughts, don’t hesitate to reach out!
Download ETIS CIUS Specification
