Global Invoice

The Global Invoice Message marks the completion of the first truly global EDIFACT message for Odette (Europe), AIAG (North America), JAMA and JAPIA (Japan). This body of work represents over two years of a combined effort between the partner organisations.

The Global Invoice Project Group (GIP) launched the international effort to produce one common message guideline containing commonalities within business practices as well as models of business processes. The global invoice data model can be translated not only into the UN/EDIFACT syntax, but also into XML as well as future data exchange formats.

Development began by creating business process models following the UN/CEFACT’s Unified Modelling Methodology (UMM) N090 Recommendation. The UMM Guideline provides a process for message development starting with business domain use case diagrams. Use case diagrams and descriptions were developed to depict business processes specific to invoicing. These were followed up by activity diagrams further explaining the business processes.

Each organisation provided definitions for the terms, and an overall glossary was developed. It will be a living document, updated as needed and used by all future global projects.