France e-credit note (UBL)
French e-credit note, EN 16931 profile (UBL, XP Z12-012)
A credit note for the French e-invoicing reform in UBL syntax, checked against the UBL 2.1 CreditNote schema, the EN 16931 rules and the French rules (BR-FR-*) published by FNFE-MPE.
About
France's e-invoicing reform makes electronic invoices compulsory between French businesses: every company has had to be able to receive them since 1 September 2026, and large and mid-sized companies issue them from that date, through an approved platform (plateforme agréée). The formats are UBL, CII and Factur-X, under the AFNOR standard XP Z12-012.
UBL has its own CreditNote document (type code 381 and the like), checked here with the same rule layers as the French invoice: EN 16931, then the French rules (BR-FR-*) check what the reform needs: SIREN and SIRET identifiers, the business process (BT-23, such as S1 or B1), invoice numbers and dates in the expected format, the electronic addresses of both parties, and VAT details. FNFE-MPE publishes them as Schematron; this profile runs them in their "fatal" form, which applies from 1 October 2026. In CII and Factur-X, a credit note is a CrossIndustryInvoice with a credit note type code, so those profiles cover both.
E-invoicing in France: the rules in short and how to check an invoice →
Good to know
- Rules run only when the document matches the schema. Documents over 50 MB are checked against the schema only.
- The EN 16931 rules are release 1.3.16, the one the French rules are published with.
- FNFE-MPE publishes no UBL credit note, so the example is its use case 1 invoice (Apache License 2.0) turned into a credit note by us: type code 381, a reference to the invoice it corrects, credit note lines. It passes all the rules above.
Files
14 files · 2.7 MB-
maindoc/UBL-CreditNote-2.1.xsd main
-
common/UBL-CommonAggregateComponents-2.1.xsd
-
common/UBL-CommonBasicComponents-2.1.xsd
-
common/UBL-CommonExtensionComponents-2.1.xsd
-
common/UBL-QualifiedDataTypes-2.1.xsd
-
common/UBL-UnqualifiedDataTypes-2.1.xsd
-
common/UBL-ExtensionContentDataType-2.1.xsd
-
common/CCTS_CCT_SchemaModule-2.1.xsd
-
common/UBL-CommonSignatureComponents-2.1.xsd
-
common/UBL-SignatureAggregateComponents-2.1.xsd
-
common/UBL-SignatureBasicComponents-2.1.xsd
-
common/UBL-xmldsig-core-schema-2.1.xsd
-
common/UBL-XAdESv132-2.1.xsd
-
common/UBL-XAdESv141-2.1.xsd
The validator loads all of these with their folder structure, so includes and imports resolve as published.
Business rules
Schematron · run in this orderThe rules run after the schema check, only when the document matches the schema, and in your browser like the schema check (with SaxonJS by Saxonica). Each finding names its rule, such as BR-CO-15, and the line it points at; each rule has a page with what it checks.
Example document
fr-uc1-credit-note-ubl.xml · 17.1 KB · passes the schema and the rules
In CI and from code
The same schema by its name, france-ctc-ubl-credit-note, through the API.
npx @xmlvalid/cli validate "**/*.xml" --schema france-ctc-ubl-credit-note- uses: xmlvalid/validate-action@v1
with:
files: "**/*.xml"
schema: france-ctc-ubl-credit-note
api-key: ${{ secrets.XMLVALID_API_KEY }}curl https://xmlvalid.com/api/v1/validations \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $XMLVALID_API_KEY" \
-F document={{ $schema->example ?? 'document.xml' }} -F schema=france-ctc-ubl-credit-noteFree accounts get 100 API validations a month. On Pro, a URL monitor can check a published document against this schema every hour and email you when it breaks. More CI setups