The United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) has approved the Cross Industry Invoice (CII) Version 2.0 standard to enhance links between the business and financial supply chains and enable cross-industry and cross-domain interoperability.

The CII, which is an electronic document exchanged globally between trading partners with a prime function as a request for payment, is an important accounting document and has potential legal implications for sender and receiver.

The CII addresses the strong business need for large scale implementation of eInvoicing, in particular, offering valuable assistance for business and governments in exchanging structured data. Also, it supports the requirements of the European Commission Expert Group on eInvoicing.

More information:
http://www.unece.org/press/pr2009/09trade_p08e.htm