UBL-SR-03
EN 16931-1 layer: en16931
Checked against Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 2026.5
What does UBL-SR-03 mean? Despatch advice identifier shall occur maximum once
Why did my invoice fail UBL-SR-03?
The Despatch advice reference (BT-16), which links the invoice to a preceding despatch advice document, may appear at most once on an invoice. In UBL this maps to cac:DespatchDocumentReference, and having more than one such reference at document level is not allowed under EN 16931.
Official rule text
Despatch advice identifier shall occur maximum once
Common causes
- Mapping logic emits one cac:DespatchDocumentReference per shipment or per line-related despatch, duplicating it at header level.
- A source ERP with multiple despatch numbers concatenates them into repeated elements instead of a single value.
- Template accidentally includes the despatch reference block twice.
How do I fix it?
Keep a single header-level reference: <cac:DespatchDocumentReference><cbc:ID>DESP-2026-001</cbc:ID></cac:DespatchDocumentReference> and remove any additional cac:DespatchDocumentReference elements.
Related rules
UBL-SR-01 · UBL-SR-02 · UBL-SR-04 · UBL-SR-05 · UBL-SR-06 · UBL-SR-07 · UBL-SR-08 · UBL-SR-09
Check your invoice against this rule
Paste it into the live demo, or call POST /v1/validate. See the quickstart.