Rule at a Glance
| ID | Severity | Context (XPath) |
|---|---|---|
| Series ref. BR-117 | Schematron ID: ibr-101-ae | Fatal (error) | cac:AccountingCustomerParty/cac:Party |
Assert text: [ibr-101-ae]-Authority name (BTAE-11) MUST be there when Buyer legal registration identifier type (BTAE-16) is Commercial/Trade license.
Test: (cac:PartyLegalEntity/cbc:CompanyID/@schemeAgencyID = "TL" and cac:PartyLegalEntity/cbc:CompanyID/@schemeAgencyName) or not(cac:PartyLegalEntity/cbc:CompanyID/@schemeAgencyID = "TL")
Classification
Master Data / Conditional (identifier-type-driven).
What the Rule Is Checking
When the buyer's legal registration identifier is typed as 'TL' — a Commercial or Trade License — the scheme agency name attached to that identifier must also be present. That attribute carries BTAE-11, the name of the issuing authority: the specific Emirate free zone authority or Department of Economic Development that issued the licence. If the identifier type isn't TL, the rule doesn't apply.
Why This Rule Exists
A UAE trade licence number on its own is not globally unique or self-explanatory — the same numbering pattern can originate from different issuing authorities across the mainland DEDs and the various free zones, and the authority needs to know which body issued it to route verification correctly. Naming the issuing authority alongside the licence number turns a bare number into a checkable identifier, which is the same logic the Passport-scheme rule (ibr-010-ae) applies to passport-issuing countries on the same party block.
UAE Data Example
PASSES ✓
<cac:PartyLegalEntity>
<cbc:CompanyID schemeAgencyID="TL" schemeAgencyName="Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism">CN-1234567</cbc:CompanyID>
</cac:PartyLegalEntity>FAILS ✗
<cac:PartyLegalEntity>
<cbc:CompanyID schemeAgencyID="TL">CN-1234567</cbc:CompanyID>
</cac:PartyLegalEntity>The failing example correctly flags the identifier as a trade licence but leaves the issuing authority name blank, which fails even though the licence number itself is well-formed. The rule is checking the pairing of type and issuer, not the format of the number.
What Your ERP / IT Team Must Ensure
- Store the issuing authority against each buyer's trade licence in the customer master, not just the licence number itself — many CRM and ERP customer records historically capture only the number.
- Build a reference table of UAE licensing authorities (DED per Emirate, plus free zone authorities such as JAFZA, DMCC, DIFC) so onboarding staff select from a controlled list rather than free-typing the authority name inconsistently.
- Apply this same pairing check wherever Commercial/Trade License is selected as the identifier type on either the supplier or buyer side, since the underlying master-data requirement is symmetric.
- Audit existing buyer records for trade-licence identifiers that were captured before this requirement was enforced, since legacy master data is the most common source of this failure at go-live.
Related Rules
No directly related published rule posts yet in this series.