Digital Financial Reporting

The links on this blog post will work until April 30, 2015.  At that time they will expire.

This blog post walks you thought the digital financial report model using SECXBRL.info web service.  28msec has kindly allowed me to show this information uisng their commercially available web service API.  A token is provided within these links which makes this information publicly available.  The token will expire April 30, 2015.  Information is provided in four formats: HTML, XML, CSV, and JSON.

The web service is an SEC specific profile (note "profile-name=sec" in the URL) of a general business report.  This web service API provides information for public companies that report financial information to the SEC using the XBRL format.

This describes the model of a general business report using financial statements which are a type of business report.

Economic entities create financial reports. (The list is the Fortune 100 companies which are used as an example.  The SEC has about 6500 public companies which follow this model.).  Here is the same list in XML, CSV, and JSON.

Reports are created by an economic entity. (This shows all the reports submitted to the SEC by 3M.) Here is the same information in XML, CSV, and JSON.

Reports can be broken down into components or report fragments. (This shows the components of the last 10-K provided to the SEC by 3M.) Here is the same information in XML, CSV, and JSON.  Note that every component that is listed is identified by a network and a hypercube (table).

A component has a fact table.  (This shows the fact table for the first component of the last 10-K of 3M.) Here is the fact table in XML, CSV, and JSON.

A component has a model structure (or report structure).  (This shows the model structure of the same component as the fact table above.  This is not a particularly good HTML representation.) Here is the model structure in XML, CSV, and JSON.

A component has a renderingwhich is created using the fact table, the model structure, and information about the concept arrangement pattern of the component and the member arrangement patterns of the component.  The rendering information is not provided in XML, CSV or JSON.

That is essentially a high-level model of a digital financial report, the foundation of every digital financial report.  The document Understanding the Mechanics of a Digital Financial Report explains additional details about this model.  The document Knowledge Engineering 101 for Business Professionals explains other considerations.  Other semantics build on those base semantics. 

The document Understanding the Mechanics of an SEC-type XBRL-based Digital Financial Report summarizes this model specifically for an SEC-type digital financial report, which is a type of financial report, and therefore a type of business report.  The document also shows that the XBRL-based public company financial reports submitted to the SEC all fit into this model.  This is empirical evidence which supports this model.