Digital Financial Reporting

This is an overview of what I call the XASB Reporting Scheme.  This is an imaginary reporting scheme which I am using to figure out the best technical approach to created an architecture for representing XBRL-based financial reports.  This is primarily to test financial reports but it is appropriate for general business reports also since a financial report is simply a rather complex business report.

I created this imaginary reporting scheme so that I could be completely unconstrained by the US GAAP XBRL Taxonomy and IFRS XBRL Taxonomy in figuring out the best approach to use.  The information below documents the existing prototype.

I will be updating this XASB reporting scheme based on some ideas from the European Single Electronic Format over the coming months. Ultimately, information from this prototype reporting scheme will make its way into the General Business Reporting XBRL Application Profile which Rene van Egmond and I have been maintaining.

You can view the information in each linked XBRL file in any off-the-shelf XBRL tool.  There are two software applications that leverage this metadata:  Pesseract which is a non-commercial but very comprehensive proof of concept and XBRL Cloud which is commercially available software.

• Conceptual model: The XASB reporting scheme uses the same conceptual model as the US GAAP and IFRS reporting schemes.
• Conceptual model relations:  The XASB reporting uses the same conceptual model relations between entities in the model as the US GAAP and IFRS reporting schemes.
• General relations: General relations use the arcroles defined by the XBRL technical specification plus are supplementd by these additional relation semantics. Neither US GAAP nor IFRS taxonomies provide for these relations but both US GAAP and IFRS have these relations.
• Disclosure relations: Disclosure relations use the arcroles defined by the XBRL technical specification plus are supplemented by these additional relation semantics. These semantics are used to describe and check the structural relations of disclosures and to create a reporting checklist. Neither US GAAP nor IFRS taxonomies provide for these relations but  both US GAAP and IFRS have these relations.
• Model structure relations: Model structure relations, which are the relations between Networks, Hypercubes (Tables), Dimensions (Axis), Members, Primary Items (Line Items), and Concepts are to be represented in XBRL presentation relations are described by these relations semantics. The model structure relations of the XASB reporting scheme follows the implied rules of the US GAAP XBRL Taxonomy architecture for these relations.
• Reporting styles: XASB provides for any number of reporting styles.  Currently, only one reporting style is provided for in the XASB reporting scheme. However, reporting styles are modeled after the same approach used by XBRL-based financial reports submitted to the SEC which has about 100 different reporting styles.  The US GAAP and IFRS XBRL taxonomies do not support reporting styles, but both US GAAP and IFRS have reporting styles.  Reporting styles are made up of three pieces;
  • Mappings: Mappings are represented using XBRL definition relations.
  • Impute rules: Impute rules are represented using XBRL formula.
  • Consistency rules: Consistency rules are represented using XBRL formula.
• Type or class relations: XASB provides for any number of type or class relations.  Currently, only a handful of example type or class relations are provided in the XASB reporting scheme.
• Disclosure mechanics rules: XASB provides for disclosure mechanics rules. Currently, disclosure mechanics rules are provided for each disclosure represented in the XASB reporting scheme.
• Reporting checklist rules: XASB provides for reporting checklist rules. Currently, reporting checklist rules are provided for each of the disclosures represented in the XASB reporting scheme.
• Combined disclosure mechanics and reporting checklist: This XBRL taxonomy schema combines the disclosure mechanics and reporting checklist into one functional set.
• Disclosures: XASB provides for the notion of a disclosure.  Currently, the following prototype disclosures are provided for by the XASB reporting scheme.
• Topics: XASB provides for the notion of a topic.  Currently, the following prototype topics are provided for by the XASB reporting scheme.
• Topic and disclosure relations:  XASB provides for the organization of disclosures into topics.  Currently, the following is a prototype organization of the disclosures into topics for the XASB reporting scheme.

Sample report: This XBRL instance for a sample economic entity reporting using the XASB reporting scheme is provided. This XBRL taxonomy for the BASE taxonomy and the COMPANY taxonomy are provided but NOTE that these taxonomies are not modularized correctly currently. (NOTE that neither the BASE or COMPANY taxonomy are modularized as I would deem appropriate currently.  These will be recast to be far more similar to the way XBRL-based reports are submitted to the SEC.  The current modularity is only for the convenience of the tools that I had to use to create the XBRL taxonomies.

Information extraction: This Excel spreadsheet is used to extract information from XBRL-based financial reports which are submitted to the SEC.  I want to create a similar tool that works for the XASB reporting scheme.  Here is the Excel spreadsheet that extracts information from an XASB reporting style report.  There is a wealth of information that can be gleaned from comparing these two extraction tools.

Repository: To test the ability to extract information from an XBRL instance created using the XASB reporting scheme, I created three additional XBRL instances by copying the the origional and then changing the file names, namespaces, and other information to make the XBRL instances and XBRL taxonomies unique.  The only data that is different is the entity name in each document.  Here is that prototype repository that contains four financial reports. (same thing in RDF format)

One significant difference between the XASB reporting scheme and the SEC and ESMA use of XBRL is that 100% of mathematical relations in an XBRL instance using the XASB reporting scheme are described and therefore can be valiated against business rules, generally XBRL formulas (GAAP and COMPANY).

Finally, the architecture above is driven by the desire to create a provably correct XBRL-based financial report as outined in the document Blueprint for Creating Zero-defect XBRL-based Digital Financial Reports. Further, it is driven by the desire to create a repeatable process for verifying such reports.

Here are actual validation results from XBRL Cloud: Disclosure mechanics and reporting checklist; Evidence package; Fundamental accounting concept relations for XASB currently exist only in newer format, need to create older version which XBRL Cloud supports; Type or class relations not currently supported by XBRL Cloud.

(Note that I have been maintaining and improving this XASB Reporting Scheme since about 2005.  The earliest publicly available version of this that I could find is this from 2008 which when what I now call the general profile was called XBRLS. The earliest private version of this was called 'Sample GAAP' and was from about 2006.)