I am continuing to piece together a complete financial reporting solution and explain my approach. The most current iteration is this document, General Ledger Trial Balance to External Financial Report.
That document combines information from my first and second explanations. The ultimate goal is to create the framework for implementing a modern finance platform using 100% global standard XBRL technical syntax.
If you want to understand all this, I would recommend three documents:
- Computer Empathy: This document provides you with critical background information. If you are an accountant trying to understand all this using the historical financial reporting paradigm you will never understand. The key word here is "digital"; accounting, reporting, auditing, and analysis in a modern digital environment.
- Putting the Expertise into an XBRL-based Knowledge Based System for Creating Financial Reports: I am not "paving the goat path" and replicating existing inefficiencies related to old-school paper-based reporting in XBRL-based digital financial reporting software. We are choosing to take a different path. One type of practical knowledge is know-how; how to accomplish something. This document helps you understand how to build a modern finance platform. The key word here is "patterns". Good software engineers understand that patterns provide leverage.
- Blueprint for Creating Zero-defect XBRL-based Digital Financial Reports: This document helps you understand how machine-readable rules are used to keep quality ultra-high. Quality will be better than the quality of current processes, procedures, techniques, and philosophies and with lower costs through process automation. The key phrase here is that "business rules prevent information anarchy."
Steven Covey, in his seminal book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, says "Begin with the end in mind." (Habit 2). What is the end? Well, these 5,734 US GAAP financial reports and these 406 IFRS financial reports are the end.
If you believe that accounting, reporting, auditing, and analysis will be done in an increasingly digital environment as contrast to the current old-school processes created for paper-based reporting; you may want to wade through the notes that I have been taking for the past 20 years: Intelligent XBRL-based Digital Financial Reporting.
Brand new to XBRL? How XBRL Works is a popular video that explains the basics.
Article originally appeared on XBRL-based structured digital financial reporting (http://xbrl.squarespace.com/).
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