Digital Financial Reporting

I put together a high-level comparison of reporting schemes.  This is somewhat similar to my comparison of implementations of XBRL which I call profiles, or implementation profiles, or application profiles.

Now, if you are a trained observer and you look at those comparisons and then you read the document Leveraging the Theoritical and Mathematical Underpinnings of a Financial Report, you begin to understand many of the leveragable patterns that exist in financial reporting.

The typical accountant does not think in this manner. The typical accountant is focused on one reporting scheme generally.  The typical accountant is focused on the presentation of information, not the representation of information.  That is why the typical accountant might not understand how to create things like the document Understanding Block Semantics.

If you compare and contrast the US GAAP and IFRS XBRL taxonomies, you see that they are more similar than they are different.  Sure, they are different in that they represent two different reporting schemes.  But both of those reporting schemes start with the logic "Assets = Liabilities and Equity".  All other reporting schemes also start with that fundamental logic.

And then below that first level equation, you have the second level which is also very similar.  Sure, some reporting schemes put current before noncurrent and others put noncurrent before current.  Or, liabilities might be shown before or after equity.  But those are arbitrary presentation matters, not differences in logic.