Quarterly XBRL-based Public Company Financial Report Quality Measurement (March 2019)
Friday, March 29, 2019 at 04:33PM
Charlie in Becoming an XBRL Master Craftsman

The following is a summary of the quality measurements of XBRL-based US GAAP financial reports submitted to the SEC as of March 31, 2019.

A couple of items worth noting.  First, for the very first time a filing agent has 100% of the reports that the have submitted 100% consistent with all the fundamental accounting concept relations.  That filing agent is RDG, the software they use is Thunderdome. Honorable mention goes to DataTracks who has only 1 filing that has an error.  Second, a total of 5,063 of 5,716 or 89.1% of all XBRL-based financial reports submitted to the SEC are consistent with all of the fundamental accounting concept relations.  Only 623 are not.

Fundamental accounting concept relations continuity cross checks

The fundamental accounting concept relations continuity cross checks verifies that high-level reported information is fundamentally usable.  The following Excel spreadsheets and other documents provide details related to these quality measurements:

FAC by Generator:

US GAAP fundamental accounting concept relations continuity cross check validation results for last 10-K or 10-Q filed by generator of the report as of March 31, 2019:

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FAC by Test:

Same US GAAP filings as above but a summary of information by test of the reports as of March 31, 2019:

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FAC Comparison 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019

Fundamental accounting concept relations continuity cross checks for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 (last 10-K or 10-Q submitted by company as of March 31):

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The incremental improvements may seem minor now, but if you consider then nature of compounding; even small changes year-to-year can mean great leaps compounded over longer periods of time.  XBRL has only been used for about 10 years so far; XBRL is really only in its infancy.

Disclosure mechanics and reporting checklist

There was not much of a change between prior year and this year when it comes to the disclosure mechanics and reporting checklist validation checks.  On average, about 89% of disclosures were consistent with expectation.

Disclosure mechanics and reporting checklist results by generator:

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Disclosure mechanics and reporting checklist results by disclosure:

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Summary of Analysis of Disclosures 

Analysis of 6751 Public Company 10-Ks

**********************PRIOR RESULTS**********************

Previous fundamental accounting concept relations consistency results reported: December 31, 2018; September 30, 2018; June 30, 2018; March 31, 2018; November 30, 2017; August 31, 2017; May 31, 2017March 31, 2017November 28, 2016August 31, 2016June 30, 2016March 31, 2016December 31, 3015September 30, 2015June 30, 2015April 1, 2015November 29, 2014.

Pierre's presentation on Data Quality

Article originally appeared on XBRL-based structured digital financial reporting (http://xbrl.squarespace.com/).
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