One form of knowledge is know how. Know how is practical knowledge about how to accomplish something.
It has taken roughly 10 years, but I can now say that the implementation framework for XBRL-base financial reporting is complete, tested, and proven to work. All of this framework has been implemented in a working proof of concept by one software engineer and a very signification portion of the framework has been implemented in at least one commercial software product, XBRL Cloud.
This open source framework is useful for creating financial reports, verifying that the reports were created correctly, analyzing or otherwise using information from reports, and processes that feed information into a process that provides information that will end up within a report.
Why is this important? It is important because while others can talk about things like "financial transformation" and the "modern finance platform" and visions such as "The Finance Factory" and "accounting process automation" and all the other ways that technologies like artificial intelligence are going to impact accounting, reporting, auditing, and analysis; I don't have to just talk. I can show. I can make this tangible. I have helped a handful of people develop the know how. We know that all this can work and we know how to make this work effectively.
Others have been focused on helping companies meet regulator mandates; regulators that are not too concerned with quality or efficiency or effectiveness. Others have been developing know how in the wrong areas in my view. Software vendors that do not have the capability to deliver high-quality can never creating something that will work. Reliability and high-quality is a fundamental capabilities, they are requirements.
Here is the stuff that will be automated:
(Click image for larger view)