Digital Financial Reporting

The metapatterns are distilled from this set of about 30 business use cases. These have been updated also to correct errors, make terminology more precise, and otherwise improve these examples. These business use cases have likewise been thoroughly tested using four different XBRL processors to be sure that they are correct.

While this may not be every business use case one would run up against when creating a digital financial report using something like XBRL, it would be hard to argue that any of these 30 or so business use cases are not necessary for financial reporting.  The point is that all of the sorts of things need to be considered when expressing a financial statement, such as an SEC XBRL financial filing, using XBRL.

Not only does each of these business use cases need to work in isolation, but they also need to work together to deilver a combined digital financial report.  Few accountants and few technical users grasp all these moving pieces. Studying these business use cases can empower you to put all these pieces together correctly.  Be sure to read through the documentation which explains the nuances and subtleties of each of these business use cases.

I have distilled the business use cases I have encountered when modeling financial information into a set of metapatterns.  I have been maintaining these metapatterns for probably ten years. I have released an updated version of these metapatterns.  This newest version can be found here.

Each of these XBRL instances, XBRL taxonomies, and XBRL Formula files has been run through numerous XBRL processors to assure that they are of the highest quality possible. The documentation which explains the metapatterns has likewise been updated.

If you are trying to learn about XBRL, these small examples help you understand the nuances of working with XBRL.  Don't be fooled by the small sizes of these examples.  Each example is packed with information important to creating quality digital financial reports.

You can also get to these metapatterns from the Digital Financial Reporting Wiki page dedicated to these metapatterns.

Thank you to XBRL Cloud for the use of their tool for working with XBRL-based business reports used to both test the metapatterns and to provide screen shots used for the metapattern documentation.