Digital Financial Reporting

The taxonomies published by SEC filers are a wealth of information, if you can somehow look at them.  Well, in that spirit, I have created a number of ways to look at these taxonomies for the purpose of learning more about taxonomies.

Here are several ways I have created to look at these XBRL taxonomies.  All these focus on the presentation linkbase information (for comparison purposes, here is a link to the best way that I know of viewing the entire Commercial and Industrial Companies entry point of the US GAAP Taxonomy):

• Excel-based Taxonomy viewer: This Excel file has macros which read the XML file (see below) of presentation linkbase information.  (Coming soon is a version of this which allows you to compare two taxonomies side-by-side.
• HTML treeview: If you go to this web page and click on the links in the column titled "Link to Taxonomy Presentation HTML (XBRL Site)" you can see a tree view of an SEC filers taxonomy. Here is one example file so you know what you are looking for.
• XAML treeview: This web page lets you quickly browser through a list of XBRL taxonomies.  You have to be using Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 or 8 to use this as it is done using XAML.
• XML file: If you go to this web page and click on the links in the column titled "Link to Taxonomy Presentation XML (XBRL Site)" you can access the information in a taxonomy programmatically.  The Excel-based tool above uses this XML file. Here is one example file so you know what to look for.
• Compare extension concepts: This web page lets you compare the extension concepts added by SEC filers.
• Summary of Statistics:  Here is an Excel file which has some statistics about the filings and taxonomy extensions.

More ways to look at this to come.  You can write some really interesting Excel macros to sumarize, slice, dice, and otherwise dig into this information.

In an earlier post I mentioned that I had created a mashup controller page containing information about SEC filings.  Here I am using that information to create two really simple to create but useful demos which compare SEC Interactive data filings and SEC filers taxonomies:

• Compare Interactive Data Information. This takes two SEC Interactive Data renderings, puts them into one HTML Frame, and shows you two filings side-by-side.  Not that sophisticated or hard to do, but it seems useful to me.
• Compare XBRL Taxonomies Presentation View. This takes two HTML renderings of XBRL taxonomies, puts them side-by-side so you can compare filer taxonomies.
• Compare Extension Concepts Added. This allows you to select two companies and then compare the extension concepts added to their taxonomy of each, side-by-side.

Now, there is a lot you can do to make this better.  For example, provide a combo box which allows the user to select the two filings or taxonomies that they want to compare.

See this page for a permanent location for this blog entry.

I created what I am calling a "mashup console" which you can see at this URL: http://www.xbrlsite.com/demos/console/console.htm. The URL contains information helpful in creating mashups of information about SEC filings.  The page includes:

• Company name of the SEC filer.
• SEC CIK number of the filer (this is a unique ID assigned to each SEC filer by the SEC).
• Asseccention number of the filing (this is basically a unique ID assigned to each filing by the SEC).
• Link the HTML Interactive Datawhich is provided by the SEC and is a rendering of what is contained in the SEC XBRL filing.
• Link to Excel Datawhich is provided by the SEC and is an Excel file which has a rendering of what is contained in the SEC XBRL filing.
• Link to XBRL Instance which is the actual XBRL instance filed on the SEC web site.
• Link to Taxonomy Presentation HTMLwhich is provided by XBRL Site.com and is an HTML rendering of the presentation linkbase of the SEC filer.
• Link to Taxonomy Presentation XMLwhich is provided by XBRL Site.com and is an XML file containing an easy to use hierarchy of the presentation linkbase.
• Link to Extension Concepts Informationwhich is provided by XBRL Cloud and is a listing of extension concepts created by the SEC filer for the filing.
• Link to Error Reportwhich is provided by XBRL Cloud and is a listing of validation error detected by XBRL Cloud.

Again, check out the information here: http://www.xbrlsite.com/demos/console/console.htm.  If you want any information you provide publically listed here for others to use, let me know.

Go to the page and click on some of the links and you might be suprised at what you find and how you can directly navigate to certain things, such as the SEC Interactive Data renderings and an Excel spreadsheet of an SEC filing.

Of particular interest might be the HTML taxonomy presentation view.  See this example: http://www.xbrlsite.com/demos/console/TreeView-0001104659-09-048013.html  One of these is provided for each SEC filing.  An XML version is also provided which you can use to easily read the taxonomy (i.e. no XBRL processor needed as this is basically pre-processed for you!).