Digital Financial Reporting

Imagine it.  What if there was an iPad application for reading financial statements.  These won't be the static financial statements which are digital paper like HTML or PDF.  I am talking interactive information, XBRL in the background allowing all sorts of interesting things to happen, things no one has seen before.

It is probably just a matter of time before we see something like this.  I hope it is sooner rather than later. The iPad makes its debut in Apple stores tomorrow.

Some say that iPod, iPhone and iPad type applications are going to radically change computing. Maybe it won't be Apple, rather Google's Android will surpass the iPhone. One Google executive says that phones will make personal computer irrelevant.  Or maybe Microsoft Smartphones will catch up.

Or maybe all this will turn out like the Apple Newton, in the dump.  Or maybe Apple learned a lot from its experience with the Newton, that is why the iPod and iPhone are so hot.  Maybe the iPad will change how we interact with computers.

Who knows how things will turn out.  Personally, I am betting on that iPad application for reading financial statements, interactively of course.  I will get an iPad and play with it, see what you can do with it.  I have an iPod Touch and really like it.  I use it as a music player and a way to show people photos and videos I take.  I don't have an iPhone, but have been talking to the people who I know who do have one about their experiences.  Pretty much every one loves it.

I think the bigger screen of the iPad will be a big game changer.  It will be kind of like carrying around a clipboard.  You certainly won't carry it around with you all the time, but I can certainly see the iPads utility.  Maybe it is underpowered.  Maybe the battery will not work long enough.  These are details which will be worked out over time I speculate.

Imagine it.  Everyone connected by the Web, not the current Web but the Semantic Web.  iPads, iPods, iPhones, Androids, Smartphones; maybe a few PCs will still be around.  IFRS used globally.  Financial information in XBRL making it dynamic like a pivot table, rather than static like the legacy paper statements.

All this will make it easier to keep tabs on our investments, on how our governments spend the taxes we pay to them, on how the charitable organizations we contribute to spend our contributions, etc.

I think it is only a matter of time.  What do you think?

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.

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!).