Digital Financial Reporting

Want to know how to do an SEC filing?  Here is your model: Citigroup.  I give Citigroup an A+. And as far as I can tell right now, no other SEC XBRL Filing gets an A+, only Citigroup.  Here is why:

• Citigroup has zero validation errors reported by XBRL Cloud's EDGAR validation report. See here. (Note that of 403 filings tested, a total of 375 had ZERO XBRL Cloud validation errors reported, 28 had one or more errors reported.)
• Citigroup has zero calculation inconsistencies per XBRL Cloud and per UBmatrix XPE.  See here for XBRL Cloud and here for UBmatrix XPE. (Note that of 403 filings tested, 313 had zero calculation inconsistencies, 90 had 1 or more calculation inconsistencies.)
• Citigroup passed the XBRL Formula testswhich I created for the Cash Flow Statement [Roll Forward] using UBmatrix XPE. See the results here. (Note that of 403 filings tested, 377 filings passed the XBRL formulas validation, 28 did not for one reason or another which is still to be determined.)
• Citigroup passed the test information model tests which I created for the [Table] style. See the results here. (Note that of 403 filings tested, sadly only about 16 passed this test, 387 did not. The test looked at the use of [Table]s, [Axis], and [Line Items].  For more information see this blog post.)
• Citigroup added 50 concepts and the list of concepts looks reasonable.  Here is that list. All the concepts added provide documentation if they are not abstract.

Clearly I have not tested every nook an cranny of the XBRL instance and taxonomy, but I have spent a fair amount of time on this and I also ran the instance and taxonomy through a comprehensive battery of testing.  If you think you see something questionable, please let me know.  I am doing my best to provide good guidance.

Now, I am looking hard for more A+ filings. Lots of filings get pieces right, but then don't do as well in other areas.  More information on this in the coming week, but for now, nice work Citigroup and their filing agent which I believe is Merrill Corporation.

If you want to look at the pieces of the Citigroup filing, see my mashup viewer which pulls a number of the pieces together into one interface. Or, here are the pieces you might want to look at which are not listed above as single web pages if the mashup viewer does not work for you:

• SEC Rendering
• SEC Files
• Citigroup Taxonomy (Presentation relations)

Whether or not XBRL GL should move from the use of tuples to XBRL Dimensions has been asked so much that Eric Cohen and Gianluca Garbellotto, two long time contributors to and proponents of XBRL GL, wrote a document XBRL Dimensions and XBRL GL: Why or Why Not (An Apologetic) 1.0 which discusses this issue.

Here is the abstract of that document:

XBRL GL makes extensive use of tuples, and a "dimensional" version of XBRL GL is not in the making. This document explains why, given the type of information that XBRL GL is designed to represent, replacing tuples with dimensions in XBRL GL's architecture would not be a good idea.

Any student of XBRL should understand XBRL GL, its relation to other forms of XBRL, the connection point between the two, and other such issues.

My personal view is that there is no real need for an XBRL Dimensions based representation of XBRL GL.  Although, I also would not use XBRL GL for things which many people would, preferring the consistency of always using XBRL Dimensions.

The modeling approach XBRL GL uses is quite useful in many cases and gets in the way in others.  The important thing is to understand the pros and cons of each modeling approach BEFORE you commit to one way or another.  Each has it's place.

I am in the final stages of brainstorming and testing my next iteration tool which helps me take a look at the SEC XBRL filings.  Here is a shell of that interface with a small subset of the entire filings which I am using for some final testing which I wanted to make available to my blog readers. 

There are three "view" into the information listed below.  There are three web sites where this information comes from: the SEC, XBRL Cloud, and information I generate. All this information is pre-processed, nothing is regenerated when you visit the page.  I generated the information and interfaces using the UBmatrix XPE XBRL processing engine, the Coyote Reporting XRun application which I received as a result of working on the US GAAP Taxonomy creation project, and Microsoft Access which is my preferred programming tool.  I use these three tools to process information and then generate the XML and HTML files which contain the information. You can download all these files and use them locally by grabbing this ZIP file. (Again, this contains only a subset of 16 filings.  My analysis will be for about 400 filings.)

Here is a breakdown of the different interfaces into this information:

• By topic.  The first view is by topic. It allows you to focus on one topic.  For example, if you wanted to take a look at the calculations validation of an SEC filing, you can use line item number (6) XBRL Calculations Validation Reports on that list. That takes you to a list of all the calculation reports for each filer.
• By file.  This is item (4) on the above list, but worth pointing out. Basically this is a matrix of every filer and every file available from whatever source.  Look down the left side of the report for a filer, the columns for the report, and the intersection "cell" contains the report you might like to take a look at.
• By filer. What this does is take a bunch of the relevant files and organizes time into a tabbed interface and lets you look at all the reports for one filer in one interface.  You can basically focus on one filer here.

I am learning a lot about using XBRL from digging into these SEC filings.  Like is said, there are two ways to learn: from making your own mistakes and from the mistakes of others. Digging into these filings really helps one learn about both the right ways and wrong ways to use XBRL.  And this is not just related to creating XBRL.  There is also a lot to be learned about building a system such as what the SEC has built, what works well and what does not.  There is a lot to learn related to creating XBRL, best practices, and so forth.  There is a lot for software vendors to learn from this in terms of features they need to provide or can provide to help filers and others. There is likewise a lot there which helps accountants and auditors who have to check over these filings.

What I think I am going to do is publish a comprehensive analysis of these filings which others in the groups mentioned above can use to learn more about XBRL.