Digital Financial Reporting

XBRL-based structured digital financial reporting

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Digital Financial Reporting Using XBRL

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This web site provides information on how to use XBRL to help business professionals exchange business information. Business information incluldes both financial and nonfinancial information. Everything on this site made available to all under a Creative Commons License, Public Domain Dedication. Everything may be reused however one sees fit without attribution. We do ask that you give credit where credit is due. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, suggestions, ideas or other feedback, please contact charles.hoffman@me.com.

The author of this web site assumes all responsibility for this web site and it's content. The views expressed on this web site are the views of the author and may not represent the views of his employer.

BLOG: Digital Financial Reporting

This is a blog for information relating to digital financial reporting. This blog is basically my "lab notebook" for experimenting and learning about XBRL-based digital financial reporting. This is my brain storming platform. This is where I think out loud (i.e. publicly) about digital financial reporting. This information is for innovators and early adopters who are ushering in a new era of accounting, reporting, auditing, and analysis in a digital environment.

Much of the information contained in this blog is synthasized, summarized, condensed, better organized and articulated in my book XBRL for Dummies and in the chapters of Intelligent XBRL-based Digital Financial Reporting. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

Entries from November 21, 2010 - November 27, 2010

Ventana: Need for Automation in Creation of SEC XBRL Filings

Ventana Research, in their article XBRL Filing Errors Point to Need for Automation through Technology, points out the need for automation in the process used to create SEC XBRL filings. I agree with Ventana and would go on to say that if one does not have automation then one needs hefty validation in order to detect and correct errors caused by using humans in the process.

The Ventana Research article points to an SEC Staff Observationwhich communicates the results of a review the Commission's Division of Risk, Strategy and Financial Innovation performed. In that review, the SEC staff points out common classes of errors found in SEC XBRL filings.

When one thinks about it, the ultimate test of an SEC XBRL filing is using that filing within some analysis process. Simply comparing two filings from different SEC filers will do the trick.

I will point out two resources which can help you figure out the types of errors you will have to deal with. The first is a model SEC XBRL filing. In particular, this PDFwhich explains the details of the simple filing, helps you see the information integrity issues you need to be sure to watch over. See the notes in that PDF for information.

The second resource is what I call the comparison example. This has three fairly basic sample financial statements. The statements have both positive and negative examples. One thing this shows is the very negative impact of filers creating their own concepts where a concept in the GAAP taxonomy should exist.

The issues SEC filers are bumping into are not all of their own making. Many of the issues come from issues with the US GAAP Taxonomy itself and lack of clarity in the SEC XBRL filing rules.

Like I said above, trying to analyze company information in those SEC XBRL filings is the ultimate test. This is not to say that everything is, or even should be, comparable. This will start the conversation where those in the financial reporting supply chain will discuss these sorts of issues.

Posted on Wednesday, November 24, 2010 at 07:17AM by