Digital Financial Reporting

For years people involved with XBRLhave said, "XBRL will be easier to use when XBRL disappears behind the scenes..." Are you seeing XBRL disappear behind the scenes in the software you are using?

What if the XBRL US GAAP Taxonomy "disappeared" altogether?  What do I mean by that? We don't need XBRL, what we need is what XBRL provides. Think about watching TV if people still do that today. I really don't watch TV much, but I do watch the digital recording of the PBS News Hour any time I want, not just at 6:00 PM after I have rushed home from the YMCA from my workout so that I don't miss it.

Take a close look at the little US GAAP Taxonomy Reorganization which I created. It is not that great, I know.  I wish I were a better programmer.  XBRL is disappearing a little. But consider this:

• List of Objects: That list provides the collections of objects in the US GAAP Taxonomy in a flat list. The objects are a little better than XBRL terminology.
• HTML Information for an Object: This, which you can get to from the list above by clicking on the HTML link, is simply a listing of information about an object. This is a rendering of information, no XBRL involved.
• XML Information for an Object: This is just like the link above, except rather than providing the information to you in HTML so you can read it, this provides the information in XML so that a computer application can read it.  This is a pseudo-web service, WSDL. Not sure I have the syntax perfectly correct.  This is not XBRL either.

Does it really matter what form the US GAAP Taxonomy is in when software vendors receive it for use? When it is created it is created in software which stores the XBRL taxonomy information within a relational database.  XBRL is only generated to make the taxonomy available to others.  Those that use the taxonomy tend to work with it as XBRL it seems.  But it seems to me from what I am doing is the taxonomy is actually much easier to use in pretty much any other format that XBRL.

XBRL is just a means of transporting or exchanging the information the US GAAP Taxonomy contains. When you add additional information, for example see these key ratios, you may or may not use XBRL for this information.  XBRL does have some advantages because you can exchange the information with others. But there are other data formats.  Relational databases is a very popular one today.

If you use a relational database, why do you still have to use the funky terms used by XBRL? Why can't easier terms be used?

Just rambling.

This document summarizes information which contributes to resolving four significant areas of confusion within SEC XBRL filings. I have provided for each area of confusion facts and evidence which is helpful in trying to figure each of these issues out. I am doing the best that I can to get formal resolution of these issues.

These four areas of confustion were first brought to light on this blog post. Subsequent to that I created a number of what I call exemplars which clearly articulate the issues and resolutions to the issues. I have shared this information with a number of others who have provided feedback which I have incorporated into this document. You can also get to these same exemplars here.

I would encourage others to provide me any feedback they might have which will help resolve these issues consistently across all SEC XBRL financial filings. Alternatively or in addition, I would encourage you to communicate your views to the FASB and XBRL US. The SEC does not seem like they will provide guidance on this type of issue any time soon, but you may want to point out your view to them also.

A greatly updated/enhanced US GAAP Taxonomy Exemplar/Component viewer is available to dink around with. There are lots of things to check out including:

• View the US GAAP taxonomy components by accounting standards codification.
• A sample/prototype applicationfor showing you how to grab pieces of the US GAAP taxonomy within a software application. (NOTE: This is an Excel spreadsheet which contains macros.)
• Remember the Four Areas of Confusion I pointed out.  Here are exemplars which show you options for modeling those pieces of an SEC XBRL filing.
• Connected the XBRL Techniques and Trends Prototypes to this prototype so they are easier to find.
• Broke the larger pieces of the US GAAP Taxonomy into physically smaller pieces to make focusing on a piece easier.
• Renamed the RDF files to be consistent with the terminology used elsewhere.
• Other enhancements.

It is helpful to read this blog post to understand the components I see and to better understand my prototype.

So what is the point of all this?  Well, there are four primary points:

1. Possibilities. This is what using the US GAAP Taxonomy COULD be like. I admit I am not a very good programmer, but I think I am showing some things which could be quite useful to business users.
2. An approach. You cannot easily automatically reorganize the US GAAP Taxonomy as it stands today like I can construct reorganizations.  The reason is that I put in a lot of manual effort to put the consistency into my reorganized version of the US GAAP taxonomy which I needed in order to provide these reorganizations.  If you find these types of organizations useful and feel constrained by the current US GAAP Taxonomy organization, point this out to the FASB.  Ask them to be more explicitly and more consistent.
3. Meta data.  I have added only some meta data to the taxonomy using RDF.  Eventually others will realize the possibilities here.  What can be added is endless really. This meta data will make things even easier.
4. Maintenance.  I contend that maintenance required of software vendors, and the FASB for that matter, when it comes to periodic updates of the US GAAP Taxonomy is made easier by more consistency and explicitness in the taxonomy.

Keep in mind that these ideas are not limited to the US GAAP Taxonomy but are rather practices which will serve any taxonomy one might desire to create.

I realized this weekend that I was looking at something incorrectly. Fact its, I have been looking for a more detailed way to break apart the US GAAP Taxonomy and it had been there all the time, I was not looking at it correctly.  What I did this weekend on my little Exemplars and XBRL Techniques and Trends project helped me realize my mistake.

This link will take you directly to a specific page in my Exemplar viewer. It is the same viewer, just a short cut to a specific contents page.

The piece I had been looking at incorrectly is what I now call the "Component". I used to look at this as an "information model", but an information model is a characteristic of a component. Let me define "Component" in the context of the other pieces in the US GAAP Taxonomy:

• Network: Networks are over rated right now because the SEC interactive data viewer uses them to put pieces of an SEC XBRL filing in certain places using networks. In reality, networks are more syntax than semantics. Networks are needed to separate conflicts which would otherwise occur should they not exist.  People will realize that it is best to ignore this syntax and use other ways to organize the pieces of an XBRL taxonomy.  (Note below how the frame work organizes a flow of the Tables.)
• Table: A Table is an organization of components or concepts which go together in some way for some purpose and share the same [Axis]. What the Table contains or needs to contain defines the table.  Every table should be unique.
• Component: A component is a piece of a Table. A component has an information model, a component is modeled in a specific way.  It could be a [Roll Forward], a [Roll Up], a [Hierarchy], an [Adjustment], a [Grid], a [Text Block].  Maybe more information models will be discovered, but I could model all relations by one of these models as the US GAAP Taxonomy stands today. (Note that [Abstract] is NOT an information model.  My viewer shows two of these, but they are errors and shown to make a point.)
• Concept: A component is made up of concepts.  A concept is the lowest building block of a taxonomy.  Concepts are organized into components.  Components are expressed within a Table.

There is one more term I am using, I really don't particularly care for the term, I am looking for a better term.  But as it stands now, the term I use is "Framework".  A framework some sort of organization of the pieces of the taxonomy, the Tables, Components, Concepts.

In my example, the framework I used is based on the Accounting Standards Codification(ASC).  But I modified those "Topics" to suit my needs a little better.  This is a rendering of that framework with the Tables of the US GAAP Taxonomy "mapped" to each topic. There are other organizations of the information. A "pure" ASC organization, by the Accounting Trends and Techniques table of contents, by the Wiley US GAAP Guide table of concepts, by some industry specific organization, by some disclosure checklist, or by a company's preferred organization.

If you look at the HTML rendering of the framework (the link above), you will notice that it looks a lot like the XBRL taxonomy renderings.  That is becuase it is expressed as an XBRL taxonomy.  Here are the relationships expressed as an XML info set of the business reporting logical model.  I have this expressed in RDF also.  What is the point? The XML and RDF is readable by a computer application.  You can read all this stuff into a software application.  Changing the configuration is as easy as creating presentation relations in an XBRL taxonomy.  This is better done using an XBRL definition linkbase because you can assign roles to better explain the relations.

All this is there.  If the US GAAP Taxonomy were organized in this manner in the first place and if it were more consistent, no one would have to go through all the work I am having to go through to make it consistent and organized in a more reusable form.

If you don't see the difference between my organiztion of select sections of the US GAAP taxonomy and the official "as published" version, compare the two.  The differences will become evident.  Here is an HTML rendering of most of the commercial and industrial companies entry pointof the 2011 US GAAP Taxonomy you can use to come my reorgnaized version with the origional version.