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 March 4, 2012 - March 10, 2012

Updated Financial Report Sematics and Dynamics Theory

Raynier van Egmond and I have updated the Financial Report Semantics and Dynamics Theory and a new version is available. Most of the changes were correcting typos and other minor adjustments.  This is a summary of the more significant changes:

  • A different document style was used.
  • The notion of a "property" was added.  Components, facts, characteristics, parenthetical explanations, and relations each have properties.
  • Work relating to verification of a financial report is being incorporated; the biggest addition here are the definitions of terms which constitute a "true and fair" financial report: completeness, correctness, consistency, accuracy, fidelity, and integrity.  (See section 4.1)
  • A "Future Work" section was added, making it more explicit that there are additional semantics which would build on the eight tests we ran against SEC XBRL financial filings.

No one really came up with anything credible which refutes this theory. One person called the theory a slogan but gave no credible justification for that view.

Posted on Thursday, March 8, 2012 at 08:45AM by Registered CommenterCharlie in , | CommentsPost a Comment | EmailEmail | PrintPrint

Resources for Exploring SEC XBRL Financial Filings

Periodically I take a look at SEC XBRL financial filings in order to better understand those filings.  I have a number of resources which I use.  The filings which I am analyzing are 10-K, 10-K/A, 10-Q, and 10-Q/A filings made between November 1, 2011 and February 29, 2012 per the SEC RSS feed archive. The total number of filings which I obtained was 4416.

Here are some of these resources which you might find helpful in order to explore and better understand SEC XBRLfinancial filings:

  • Excel spreadsheet with all 4416 filings. Basic Excel spreadsheet with all the filings, information relating to core financial report semantics, and other information.
  • Excel-based taxonomy explorer. Excel spreadsheet with macros which allows you to load filer taxonomy into an Excel spreadsheet, view the taxonomy within a tree view control, explore various lists of filers (prototype).
  • HTML flat list of filings.  Flat list of filings, links to the filing on the SEC web site and to the filer taxonomy rendered as a flat HTML web page.
  • Viewer format.  A table of contents which goes down the page, you can view either the SEC interactive data view or the filer taxonomy as a flat HTML page.
  • Computer readable XML file (RDF format). Computer readable XML file which can be used to read the filings, the relations infosets which contains taxonomy information.
Posted on Monday, March 5, 2012 at 11:58AM by Registered CommenterCharlie in , | CommentsPost a Comment | EmailEmail | PrintPrint