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 April 8, 2012 - April 14, 2012

Guide to Verification of an SEC XBRL Financial Report

In order for an accountant or accounting team creating an SEC XBRL financial report, a manager or audit committee to sign off on such report, or a third party accountant to sign off that such a filing is appropriate; each of these business users needs to be able to verify for themselves that the SEC XBRL financial report is a true and fair representation of the reporting entity's financial information.

In order to help business users understand how to achieve this success I have put together the following document: Guide to Verification of an SEC XBRL Financial Report. 

Over the past four months I have analyzed multiple processes for used by those creating SEC XBRL financial reports.  I have analyzed the AICPA SOP 09-1 which provides guidance in this area and analyzed other's analysis of this guidance.

A big issue today is that SEC XBRL financial report creation and verification software still requires business users to have too much XBRL technical expertise to be successful. While success can be possible using existing software, the tasks and steps which accountants need to execute need to be made easier.  The good news is that they can be and I believe that over the coming months will be made substantially easier.  How?

  • Focusing more on business meaning and less on technical syntax
  • Software vendors empowering business users with the features and functionality which they need to be successful
  • Increasing pressure on quality and an increasing ability of business users to differentiate good and not so good SEC XBRL financial reports
  • Increased maturity of guidance provided to accountants
  • Existence of many, many examples which now exist in the SEC Edgar system
Posted on Wednesday, April 11, 2012 at 04:04PM by Registered CommenterCharlie in | CommentsPost a Comment | EmailEmail | PrintPrint