Digital Financial Reporting

The Edgar Filer Manual (EFM) is a great first step, but it is not adequate to create rational, sensible, and logical SEC XBRL financial filings.

This Analysis of Document and Entity Information across 12 SEC XBRL Financial filers points out very common types of rather clear inconsistencies and contradictions found in not only the document and entity information section; but these same sorts of issues exist in virtually ever report component of SEC XBRL financial filings.

Here is one example.  If you look at the SEC Document and Entity Information (DEI) Taxonomy you will see that the SEC provides three specific [Table]s for representing this information:

• Document Information [Table],
• Entities [Table], 
• Entity Listings [Table].

Yet, not one of the 12 SEC filers analyzed breaks the information out in this manner.  They simply pack all the information into one explicitly defined [Table] or implied table.  What that causes is facts such as "Entity Registrant Name" and "Document Type" having characteristics such as "Class of Stock [Axis]" which makes no sense at all.

The crack down is coming.  Don't let SEC XBRL financial filings which you are involved with stand out in a bad day. If you find this analysis helpful, you may also want to check out the following additional information which will help you become an XBRL master craftsman:

• Summary of Analysis of SEC XBRL Financial Filings
• Understanding Characteristics
• Understanding Model Structure and why EFM Rules are Not Sufficient

The following is a definition of a characteristic:

Characteristic: A characteristic describes a fact. A characteristic or distinguishing aspect provides information necessary to describe a fact or distinguish one fact from another fact. A fact may have one or many distinguishing characteristics.

The document Understanding Characteristics explains characteristics, facts, and report components. The document helps you understand characteristics and use a very simple but very commonly mis-modeled report component, document information, to help you understand how to properly represent your financial information using XBRL.