Digital Financial Reporting

The Digital Financial Report Explorer (Beta) is a Microsoft.Net software platform for working with repositories of financial information.  You can download an explore a version of this platform which works as n Excel add-in.  The application has been tested with Excel 2010 and likely works with Excel 2013 but has not been tested as well using that version.

The Digital Financial Report Explorer was created by Hamed Mousavi, a software developer, and myself.  The platform provides general functionality to query a financial information repository filled from XBRL-based financial report information.  Currently, two repositories are supported: SECXBRL.info and EDINET.info both provided by 28msec.  Support is planned for other information repositories including XBRL Cloud's EDGAR Report Information REST Web Service.

To download and try out the Digital Financial Report Explorer (Beta) for free, please do the following:

1. Close Excel.
2. Uninstall any prior versions of the Digital Financial Report Explorer you have installed. (Control panel, Programs and Features)
3. Download and then run this Microsoft Installer which will install a new Excel add-in.
4. After the installer as completed, the add-in is now assailable for use.

The Digital Financial Report Explorer adds a new tab to the toolbar ribbon called "DFR Explorer":

You don't need to get a SECXBRL.info authorization token, the application provides a default authorization token complements of SECXBRL.info.  However, if you register with SECXBRL.info, you can have complete access to all financial information in the repository for commercial or noncommercial use. If you have troubles getting an access token, use this token (copy and paste it into the application):

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Using the application is rather straight forward.  The information below will help you understand the capabilities of the application:

Login to multiple repositories:  This may seem simplistic, but this really is a big deal.  You will be able to log into the repositories of any number of software vendors that provide financial repository information.  This leverages the global standard nature of XBRL.  Not only that, but imagine being able to login to multiple repositories at the same time and then be able to query across repositories using a single user interface!  That aspect is coming soon.

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Repository metadata: Work with repository metadata. This is not just metadata provided by the XBRL-based financial report. While that metadata is provided, additional metadata and meta-metadata is provided.  Be sure to check out the Taxonomy icon, the Additional Metadata Icon, and the Business rules icon (coming soon), and the filtering capabilities that help you sort through all that metadata:

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Entity perspective: You can look at information from the perspective of a reporting entity.  Again, all public companies that file a 10-K or 10-Q are available from SECXBRL.info. 

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Disclosure perspective:  Where the application becomes very interesting is when you start querying for components of a of a financial report across many financial reports.  For example, compare how different public companies provide the same disclosure using this functionality:

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Report library and Query library: Create and maintain your own library of reports or library of queries. You can exchange entire sets of queries using standard RSS library formats.  You can not only run queries and reports within the application, but you can copy and paste the link to a report or query into an email, web site, or other location.

Ad hoc Query, load results into Excel: Using the functionality of the SECXBRL.info platform (i.e. we did not build this ourselves, we are leveraging the platform) you can load any information you desire into Excel.  We provide fact-type queries which you can use for experimentation:

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Remember, the Digital Financial Report Explorer (Beta) is more of a demonstration of what is provided by the SECXBRL.info repository platform and the Microsoft.Net components used to create the Digital Financial Report Explorer itself.  You can create your own products in a fraction of the time and expense.

And this is only the start.  There are many, many additional high-level components on their way.  To get a better understanding of what all this means, be sure to read through these resources which helps you understand new capabilities that are coming to financial report creation and financial information consumption software.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that you have to build everything from scratch yourself.  Let the platform take care of the hard work, you do the rest to add real value.  Digital isn't software, is a mindset!  Create stories which show information from a financial report across reports. 

Any set of concepts that you want for any periods that you want.

Basic sets of concepts. Or come up with your own interesting combinations! Change the format from JSON, to CSV, to XML, to HTML.

Got any good ideas you want implemented?  Send them our way.

An XBRL study group in Brazil has organized it's information about XBRL into an XBRL Framework.

As I understand it, this study group is led by professor Dr. Paulo Silva who is also a financial analyst of the Centeral Bank of Brazil.  The focus of the group is XBRL computer projects which have been developed by master and doctoral students.  All projects and scientific papers are free and open source and our scientific paper.

A kluge, a term from the engineering and computer science world, refers to something that is convoluted and messy but gets the job done.

Anyone can create something that is complex.  But it is hard work to create something that is simple.  As Steve Jobs put it, creating something that is simple and elegant to use is the ultimate sophistication.

"It takes a lot of hard work," Jobs said, "to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions." As the headline of Apple's first marketing brochure proclaimed in 1977, "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

Simplistic is dumbing down a problem in order to make the problem easier to solve.  Simplistic ignores complexity in order to solve a problem which can get you into trouble.  Simplistic is over-simplifying.  Simplistic means that you have a naïve understanding of the world, you don't understand the complexities of the world.  Removing or forgetting complicated things does not allow for the creation of a real world solution that actually work.

Simple is something that is not complicated, that is easy to understand or do.  Simple means without complications.  An explanation of something can be consistent with the real world, consider all important subtleties and nuances, and still be simple, straight forward, and therefore easy to understand.

Complexity can never be removed from a system, but complexity can be moved.  The Law of Conservation of Complexity states:

"Every application has an inherent amount of irreducible complexity. The only question is: Who will have to deal with it-the user, the application developer, or the platform developer?"

Another version of the law of conservation of complexity:

"Every application has an inherent amount of complexity that cannot be removed or hidden. Instead, it must be dealt with, either in product development or in user interaction."

Irreducible complexity is explained as follows: A single system which is composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.

So for example, consider a simple mechanism such as a mousetrap.  That mousetrap is composed of several different parts each of which is essential to the proper functioning of the mousetrap: a flat wooden base, a spring, a horizontal bar, a catch bar, the catch, and staples that hold the parts to the wooden base.  If you have all the parts and the parts are assembled together properly, the mousetrap works as it was designed to work.

But say you remove one of the parts of the mousetrap.  The mousetrap will no longer function as it was designed, it will not work.  That is irreducible complexity: the complexity of the design requires that it can't be reduced any farther without losing functionality.

As pointed out in the document Understanding Blocks, Slots, Templates, and Exemplars, technical details can be hidden from business professionals using clever techniques.  Coming up with the clever techniques can be a challenge.  But the payoff is simplicity and elegance.

For example, the notion of a fact table explains the interaction between networks, hypercubes or [Table]s, dimensions or [Axis], [Member]s, primary items or [Line Items], [Abstract]s, and Concepts. As pointed out in an analysis of 6,751 XBRL-based financial reports submitted to the SEC,

• 99.9% of public companies consistently follow the structural relations between these report elements (Networks, [Table]s, [Axis], [Member]s, [Line Items], [Abstract]s, Concepts
• 98.7% follow a set of fundamental accounting concepts and relations between those concepts, that percentage continues to push toward 100%
• 100.0% of the pieces of a financial report are identifiable as either a
  • roll up (about 16%),
  • roll forward (about 5%), 
  • text block (about 54%)
  • hierarchy (about 24%)

Not a lot of software products are leveraging this information, but the number is slowly increasing.  Once software developers figure out how to leverage this information, business professionals will begin to see the power of digital financial reports.

Simple is elegant!

Elegant: Characterized by highly skilled or intricate art, tasteful beauty of manner, form, or style; excellently made or formed; simple and clever.