Digital Financial Reporting

This is a very useful XBRL Taxonomy Library provided by CoreFiling.  What would be even better is if they included all metadata for each of these taxonomies, including business rules.

What would even be better than that would be to be able to edit (i.e. extend) the taxonomies via some sort of a "wiki" mechanism.

If you understand how to make accounting process automation and process robotics work; then you recognize the need for metadata to make that automation work.  (If you don't understand how to make this work, then you will want to check out Closing the Skills Gap.)

If you want to get started with accounting process automation and process robotics; here is some high-quality, proven metadata that you can use.  There are basically two sets of metadata.

• Fundamental accounting concept relations continuity cross checks: That set of metadata is what makes these quarterly quality checks work.
• Reporting checklist and disclosure mechanics: That set of metadata is what makes this work for XBRL Cloud and Pesseract which is a noncommercial working proof of concept. (For more information on this, see here.)

Here is the metadata:

• Fundamental accounting concept relations continuity cross checks: (the OLDER version is not pure XBRL; the NEWER version is pure, standard XBRL)
  • Older version: (Human readable | Machine readable)
  • Newer version: (Human readable | Machine readable)
• Reporting checklist: (pure standard XBRL)
  • ONLY version: (Human readable | Machine readable)
• Disclosure mechanics: (pure standard XBRL)
  • ONLY version: (Human readable | Machine readable)

Available implementations:

• Commercial: XBRL Cloud
• Noncommercial: Pesseract (working proof of concept)
• Noncommercial: Excel prototypes for fundamental accounting concept relations
• Commercial: FlexRule(only certain reporting styles of fundamental accounting concept relations)

You can implement accounting process automation and process robotics using proprietary approaches such as a proprietary rules engine, the semantic web stack of technologies, or the XBRL stack of technologies.  My personal preference is the XBRL stack of technologies extended with additional non-standard functionality to overcome the known deficiencies of an XBRL Formula Processor.

This business logic gap analysis can help you understand which approach might best suit your needs.

To understand more possibilities, see the document Blueprint for Creating Zero Defect XBRL-based Financial reports.  If you want some more tips and tricks, see Putting the Expertise into an XBRL-based Knowledge Based System for Creating Financial Reports. If you want all the details, then you will want to check out Intelligent XBRL-based Digital Financial Reporting which basically has an accumulation of my notes for the past 20 years of working with XBRL.

The document; Closing the Skills Gap: Specifics as to what professional accountants need to learn to survive and thrive in the digital age of accounting, reporting, and auditing; is my best attempt at summarizing information which I wish I would have known 20 years ago when I started fiddling around with what became XBRL.

I tried to provide the least amount of what I would consider to be a complete set of basic information a professional accountant would need to correctly understand "the artificial intelligence revolution".  Here is the executive summary:

• Changes that will be brought about by what is being called "the artificial intelligence revolution" among other terms will unquestionably be significant.  It is not useful to overstate or understate the impact.
• A gap exists between what professional accountants understand today and what they need to understand to survive and thrive in the digital age of accounting, reporting, and auditing.
• This gap in understanding capabilities of technologies such as artificial intelligence makes it difficult for professional accountants to grasp the changes that are not only inevitable but are imminent.
• Undergraduate and graduate college curriculums need to be updated for these changes.  Continuing professional education offered likewise needs to be updated.
• The "learn to code" hysteria is not the right answer.  Having professional accountants become more proficient with information technology or computer skills is likewise not the right answer for most professional accountants.
• Computers work per the rules of mathematics.  Mathematics works per the rules of logic.  The primary gap that needs to be filled is for professional accountants to gain a sound understanding of how computers actually work and the skills necessary to leverage these very useful tools of the digital age of accounting, reporting, and auditing appropriately. Understanding the basics of logic is the key to prospering in the digital age.
• Business logic can be used by professional accountants and other business professionals who have little or no formal training in logic.  A sound understanding of business logic enables effective communications with information technology professionals.
• The artificial intelligence revolution will not only impact accounting professionals, rather all business professionals will be impacted.  Closing this knowledge gap sooner rather than later can help position professional accountants as leaders for the digital age of accounting, reporting, and auditing.

Essentially, what professional accountants and other business professionals need to learn to do is to "think critically" about data and information. What I mean by that is that they need to be able to be consciously conscious when working with data and information.  They need to be rigorous, deliberate, and methodical.

Any comments or other feedback would be gladly accepted.

This ZIP archive contains a little Microsoft Access 2010 Database application (prototype) that I created.  If you don't have Microsoft Access 2010 or greater, you can download a runtime version of Access here.

This video shows you what the application does.  Basically, the application provides a number of best practice examples of US GAAP disclosures.  I have provided 33 disclosures.

What the application does is let you look at best practice disclosure examples like these for public companies that have provided that disclosure, like these.

Why this is interesting is that you can easily extract specific examples from XBRL-based financial reports of public companies that file with the SEC.  I am showing 33 disclosures, but you can do the same thing for EVERY disclosure.

I have a much, much better application that I created, but it uses XBRL Cloud's web service.  But to use that, you need a username and a password which you have to get from XBRL Cloud.  I removed all the functionality that I had used from XBRL Cloud and therefore all the features provided by XBRL Cloud, such as the ability to click on all elements and get Accounting Standards Codification references, concept definitions, etc.

What I want to do is create a more complete version of this application and make it available to intermediate accounting students.  If anyone is interested in helping out with this little project, let me know.