Verifying that SEC XBRL Financial Filings are Correct
Wednesday, February 15, 2012 at 08:59AM
Charlie in Digital Financial Reporting

Assurance on XBRL instance document: A conceptual framework of assertions, by Rajendra P. Srivastava and Alexander Kogan which was published by the International Journal of Accounting Information Systems concludes:

we come to a conclusion that there seems to be a general lack of conceptual framework of assertions that would make the assurance process effective and efficient

While you may not be interested in having your SEC XBRL financial filing go through a third party assurance process to verify it is a true representation of what is also in the HTML version; you will want verify for your own edification that it is correctly created.

This paper provides a list of many of the things you will want to do in order to make sure your SEC XBRL financial filing is correct; but it points out that it is not necessarily a comprehensive list. 

The AICPA's Statement of Position (SOP) 09-1 also provides a list, but that is likewise only a partial list.

Other partial lists exist.

But where is the definitive, comprehensive set of detailed procedures which, if executed appropriately, would yield a verifiability correct true representation of a SEC XBRL financial filing?

Stay tuned...I am working on that comprehensive set of detailed procedures.

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