Understanding Blocks, Slots, Templates, and Exemplars
Monday, May 11, 2015 at 12:31PM
Charlie in Becoming an XBRL Master Craftsman

A little application called Scratch which was created by MIT shows those who have a little imagination where digital financial reporting is headed;

(Click image to go to Scratch website)

If you need a little more help getting your head around that idea, the document Understanding Blocks, Slots, Templates and Exemplars helps business professionals begin to understand how digital financial reporting will eventually work.

Software engineers use patterns to implement software.  A financial report is not one big thing, it is a many little things.  The notion of block, slot, template, and exemplar help give software engineers things to work with to implement sophisticated software that is easy for business professionals to use.

Imagine accounting professionals interacting with this:

(Click image for larger view)

Technical?  Absolutely that is technical.  Just not information technology-technical; it is accounting-technical.  And that is exactly what professional accountants shoud be working with, accounting related stuff.

Can anyone explain to me why digital financial reporting software cannot work has I have described in the document?  Everything is glued together with business rules understood by professional accountants.  Software does more to help accounting professionals get things right, rather than give them more opportunities to make mistakes.

Why can't this work?

More information:

Article originally appeared on XBRL-based structured digital financial reporting (http://xbrl.squarespace.com/).
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