Digital Financial Reporting

XBRL International has published a candidate recommendation for the XBRL Open Information Model (OIM) 1.0.  XBRL International defines OIM as follows:

The Open Information Model provides a syntax-independent model for XBRL data, allowing reliable transformation of XBRL data into other representations.

My personal view here is that this is a good step in the right direction, but there is not really anything that is "XBRL data".  XBRL is a technical syntax.  There is "financial data" and there is "nonfinancial data" and either of those types of data, or information really, can be represented using the XBRL technical syntax.

What is still missing is a global standard conceptual model for business information, including financial information.  Until that global standard model exists, here is the conceptual model that I am using.  I arrived at that by reverse-engineering XBRL-based public company financial reports which were submitted to the SEC.

My conceptual model has a significantly deeper level of meaning than is provided by the XBRL International OIM.