Digital Financial Reporting

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.