Understanding Reporting Styles
Tuesday, June 12, 2018 at 07:38AM
Charlie in Becoming an XBRL Master Craftsman

I used to call them "reporting frames" or "reporting pallets".  Now I call them "reporting styles".  If you want to understand reporting styles, read this document.

I built the US GAAP reporting styles first.  Now I am creating IFRS reporting styles.  Here are both sets:

One thing that I want to revise is the coding scheme that I use.  The coding scheme that I have now for US GAAP just evolved as I methodically created the reposting styles.  Now that I see all the moving parts, in retrospect I wish I would have done a few things differently.  I am going to make those changes for IFRS.  I have not done so yet, but I am going to go back and revise the coding scheme.

Another thing that I am recognizing is that these fundamental accounting concept relationships and the reporting styles are not only useful for validating XBRL-based reports to make sure they are created correctly; the machine-readable metadata is also useful for extracting information from the filings AND for doing comparisons between IFRS and US GAAP reports.

Here are the mappings for one reporting style for US GAAP. And here are mappings for that same reporting style for IFRS.  The IFRS and US GAAP concepts are different; but the FAC (fundamental accounting concepts) are the same.  Unfortunately, I used different schemas and different namespaces for IFRS and US GAAP.  I will fix that.

So, here are the impute rules and consistency cross check rules: IFRS | US GAAP.  Those rules are essentially the same.  There are a couple of differences because IFRS does not use "commitments and contingencies" and "temporary equity" as US GAAP does.  (Note that extraordinary items was dropped from US GAAP, so that needs to be removed from my FAC concepts and rules.)

Basically, I believe that I can create one set of impute/consistency rules that will work for US GAAP and IFRS for some reporting styles.  For others, probably not.  Time will tell.

Also, note that the versions above use the OLD SYNTAX of articulating the impute and consistency cross check rules.  Note that the rules are basically a controlled natural language with information stored in a text file.

The NEW SYNTAX is 100% pure XBRL. Here is the new style for both US GAAP and IFRS:

If this is a bit confusing, sorry.  I am figuring this stuff out as I create it.  That is how it works being on the leading edge.  Sometimes you have to backtrack because you went the wrong way.

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