XBRL-based Digital Financial Reporting

Way back in like 2012 when XBRL-based reports were first starting to show up in the SEC's EDGAR system, I started trying to extract information from those reports.  Being an accountant, I realized that not every reporting entity provides information in one consistent way.  I tried to create one Excel spreadsheet for extracting information from ALL XBRL-based reports submitted to the SEC but I could not make that work because of my limited programming skills.  For example, trying to make the code work for when a multi-step income statement was used (e.g. reports gross profit) and when a single-step income statement was used could work...until I tried to cover all styles of income statements; and then I became overwhelmed. That is when I changed to creating separate Excel spreadsheets for each style of reporting. This blog post has like 13 such Excel spreadsheets for extracting information from XBRL-based reports . That worked, but that approach is not flexible or practical. This is

Someone pointed out that a knowledge graph is just a fancy type of database.  Not a relational database, rather a graph database.  Unlike a relational database that structures data into tables, a graph database structures data into a graph.  Doing this enables new types of pattern-based capabilities with no programming overhead necessary. Think about something.  Why would ISO which has the SQL standard for relational databases spend the time to create a GQL standard for graph databases?  Why would they take the time to do that? (For the answer, see page 11, the section Relational Databases Lack Relationships ) XBRL is in effect a global standard approach to representing a knowledge graph. XBRL is an Extra Fancy Knowledge Graph .  Now, you could represent a knowledge graph using RDF, GQL, SQL, Prolog, Datalog, JSON, JSON-LD, or probably there are even more possibilities.  All of these possible approaches can be grouped into three buckets : Semantic web stack (W3C standard) Graph dat

There is no one formal definition of informatics as far as I can tell.  This is one definition that I synthesized from other definitions that I like: Informatics  relates to the intersection of information, people, and technology and the practical application of computational systems; understanding how people will "live" in the digital realm within some specific area of knowledge that makes sense to users of that technology. Informatics is the conscious management of information, knowledge, and accumulated knowledge Informatics spans the knowledge accumulation process of an individual member (learning) organization (institutionalized knowledge) area of knowledge (professional knowledge; subject matter) Informatics has theories, principles, frameworks, and strategies that can be applied to solve information management problems Informatics is about harnessing the power and possibility of digital technology to transform data and information into knowledge that people use every d

Per Wikipedia, informatics is used synonymously to mean information systems , information science ,  information theory , information engineering , information technology , information processing, computer science , information and computer science , computer science and engineering , and "modern computer science". Huh. Ok, let me look at information theory.  Information theory relates to the transmission, processing, extraction, understanding, and utilization of information.  Information theory relates to the reduction of uncertainty in that endeavor; maximizing "signal" and reducing or removing "noise" which might cause the signal to be misinterpreted. The following seem to be the logical patterns within information theory: Logical statements : Logical statements are the building blocks of information.  Information is comprised of some set of true logical statements. For example, "The sky is blue." is a logical statement. (Note that a statemen

Informatics is about the practical use of information technology within some domain. Informatics is about the intersection between technology, people, and information.   Accounting informatics professionals  likely have a blend of accounting/reporting/audit/analysis skills, accounting information system skills, business systems analysis skills, knowledge engineering and information modeling skills, and information technology skills. As described by the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University Indianapolis ; Informatics is about harnessing the power and possibility of digital technology to transform data and information into knowledge that people use every day.  It is about humans using computing technology in the best and more efficient way possible.  The Luddy School uses the analogy of an architect: With the right hardware (construction materials) and software (knowledge), engineers can create a building that is structurally sound. But the archit

Personally, I knew XBRL-based digital financial reporting was going to be important in 1998 .  Honestly, I did not realize how important; I gained that understanding later. Now, everyone and their brother/sister seems to be increasingly interested in XBRL-based reporting. Today, you have a bunch of people that call themselves "XBRL reporting experts".  And they are experts; but experts in the creation of XBRL-based reports that have serious flaws.  You get what you do. Rather than going down the goat path that others went down; I took a different path.  I spent 20 years trying to figure out how to do XBRL-based financial reporting right.  Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.  During my journey to understanding XBRL-based financial reporting I maintained a blog which was, in essence, my lab notebook .  Every now and then, I synthesized what I had learned into Mastering XBRL-based Digital Financial Reporting .  If I were to have to point you to one do

A disclosure is something that is disclosed within a financial report.  To understand the disclosure, it is best to first understand the notion of the block . If you understand atomic design methodology you will understand what blocks and disclosures are useful.  Effectively, blocks and disclosures are logical assemblies of facts within a report or some set of reports. But if you try and search the US GAAP or IFRS XBRL taxonomies for disclosures you will be unsatisfied by the result.  Why? Because neither the US GAAP nor IFRS XBRL taxonomies has the notion of "disclosure" and provides no identifiers which enables software to identify, find, and work with disclosures.  Further, neither the Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) for US GAAP or IFRS Accounting Standards Navigator  for IFRS provide identifiers for disclosure or name disclosures. However that is exactly what is necessary to get a machine such as a software application to be able to identify and work with speci

EFRAG , the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group, published a DRAFT XBRL taxonomy for sustainability reporting . I published a quick and dirty human readable view of that XBRL taxonomy . That EFRAG XBRL taxonomy is consistent with the US GAAP and IFRS XBRL taxonomies, which is good.  But the US GAAP, IFRS, EFRAG, and other such XBRL taxonomies don't seem to be seen as machine readable artifacts.  The focus seems to be on humans reading stuff. This is not surprising.  Accidental taxonomists seem to be creating these business reporting technical artifacts. The IFRS Foundation is also publishing ESG disclosures .  Here are some sample reports provided using the SASB (now IFRS Foundation) sustainability reporting XBRL taxonomy: Esty  (Workiva Viewer) GAP  (IRIS Carbon Viewer) Moody's (Workiva Viewer) Additional Information : Seattle Method Value Explained Two AASB 1060 Financial Reports to Fiddle With EFRAG (Wikipedia)