Big Idea for 2025: Semantic Accounting and Audit Working Papers

I began my career in accounting in 1982 as an auditor with Price Waterhouse when accounting and audit working papers and schedules were 100% paper.  But within three months, I was creating many of those same working papers and schedules first in VisiCalc and then Lotus 1-2-3.  I would create those schedules and working papers electronically, then print them out, and tape them into the bundle of paper that supported our audits. The Compaq luggable computer was invented and electronic spreadsheets where even more compelling.

Today, accounting and audit working papers tend to be 100% electronic proxies for those paper documents created in Excel or some other electronic spreadsheet, Word or some other word processing document, PDF generated from some word processing document, and maybe HTML.  All of these are presentation oriented proxies for documents and none of them is truly understandable by a computer based process.

The next step in the evolution of accounting and audit working papers and schedules will be for those accounting/auditing/analysis artifacts to be understandable by machine-based processes, truly understandable; these accounting artifacts will be proxies for databases and knowledge bases.  These artifacts will be able to be interrogated using machine-based processes or by human-based processes or a combination of the two.


Think semantic spreadsheets or what others refer to as "knowledge graphs".  To get a good idea of what I am talking about, see the document, Special Purpose Logical Spreadsheets for Accountants and Case for Semantic Oriented Accounting and Audit Working Papers.  To understand my experimentation, please have a look at Theory of Semantic Accounting and Audit Working Paper Archetypes.

Trying to understand what I am trying to explain by using your current map of the world will be unsatisfying.  As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella put it, "the 'work' in 'workflow' will be going through a fundamental change.


I have already created some semi-working prototypes of semantic oriented accounting and audit working papers and schedules using XBRL.  I can fundamentally interact with those working prototypes using general, off-the-shelf software products that understand the XBRL technical syntax.  Sure, they are perhaps rudimentary in some ways or many ways.  But then, the Wright Flyer was not the SR-71 Blackbird either.  Over time, all this will evolve.

As I see it, the status quo is doomed.

Based on what I have learned about XBRL-based financial reporting and knowledge graphs over the past 25 years; this is what I know to be true.
Brick by brick, semantic accounting and audit working papers will be built out.

A brick wall is made out of exactly two things: bricks and mortar.  But a brick wall created by a master craftsman/craftswoman, or mason, and a brick wall created by a “weekend warrior” with no working knowledge of masonry and little skills or know-how will be very different. A mason is a professional builder of brick walls, a master craftsmen.  Master craftsmen are created and that process takes time and effort.

As legendary Canadian hockey star Wayne Gretzky put it, "I skate to where the puck is going, not to where it has been."

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