XBRL-based Digital Financial Reporting

Precision machines need to be calibrated.  Accuracy and precision are not the same thing. Per Wikipedia, Accuracy  is how close a given set of measurements (observations or readings) are to their true value. Precision is how close the measurements (observations or readings) are to each other. Accuracy is measured using a series of specific tests under controlled conditions to determine if a specific machine is operating within expected tolerances. Tolerance is an allowed amount of variation from a specified quantity.  Tolerances are set and serve as a standard between which results must fall.  There are many tests that can help determine the accuracy of a machine; remember that accuracy is not a standalone value, but rather the summation of these specifications. A financial report tells a story.  That story must be "true and fair".  Precision is the measure of how true and fair that story is to the real economic entity that the story is about. A finan...

Accountants have a dirty little secret.  It is called the " plug ".  There is another fancier term for the plug: "by induction".  The "plug" has big problems. In a properly functioning accounting system there would never be the need to "plug" numbers.  The process of "plugging" involves inserting or adjusting numbers (i.e. unsupported adjustment) to whatever is needed to make something work the way it should work. For example, if you had two systems that should always agree and for some reason they don't in fact agree; you have to adjust one of the two systems to make the balances of the two systems match. The practice of plugging is commonly used in the "eleventh hour" when you are trying to get a report out but something is not working and the "debits" are not agreeing with the "credits" or something is not adding up correctly and if you issued the report as is you would look a bit foolish because thi...

Data silos are not good. They cause lots of problems like inconsistencies between different silos, increased data management costs, difficulty in connecting data across siloes, difficulty in understanding and using data, and other such issues.  In the new era of artificial intelligence, bad data can be particularly problematic. Barc explains data governance thus: Data Governance includes the people, processes and technologies needed to manage and protect the company’s data assets in order to guarantee generally understandable, correct, complete, trustworthy, secure and discoverable corporate data. The topics encompassed by data governance are shown in the following graphic provided by Barc and include: Amazon Web Services (AWS) explains data governance thus: Data governance includes the processes and policies that ensure data is in the proper condition to support business initiatives and operations. Modern organizations collect data from various sources at scale to enhance oper...