ISO/IEC 15944 - Accounting and Economic Ontology Implementation

Double entry bookkeeping is a global open standard mathematical model. That standard model, which is part of the universal technology of accountability, was documented by Luca Pacioli in 1494 and is considered part of the language of business.  

As I point out in the Essence of Accounting, bookkeeping and accounting are not the same thing.  Bookkeeping is a mechanical process of recording transactions. Bookkeeping is an action; it is a record keeping process. Accounting is about determining what constitutes the transactions that are then recorded per the bookkeeping process.  Accounting is the language used by bookkeeping. Accounting is a communications tool. Accounting is a classification system.

Financial reporting schemes, like US GAAP and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), specify those classifications among other things.

Small proprietorships and  partnerships, medium size corporations, and large multinational corporations all  use this same system.  Some argue that it is this system of bookkeeping, accounting, and financial reporting that enables the global multinational corporation to even exist.

The "stuff" that goes into this system is business transactions or business events really.  In 1982, the notion of the business event was documented by Bill McCarthy in his Resources, Events, Agents (REA) framework.

In 2015, that REA framework became the basis for ISO/IEC standard 15944-4:2015 Part 4: Business transaction scenarios - Accounting and economic ontology.

This ISO/IEC standard is FREE TO DOWNLOAD!  As I understand it, this is one of the very few free ISO/IEC standards.

I downloaded that ISO/IEC standard and represented the terms defined by that accounting and economic ontology in XBRL.

Over the coming years; small, medium, and large economic entities are going to create "semantic layers" or create "enterprise knowledge graphs" or do other things to deal with their "integration hairballs" or take other steps to leverage artificial intelligence.

It just seems to make a lot of sense to me that these economic entities are going to want to leverage existing standards such as this ISO/IEC standard rather than invent their own semantics.  It just seems to me that, at least at the high level; (a) economic entities have already standardized a lot of their information so that they can do things like external financial reporting and (b) not leveraging this will make their lives more difficult.

Industry initiatives such as the Open Semantic Interchange (OSI) show that these efforts are picking up steam.

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