XBRL-based Digital Financial Reporting

An audit bundle (a.k.a. set of audit working papers) is effectively the set of working papers that formally documents and is the authoritative evidence of the work performed to support the audit opinion provided on a financial statement issued.  Such an audit bundle could support the work of an independent third-party auditor or an internal auditor (i.e. not independent) which performed that work. An audit bundle has many moving pieces. An audit bundle has things like: engagement letter plan and strategy materiality passements risk assessments internal controls documentation such as flowcharts, narratives, walkthroughs prior period financial statements trial balance prepared by client or adjusted trial balance lead schedule which serves as the backbone for the audit bundle detailed trial balances of the various accounts on the trial balance reconciliations sampling documentation confirmations inventory count observations analytical procedures professional judgments made conclusion...

When an accounting or reporting team " closes the books " they generate an archive of material that supports the financial statement which is generated at the end of a month, or end of a quarter, or end of a fiscal year.  This is sometimes referred to as a " closing book " or " closing binder ". When I began as an auditor for Price Waterhouse back in 1982, computers existed but no one really used them in the accounting process quite yet.  The "closing book" for the clients we audited at that time was usually a drawer in a file cabinet or desk that had a bunch of file folders in them.  Each file folder was for a specific type of supporting item like the trial balance printout from the accounting system, the bank reconciliation(s), trade accounts receivables trial balance, physical inventories that were taken, statements received from the bank that told you how much was still do on a loan, and so forth. Eventually, the closing book was created main...

A financial reporting framework is basically the rulebook a company must follow when it prepares its financial statements. A financial reporting framework tells a reporting economic entity things like what they need to report, how to measure the things they report, how to present that information so that others can understand the information, explains the standard "jargon" used, and how to structure what is reported so that users of the information understand how to use that information. There are many different financial reporting frameworks, two of the most well known and widely used are US GAAP and IFRS . One thing that every financial reporting framework has in common is that they follow the double entry bookkeeping model and the accounting equation in some way, shape, or form. Historically, financial reporting frameworks were documented in books or other documents or now document oriented web pages published from, perhaps, a document oriented content management system...

Common Element is a "financial reporting scheme" is a working proof of concept that is beginning to show the true characteristics of a full financial reporting scheme. This financial reporting scheme builds on SFAC6 and SFAC8 by introducing the notion of the "four statement model" of financial reporting and the notion of articulation ; the fact that all four of the core financial statements are connected mathematically. Here is a reference implementation of a report created using this Common Elements financial  reporting framework . The following video, XBRL-based Digital Financial Report Creation , is a comprehensive example of the capabilities of model-driven XBRL-based digital financial reports. This demonstration uses the Common Elements financial reporting scheme example. Additional Information: Accounting Equation SFAC6 SFAC8 Office of Comptroller of Currency Financial Reporting Framework MINI 2025 Financial Reporting Framework PROOF AASB 1060 Financial Repor...

SFAC8 is a "financial reporting framework" (a.k.a. financial reporting scheme) that is based on the SFAC 8 elements of a financial statement and part of the conceptual framework of US GAAP.  The reason I created this working proof of concept is for testing, experimenting, teaching other accountants, etc.  The intent is to have a relatively small "financial reporting scheme" that achieves a very specific need. Here is a reference implementation of a report created using this SFAC8 "financial reporting framework". There is a very specific purpose for including this SFAC8 financial reporting framework in my examples.  This SFAC8 financial reporting scheme introduces the notion of "extensibility" and "reporting styles".  The SFAC6 working proof of concept expects only one reporting style.  What SFAC8 introduces is the idea that financial statements are not forms. Additional Information: Accounting Equation SFAC6 Common Elements Office of ...

The SFAC6 working proof of concept financial reporting framework example is a small XBRL-based taxonomy (i.e. report model) and a report that I created for testing, understanding, experimentation, teaching others, and other such things.  What I did was represent the 10 elements of a financial report defined by the FASB's SFAC6 which is part of the conceptual framework of US GAAP in the form of a reporting framework to have a very small example to work with.  This builds on the even smaller accounting equation example. Here is a reference implementation of a report created using the working proof of concept SFAC6 "financial reporting framework". (I know this is not a real reporting framework, it is part of the conceptual framework of US GAAP; the point is that I wanted something small and compact to help accountants understand the workings of XBRL-based reports. For the next part of your journey into model-driven financial reporting consider experimenting with one of th...

NotebookLM is a new tool provided by Google. What NotebookLM allows you to do is put a set of information into a "notebook" and then use that specific set of information (i.e. a small language model) with a ChatGPT type interface to ask questions.  It also will summarize the information into various artifacts such as an audio summary, video summary, flash cards, infographic, slide deck, and so forth.  NotebookLM is worth checking out. To experiment with NotebookLM, I fed it this PDF which is the specification for the Standard Business Report Model (SBRM).  I then had it generate an infographic and this was the result: In addition, NotebookLM generated this video which is a video overview of SBRM. Not bad for a machine. Additional Information: Standard Business Report Model (SBRM) Study Group Google’s AI Boss Just Gave a Terrifying Preview of 2026 World Models Paper World Models Explained (Video)

Software as a Service (SaaS) has been around for awhile, made popular by the likes of Salesforce. This article, 111 Unmissable SaaS Statistics for 2025 , has a bunch of information related to SaaS. But there is a new acronym in town, Service as Software (SaS).  Both SaaS and SaS might represent a fundamental shift in how businesses work. The article,  AI leads a service as software paradigm shift , helps to under this new emerging paradigm. The article calls this a $4.6 trillion opportunity. A quick analogy helps you understand the difference between Software as a Service (SaaS) and Service as Software (SaS).  Think of TurboTax. TurboTax is a product of Intuit which someone can use to create a tax return; Intuit provides TurboTax, software, that you can use to create your tax return.  You use the software to perform work. That is SaaS.  With Service as Software, SaS, the product is a completed tax return (the result or outcome), the service, which is created by ...

One day, I was looking out of my office window and I saw this: The ship is the world's largest container ship.  The 4 minute video, How a Steel Box Changed the World: A Brief History of Shipping , explained how the inter-model shipping container , standards ISO 668:2013 and ISO 1496-1:2013, changed the world. This 10 minute video, How Container Ships Work , digs into the details the efficiencies realized from using shipping containers. Standards are a set of technical specifications that provide or intend to provide a common design for a product or process.  Standardization can be across organizations or even within an organization. The Harvard Business Review article, The Globalization of Markets , the author asserts that "well-managed companies have moved from emphasis on customizing items to offering globally standardized products that are advanced, functional, reliable-and low priced. Multinational companies that concentrated on idiosyncratic consumer preferences have beco...

Termboard seems to be a really useful software application. Here is Termboard in Github.  This set of generic terms is an example of what you can do with Termboard. Here are some video tutorials. Here is a quick start guide. Here is the Termboard manual . So apparently, you cannot actually publish a "Termboard" that you create.  You can generate an HTML page ( like this which I created ), PDF, PowerPoint.  You can also generate Excel, JSON-LD,  Turtle; however, not all the information is provided in the export so you cannot really share all the information from a model.  That said, there are a lot of really good ideas in Termboard. Here is a discussion on LinkedIn which walks through using Termboard with ChatGPT. Here are some examples: Semantic modeling taxonomy Generic terms User Story template Here is a little test set of terms I am fiddling with to understand how Termboard works. Additional Information: Accounting, the Language of Business CDB Knowled...

Accounting and audit is about to get a significant productivity boost.  How? The productivity boost will come from the capability to create a human-machine team using knowledge based systems  (a.k.a. what I call a mindful machine for accountancy ) effectively. Intelligence and work capabilities of accountants and auditors will be amplified .  Hybrid artificial intelligence, grounded in rules-based artificial intelligence and supplemented by probability-based artificial intelligence, and operated by a skilled, experienced accountant/auditor will make "the average accountant" above average. A super accountant/auditor.  Service as Software (SaS) will be a new way to deliver professional services.  Entire workflows will have significant reductions in the "friction" that exists today. Quality will skyrocket and attaining that level of quality will cost less.  That is the definition of productivity . It is tempting to think that achieving this productivity boost...