XBRL-based Digital Financial Reporting

If you go to Wikipedia and search on " financial statement "; you will see this example of a financial statement for Wachovia National Bank from 1906 : I took this rather basic, simple, straight forward example and represented it in XBRL using Pacioli.ai 's cloud based software application Luca Suite.  Here is the XBRL instance of that report.  Attached to that XBRL instance is the XBRL taxonomy schema and linkbases. There are several ways to have a look at what I created.  The first is a report viewer provided by Luca Suite, which you can see here . Another way to look at the report is using an Inline XBRL viewer. Here is an open source Inline XBRL viewer provided via Arelle which is supported by Luca . Another way to view the report is simply has an HTML page generated by Luca Suite.  Here is that HTML page . Verification can be performed on the report using Pacioli.  Here is the technical analysis provided by Pacioli .  Using that technical analysis you...

Think of the process used for creating a financial report.  Is there, perhaps, a way to improve that process?  Is there a completely new paradigm that could be used to create financial reports?  What I have found is that people tend to believe that the way they do something is the way they MUST do that thing.  As is said, "If it isn't broken, then don't fix it." Well, is the process of creating financial reports broken?  Is audit broken?  Is financial analysis broken?  Here is some information to consider: Problems caused by silos Problems caused by documents Problems caused by semantics Problems caused by spreadsheets I will look at each of those four bullet points in order. Problems caused by silos The first problem I see is the problem caused by silos. The problem is that information used to create financial reports, perform audits, perform financial analysis tends to be created by a number of different parties, the information tends to exist in its...

The Seattle Method is a tested, proven, industrial strength, good practices-based, standards-based pragmatic approach to creating provably high quality XBRL-based digital information. A new version of the Seattle Method documentation has been made available. This new version provides the following enhancements: Added a few missing sections. References to the most current examples and prototypes. Incorporates feedback received from others. New version of Auditchain Luca provided. Production version on a significantly more powerful server. Enhanced version of Essentials of XBRL-based Digital Financial Reporting that uses Platinum examples and test cases. What I am realizing is that the ideas above are broader than just accountancy; pretty much every area of knowledge has similar issues related to the effective exchange of information and the quality of that information. Additional Information: PLATINUM Use Cases, Test Cases, Conformance Suite PROOF Auditchain Luca Production Version E...

In this blog post I am inventorying the important things that impact information exchange which I can later reassemble and synthesize. Much of this information and thinking is inspired by work of Sean McGrath . Blending Technology and Liberal Arts As Steve Jobs pointed out, there needs to be a proper blending of technology and liberal arts. This applies to hardware, operating systems, and software applications. Direct vs Mediated Communication There are two types of communication: direct and mediated. Direct communication is one person having a conversation with another person; if there is a question about information context, those involved in the communication can directly discuss and resolve any context issues.   Mediated communication is indirect and resolving context issues can be more challenging because parties involved in the communication cannot really have a discussion about the immediate context. Vagueness is the Enemy In an email Sean McGrath said, “Vagueness is the en...

Switzerland has published a revised version of their XBRL taxonomy which appears to be part of a Standard Business Reporting initiative . This blog post provides information about that most recent version. For more information see this . Here is background information for the Swiss CH Taxonomy. I was involved in testing this most current version of the Swiss CH Taxonomy.  What I did was put a copy on my we site and used the taxonomy as if it were being published.  Here is summary information about that Swiss CH Taxonomy: Summary of all Swiss CH Taxonomy artifacts English version of Swiss CH Taxonomy Reference implementation of report Approximately 607,000 small- and medium- sized enterprises could use this XBRL taxonomy to report to the Swiss government. Additional Information : XBRL is an Extra Fancy Knowledge Graph Logic Systems Seattle Method Value Explained (Pillars of Quality and Trustworthiness) Switzerland Mandates Machine Readable Climate Disclosures XBRL Switzerland...

The following is my best effort to define the knowledge graph of a business report from multiple interoperable technical implementations including: XBRL Cloud 28msec Pesseract Auditchain Pacioli Auditchain Luca Suite A business report, including financial reports, are composed of blocks of information that can be identified as specific "disclosures" or in the case of financial reports, financial disclosures. ( Image from Wikicommons ) This same business report model was implemented by five different software vendors and are interoperable.   However, there are three issues with my business report model that I am aware of.  First, the model has an XBRL bias.  I  don't understand how to remove that bias or I would.  Second, I am not an information technology professional or knowledge engineer so I don't have professional skills related to building sound models.  This is basically the best that I could do given my understanding of XBRL, financial reporting...

One of the unique aspects of XBRL-based information is that the information is readable both by machines and by humans.  This article explains how that capability is achieved. Simple "Hello World" Example Here is a very simple " Hello World " example of XBRL-based information. (Here is the same report in the XBRL International test case format .) This is the same information rendered for editing a report as opposed to reading the report: Here is the same information in the form of a sharable viewer which you can use to have a closer look at this small Hello World! example. Here is the same information in the form of a set of HTML pages that also provide a means of viewing the information from within the machine readable XBRL files. How This Works So the rendering of the information that you see by multiple different software vendors in multiple different but all very human readable formats is not a one off.  This  capability is by design. Here is a comparison of ...