XBRL-based Digital Financial Reporting

We have entered the "agentic era"; the era of the agent or intelligent software agent . Others refer to this as the "algorithmic economy".  Maybe think many very intelligent  microservices  exchanging information with each other and can work globally. In an interview with BG2, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella predicts that (paraphrasing) SaaS (software as a service) is dead and that AI agents will replace all software. The entire interview is the first link in "Additional Information" below.  These three videos provide a focused look at this statement: LinkedIn post including short video AI Insights Explorer video  (Microsoft CEO Predicts: "AI Agents Will Replace ALL Software") Microsoft CEO's Shocking Prediction: "Agents will replace ALL software" Here is my personal interpretation of what Satya Nadella is saying and what it means.  First, Nadella says that we are "on the brink of a monumental shift".  I agree with that statem...

Ontologies improve communications.  Ontologies are effectively agreements. Ontologies that are subject-independent are called upper-level or top-level ontologies or foundational ontologies, and they attempt to define entities and associations between entities that are shared by all areas of knowledge. To our knowledge, no framework is available yet to determine the goodness of an ontology.  However, many criteria have been proposed.  A widely accepted set of criteria is the one discussed in Gruber (1993): clarity, coherence, extendibility, minimal encoding bias,   and   minimal   ontological   commitment.   First   and   foremost,   ontologies   should emphasize the characteristics of clarity and coherence. Clarity implies that definitions are context independent, and coherence  requires   consistency of the definitions. The graphic below was provide on LinkedIn by An...

Classification is about organizing things into types . The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) first came up with the idea of classifying plants and animals by type, essentially creating the notion of a hierarchy or taxonomy.  The idea was to group types of plants and animals according to their similarities thus forming something that looked like a "tree" with which most people are familiar.  People tend to understand the notion of a "tree", but people tend to be less familiar with the notion of what is known as a " graph ". A tree, or hierarchy of things, is actually a type of graph.  You can differentiate the notion of a tree and the notion of a graphs in your mind as follows:  A "tree" has, well, only ONE TREE.  A graph can have many trees. Classification is about organizing knowledge.  Categorization is a synonym of classification.  The only thing better than classifications is standard classifications.  One well known classification...

Over the next year, I am going to create a Master Class in Representing Financial Statement Logic Using XBRL . I now have the tools I need to create that class effectively.  I am able to separate the XBRL related "stuff" from the representation of financial statement information "stuff" because I have the proper tools. I also have a boatload of examples that I have created that enable me to communicate important subtleties and nuances that, before now, you would need years of experience using XBRL to grasp.  Now understanding these important subtleties and nuances is trivial. Here is my raw material which is basically financial statement logic represented using many different approaches using XBRL: (Note that I am using these to test and debug software so there are some issues with these representations currently, but those will go away eventually as the software is tuned. Please start with this Introduction video .  Here is a YouTube Playlist with all the videos .)...

The European Single Market Authority  (ESMA) is an independent European Union (EU) authority whose purpose is to improve investor protection and promote stable, orderly financial markets. As part of that mission, the ESMA collects financial information from regulated companies.  The European Parliament mandates that this information be provided in electronic form using regulatory technical standards (RTS).   To this end, the ESMA developed the European Single Electronic Format (ESEF). That ESEF format is described in the ESEF Reporting Manual . That reporting manual specifies, among other things, that the reports submitted to the ESMA be prepared using Inline XBRL. Inline XBRL is a global standard technical format published by XBRL International. Inline XBRL is composed of two pieces or you might think of them as "layers".  One layer is HTML which is used to present the information so that humans can read that information.  Embedded within that first laye...

Years ago I posed a hypothesis that accounting and audit working papers and schedules could be represented using XBRL and/or RDF in machine readable form and turning those working papers from "documents" into "databases".  After significant experimentation and testing between 2015 and about 2022, I have reached the conclusion that my hypothesis was correct and now I have my theory of Semantic Accounting and Audit Working Paper Archetypes. Here are many of the best details related to my testing, poking, and prodding and prototypes that I constructed to experiment with and test this hypothesis: Case for Sematic Oriented Accounting and Audit Working Papers Special Purpose Logic Spreadsheets for Accountants Semantic Accounting and Auditing Working Papers Modern Spreadsheets AICPA Audit Data Standards Exposure Draft on Target ISO Audit Data Services Introducing the Fact Ledger Deductive Spreadsheet Using logic programming for theory representation and scientific inferenc...

Years ago I posed a hypothesis that business events drive accounting transactions and that economic entities have patterns of business events which could be named and described in machine-readable terms.  After significant experimentation and testing between 2015 and about 2022, I have reached the conclusion that my hypothesis was correct and now I have my theory of business events. Here are many of the best details related to my testing, poking, and prodding and prototypes that I constructed to experiment with and test this hypothesis: Resources, Events, Agents (REA) Description The Joy of Accounting , PART 2, Classic Transactions (page 91) Algorithmic Contract Types Unified Standards (ACTUS) Sensemaking Accounting Basics Essence of Accounting MINI Financial Reporting Scheme (MINI) With Business Events and Classic Transactions Effective Automation of Record to Report Process Narrative for Iteration #4 Record-to-Report Iteration #6 Record-to-Report Iteration #7 Cross Border Paperle...