XBRL for COA and financial reporting
Introduction
From the Horse's mouth
XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is a computer language for preparing Internet web pages in a way that communicates the complex financial information in corporate business reports to Internet users. XBRL makes the analysis and exchange of corporate financial information easier and more reliable by allowing data to be extracted and processed automatically by XBRL-aware applications.
XBRL is a royalty-free, open specification for software being developed by a non-profit consortium consisting of over 170 leading companies, associations, and government agencies around the world. Anyone interested in applying XBRL to business reporting processes can receive a license from XBRL International. See the XBRL International Organisation Website.
Specifically, XBRL defines data-formatting conventions and vocabularies for marking up and describing business report data, such as sales or net assets. Like XML, it is tag based. Descriptions in the form of tags or labels are attached to the various pieces of business data. These tags describe the particular piece of data in terms of an agreed-upon vocabulary. That vocabulary is referred to as an XBRL taxonomy, the specific system of tags.
Once an organisation has the appropriate taxonomy, it can enable its reports for XBRL. From there, organisations can more easily use and share data from the reports within the organization and between organizations. XBRL-aware applications can take advantage of the high level of specificity and self-describing nature of the tags to automatically process the information for purposes of reporting and analysis. XBRL is independent of any hardware platform, software operating system, programming language or accounting standard.
IFRS XBRL Taxonomy
In November 2002, the XBRL International Steering Committee (ISC) issued the IAS Primary Financial
Statements (PFS) Taxonomy as an XBRL Recommendation and also issued the IAS Explanatory Disclosures and Accounting Policies (EDAP) Taxonomy as a Public Working Draft. Both the PFS and EDAP taxonomies are available on the Internet from XBRL International's XBRL Resource Center.
The PFS Taxonomy includes XBRL representations of a classified balance sheet, an income statement, a statement of changes in equity, and a cash flow statement. The PFS Taxonomy encompasses the core financial statements that private sector and certain public sector entities typically report in annual, semi-annual, or quarterly financial disclosures as required by IAS 1.7 and IAS 34.8.
Significant accounting policies and other explanatory notes are modelled in a separate XBRL taxonomy, the Explanatory Disclosures and Accounting Policies (EDAP) taxonomy, which has been released as a public working draft.
Approach
- Possibly using the COA builder tool?
- Or refactor everything using the protege ontology editor.
- What are the implications for using this CoA? Would it break ADempiere? Is it worth carrying out a study / test?
