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The Accountant's Guide to XBRL (6th Edition)


Clinton E. White, Jr., DBA, MBA
Professor of Accounting & MIS
Univesity of Delaware

Preface:

Preface

In 2011, XBRL reporting reached several significant milestones. First, all companies reporting to the SEC using U.S. GAAP are now required to include financial statements in XBRL format. All accelerated filers (i.e., those with outstanding common equity over $700 million) are required to tag every fact found in footnote disclosures, including every item in a table and every fact in footnote text. Smaller filers are required to tag footnote disclosures as blocks of text. Second, the 500 largest files, referred to as tier 1, are in their third year of “furnishing” XBRL-formatted financial statements. The SEC considers the XBRL-formatted financials to be “furnished,” as opposed to “filed,” for purposes of liability for the accuracy of their contents. As of June 2011, tier 1 filers no longer have limited liability for their XBRL-formatted financials; meaning that they are subject to more rigorous accuracy requirements and are liable for complying with all tagging requirements. Limited liability will disappear in June 2012 for all other accelerated filers and in June 2013 for smaller filers. As such, tier 1 filers are expected to have a formalized XBRL reporting process, including quality controls, in place; and all other filers are expected to be creating them. They are however exempt from officer certification requirements. Third, as of April 1, 2011 all company tax returns submitted to the HM Revenue & Customs in the UK must submit them online using iXBRL (inline XBRL). iXBRL is a relatively new XBRL specification (April 2010) for imbedding XBRL-formatted information in XHTML documents. An advantage is that XBRL financial statements are included as part of an XHTML document and are rendered exactly as originally designed. At the same time, the XBRL information can be extracted and analyzed separate from the XHTML code. Some are saying that this is the best way to do XBRL reporting but it remains to be seen what impact it will have on already established reporting regimens such as the SEC’s. Fourth, foreign private issuers were originally scheduled to start reporting to the SEC in XBRL format in June 2011 but the SEC has yet to approve the IFRS XBRL taxonomy. Subsequently, the IFRS and IASB have released a number of interim XBRL taxonomies but to date none have been approved for SEC reporting.

Elsewhere, the European Parliament, part of the legislative branch of the European Union (EU), announced its official support of XBRL for financial and tax reporting. The China Ministry of Finance released and mandated the use of a national General Purpose XBRL taxonomy for banking, insurance, capital markets, taxation, and audit. Along with XBRL standardized business reporting initiatives in Australia and the Netherlands and tax reporting mandates in Ireland, the U.K., Germany, and Denmark, among others, XBRL is the standard upon which computerized financial and performance reporting is being built. In addition, the Interoperable Taxonomy Architecture Project, which has been working to achieve the convergence of the IFRS, EDINET (Japan), and U.S. GAAP XBRL taxonomies, has published a new edition of the XBRL Global Filing Manual. The GFM is meant to provide guidance that applies globally to the preparation, filing, and validation of XBRL financial documents.

The current version of the U.S. GAAP XBRL taxonomy was released at the end of January 2011. The 2012 version is expected to be released in January 2012. The 2009 U.S. GAAP XBRL taxonomy contained about 14,000 elements each representing an accounting or financial reporting concept while the 2011 taxonomy contains over 15,000. Many of the changes and additions are a result of the SEC and FASB working closely together to monitor SEC XBRL filings and business reporting processes with the goal of improving the robustness of the U.S. GAAP taxonomy and the effectiveness of corporate financial reporting. This process will continue with XBRL taxonomies and financial reporting business processes improving and evolving over time.

The sixth edition of The Accountant’s Guide to XBRL reflects the current state of XBRL reporting. As you will see, my approach is that a person needs to understand the basics of the XML foundation in order to understand XBRL. A major new XML vocabulary for e-business documents is UBL (the Universal Business Language). I use it to introduce XML in this edition. I came to understand that XML is not simply another “language” with which to write code but instead a computing paradigm on which to build vocabularies for other purposes, such as business documents and financial and business operations reporting. I have researched, published articles, taught professional workshops and seminars, and built XBRL into a capstone course for accounting majors at the University of Delaware. Along the way, I have been fortunate to have the input of a number of academics using my books in various ways in various college courses. I would like to thank them for their invaluable feedback and suggestions: Professor Brad Tuttle, University of South Carolina, Professor Uday Murthy, University of South Florida, Professor Andy Luzi, California State University at Fullerton, Professor Graham Gal, University of Massachusetts, Professor Steven Hornik, University of Central Florida, Professor Lois Mahoney, Eastern Michigan University, Professor Terry Glandon, University of Texas, El Paso, and Professors Rick Elam and Mitch Wenger, University of Mississippi.

What's new in the sixth edition

  • Level 1 through 4 footnote disclosure tagging
  • The rules for creating SEC extension taxonomies
  • IFRS 2011 XBRL taxonomy
  • SEC filings analysis with XSLT
  • iXBRL reporting

Contents:

Contents

  1. Introduction
    • Overview
    • XBRL
    • A Preview of The Accountant’s Guide to XBRL
    • A Note on Teaching
  2. The XML Document Foundation
    • Overview
    • The Rules for Well-formed XML Documents
    • The UBL Order
    • UBL Element Names – Metadata
    • XML Attributes – Additional Meaning for Elements
    • UBL and the Procurement, Fulfillment and Billing Process
    • XML and UBL in Business
    • Summary
    • Using Notepad™
    • Processing XML documents with a Web browser
  3. The XML Language Foundation
    • Overview
    • The XML Schema Language
    • The UBL Order Schema Document
    • The UBL Common Basic Components Schema
    • The UBL Common Aggregate Components Schema
    • Validating XML Documents
    • XML Linking Language (XLink)
    • The XML Foundation and XBRL
    • Summary
  4. XBRL Instance Documents and Taxonomies
    • Overview
    • The Rules for Valid XBRL Instance Documents
    • The root element and its namespace declarations
    • The schemaRef element
    • The context element
    • The unit element
    • XBRL items
    • Understanding the US GAAP Taxonomies
    • The schemaRef element and the DTS
    • SEC reporting and Extension taxonomies
    • Footnotes and Dimensions
    • Summary
  5. Transforming Documents with XSLT
    • Overview
    • The Basic XSLT Language
    • Transforming a UBL Purchase Order into a XHTML Web page
    • Processing XSLT instructions
    • XSLT Processing
    • Analyzing an XBRL document using XSLT
    • Summary
  6. The Current State of XBRL
    • Overview
    • The IFRS XBRL 2010 Core Taxonomy
    • Creating an IFRS XBRL instance document
    • SEC Filing Packages
    • Understanding an XBRL extension taxonomy schema
    • An analysis using the extension taxonomy schema
    • XBRL Instance Document Validation
    • XBRL Around the World
    • FDIC
    • SEC
    • Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HRMC) – iXBRL
    • The EU
    • China
    • AICPA
    • IMA
    • XBRL Services and Tools
    • The Future State of XBRL