XBRL: Future of Financial and Business Reporting

Presented by: Liv Apneseth WatsonXBRL International Vice Chair & Founder Board of Director , IRIS Business Services LimitedBoard of Director, MediaTenorE: lwatson.liv@gmail.comP: +1 203 856 8986

• Few words about Project in Macedonia ( methodology, who is involve, what does it change etc.)

• Public institution’s experience in implementation SBR Project, what kind of risk is connected with this project?

• Few words about Project in Nevada (risk, costs and benefits)

XBRL a 2007 Breakthrough Idea!

Is there a problem with Electronic Data Today?

Current accounting processes include largely manual , significant ‘cut and paste’ and manual data-entry that degrade the completeness, accuracy, and validity of information.

What is XBRL?XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) ✔ XBRL is Tagged Data (Meta-Data - Machine Readable)

– Standard way to communicate business and financial information

– Defined by meta-data set out in taxonomies which capture the definition of individual reporting concepts and the relationships between them.

– XBRL - The “Bar Code” of the Business Reporting World.

XBRL International– Not-for-profit consortium of approximately 500 companies and

agencies worldwide working together to build the XBRL language and promote and support its adoption.

Validation

Standardization

Adding Meaning to Electronic Data

CalculationCash = Currency +

DepositsFormulas

Cash ≥ 0Contexts

US $FY2004

Budgeted

LabelcashCashEquivalentsAndS

hortTermInvestments

ReferencesGAAP I.2.(a)Instructions

Ad Hoc disclosures

PresentationCash & Cash Equivalents

XBRLItemXBRLItem

PresentationComptant et Comptant

Equivalents

PresentationGeld & Geld nahe Mittel

PresentationKas en Geldmiddelen

Presentation现金与现金等价物

Presentation現金及び現金等価物

PresentationДеньги и их эквиваленты

PresentationГроші та їх еквіваленти

XBRL – The Language of Financial and Business Reporting

Macedonia

Macedonia XBRL Project

Business Environment Reform and Institutional Strengthening Project (BERIS) Technical Assistance for the preparation of Study for Implementation of the Extensible business reporting language (XBRL) in the financial and business information systems in the Republic of Macedonia

Introduction to Standard Business Reporting

• motivated by a Government-wide policy to reduce cost and administrative burdens for business.

• true benefits can only be realized by a cross-Government initiative covering at least some, if not all, other Government Departments.

• multiplier effects that the straight-through production of structured data might bring about in the wider economy.

• Studies in the Netherlands and in Australia, backed by early work on SBR in the UK, have estimated that the administrative burden imposed on businesses by government reporting amounts to roughly 2.5% of GDP. The Netherlands and Australian studies estimate that SBR related savings could reduce these costs by at least 8%, reducing the burden by 0.2% of GDP to 2.3%, which represents savings in the high hundreds of millions in both currencies.

Standard Business Reporting (SBR)• Government requirements to

report financial information create administrative burdens for businesses throughout the world.

• The lack of a common reporting standard/language makes these burdens onerous, as businesses have to tailor, duplicate and individually supply information to meet the many and varied requirements imposed by domestic and international government agencies and regulators.

Australian business will save around $800 million per year when SBR is fully operational.

SBR requires the creation of a “national taxonomy”

• SBR standardizes and rationalizes those data formats and descriptions to make reporting of financial information easier and cheaper for business. The expected savings to business in Australia are $A795m per annum and, in the Netherlands, €350 million per annum.

• SBR has been made possible by advances in technology but it must be a policy driven initiative enabled by technology not a technology-driven initiative.

• SBR requires the creation of a “national taxonomy”.

• It is critical that the private sector supply chain for financial reporting is involved in SBR.

With the focus in many countries on reducing the administrative burden of business in complying with Government regulations, the ideas underpinning the concept of SBR may be highly relevant and, potentially, could deliver substantial benefits to both businesses and Government

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/36/52/43384923.pdf

For internal auditors, key areas of interest in the XBRL process could include:

• The migration from manual to automated processes in key activities.

• The ability to more efficiently access and integrate entity wide data.

• The abstraction of business rules and controls that can be applied across a wide range of software applications.

• A lower cost operating environment.

http://www.theiia.org/research/research-reports/chronological-listing-research-reports/downloadable-research-reports/index.cfm?i=9033

Presented byGianluca Garbellotto

XBRL Data Level Assurances• XBRL assurance is the

auditor’s opinion on whether a financial statement or other business report published in XBRL, is relevant, accurate, complete, and fairly presented.

• An XBRL report is an electronic file and called instance in XBRL terminology.

Audit objectives and approach and Check :

1. the right standard (base) taxonomy has been used;

2. the custom (extension) taxonomy is complete, correct and accurate;

3. the sourcedata used for reporting is reliable;

4. the correct and complete mapping (or tagging) of sourcedata to taxonomy elements has occurred;

5. the XBRL report (instance) is technically correct and validates with the taxonomy;

6. the sending of the XBRL reporting was complete, accurate and timely.

Source: http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2007/Jun/RoiOnXbrl.htm

REAL BENEFITS TODAY

What can XBRL do for investors and analysts?

• Packages explanatory contextual information around each data point

• Makes data more granular, more extractable

• Provides a common framework of definitions

• Improve the accuracy/quality/transparency of corporate information

• Enables easier comparison of multiple companies

• Reduces reliance on normalized datahttp://www.cfapubs.org/doi/pdf/10.2469/ccb.v2009.n3.1

Why will XBRL benefit you?

“I must state unequivocally that the purpose of introduction of XBRL is not to catch errant companies. In fact, with XBRL, companies will not make errors in their reporting if they are able to implement XBRL within the organization effectively,”

-Swaminathan, CEO of IRIS Business Services

Can we prevent another Satyam?• Non technological solution can go only so far.

– With XBRL Statements will be very different in format / a new type of annual report with accounting principles focusing on atoms of data not reports

– With XBRL data we will accelerate the route to continuous reporting

– With XBRL Hyperlinks to “external” sources of data will be increasingly found in the corporate information portals

– With XBRL variable information update periods will be prevalent on the corporate information portals

– With XBRL accountants will become more like the financial analysts of today as opposed to bookkeepers

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