XBRL FAQ — DATA Act Special Edition: Will Adoption of Open Standards Cost A Lot to the Government?
Q The DATA Act aims at introducing open standards for the communication and publication of Government data. Doesn’t this require changing all the software applications and information systems of the reporting agencies, which tanslates into huge additional costs? A Actually, the opposite is true. Firstly, existing information systems do not have to be changed to enable them to generate data using open standards such as XBRL. This is a common misconception, mostly based on inefficient approaches adopted by software vendors and users to embed...
read moreXBRL FAQ: What Is a Standard Business Reporting (SBR) Program?
Q What is a Standard Business Reporting (SBR) program, and what are its defining features? A SBR programs are regulatory initiatives aimed at streamlining and reducing the cost of business-to-government reporting. There are currently two officially recognized SBR programs: the Standard Business Reporting Programma in The Netherlands and the Standard Business Reporting Program in Australia. The SBR approach is also under consideration by various other countries. The key features that distinguish a SBR initiative are: They are...
read moreXBRL FAQ: XBRL is not a transactional standard, and at the same time it is used to represent transactions in domains like HR, auditing, integrated reporting. Why is that?
Q I often hear that XBRL should not be used to record transactions, but I also hear about the benefits of XBRL in domains like human resources, manufacturing, auditing, integrated reporting, where much of the relevant information is transactional in nature. How is this possible? A XBRL is not a transactional standard, meaning that it was not conceived nor optimized to standardize transactional data — such as invoices, orders, time sheets, or sustainability information — for the purpose of easily exchanging them between different parties....
read moreXBRL FAQ: What are the practical benefits of the re-usability of XBRL?
Q I hear a lot about the benefits of XBRL re-usability. What does this mean in practice? A XBRL is a technical specification optimized to represent business and accounting data. This means that the same syntax and the same semantic model can be used to represent very different types of information – such as financial statements, tax returns, invoices, inventory, fixed assets, trial balances, payroll information, Key Performance Indicators (KPI), sustainability data, just to make a few examples. These different types of information are used...
read moreXBRL FAQ: Does a Taxonomy Extension Create Additional Burdens for the Base Taxonomy Owner or the Extender?
Q Does the fact that a user creates an extension to a regulatory taxonomy create confusion and additional burdens for the owner of the base taxonomy (the regulator), for the filing process in general, and for the extender, for example when a new version of the base taxonomy is released? A No, it does not. An extension to a taxonomy can be created for one of the following reasons: Because the filing program supported by the base taxonomy is an open program – which means that it allows, or even requires, filings based on a filer-specific...
read moreXBRL FAQ: What is the difference between XBRL and XBRL GL?
Q What is the difference between XBRL and XBRL Global Ledger? A “XBRL” is a set of technical specifications that define how to create XBRL taxonomies. XBRL Global Ledger (XBRL GL) is a XBRL taxonomy. Sometimes this question has a different implicit meaning: what is the difference between XBRL GL and other XBRL taxonomies? So let me answer this one as well. From a technical standpoint, there is no difference between XBRL GL and other XBRL taxonomies, such as the IFRS taxonomy, the US-GAAP taxonomy, or the Standard Business Reporting (SBR)...
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