CHAPTER TWO

XBRL and IFRS

AN APPROPRIATE INTRODUCTION TO THIS PART OF the book is to look at what Kurt Ramin said in 2008 when, as chairman of XBRL International, he expressed his views in the broader AICPA domain of which he is a member (see www.cpa2biz.com/Content/media/PRODUCER_CONTENT/Newsletters/Articles_2008/CorpFin/Hands.jsp). What follows is a truncated version, in which links to tools references are not present. Even so, the overall tone is not lost.

XBRL and IFRS joining hands

How this powerful combination will accelerate adoption of financial reporting around the globe.

     March 6, 2008

     by Kurt Ramin, CPA

The movement towards a single set of global financial reporting standards is gaining speed in the United States. The Security and Exchange Commission's (SEC's) concept release on the use of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) by U.S. companies has put real meaning into this trend. XBRL is already well established in our country. The SEC showed leadership here, so the combination IFRS/XBRL will soon take hold here as well.

Over 100 countries either require or allow the use of IFRS by listed companies, and some of those countries permit the use of IFRS for local regulatory or statutory reporting by non-listed companies. The European Union (EU), Australia and South Africa have adopted requirements to use IFRS, while others, such as Canada, India and Brazil, plan to require the use of IFRS by a specific date.

IFRS Taxonomy and XBRL

Through its Foundation, the IASB was involved early on in building a taxonomy to drive global adoption of both IFRS and XBRL. This powerful combination caters to people who understand accounting standards and concepts on one side and people who use technology tools to segment and organize financial and business information.

It is no accident that the Foundation's XBRL team, in addition to its education and translation departments, is now one of the strongest support functions for the standard-setting process at the IASB. Its XBRL Advisory Council (XAC) and Quality Review Team (XQRT) span members from around the globe, who are moving the implementation of XBRL and IFRS through the use of XBRL forward.

Watch out for the latest version of a totally new and updated IFRS XBRL taxonomy that contains links to the latest version of the complete text and volume of IFRS during the next month. IFRS and XBRL will also be one of the prime topics at the next World XBRL conference in Eindhoven, Holland, from May 5 to May 9.

The codification of accounting standards by Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is another strong building block in the conversion of financial reporting standards worldwide. Once the codified standards are linked to the XBRL U.S. taxonomy (as the IFRS are to the XBRL/IFRS taxonomy) this accounting base — with rich definitions — will be a step forward to the worldwide adoption of a single global standard. Interestingly enough, the same software tools have been used to codify the U.S. literature and putting IFRS into electronic formats.

Translation capabilities (IFRS are now translated into over 50 languages) of the mostly principles based IFRS and the automatic translation features of XBRL help to localize financial reporting and push their use down to the lowest level of implementation. After all, through the use of IFRS/XBRL, Americans will become linguistic experts!

SME standard

The IASB has issued an exposure draft for small and medium-sized entities (SMEs), which will hopefully lead to a final standard this year. If implemented, this standard will allow millions of entities around the world to deliver comparable financial information. It is expected that the SME standard can still be reduced in its complexity including some simple recognition and de-recognition principles. XBRL can be used to track units of accounts and prepare parallel accounting (if needed).

Conclusion

Are you prepared for XBRL? Familiarize yourself with the new concepts and technologies. Financial reporting will be like reading a map. Places can be found by knowing the geographic coordinates, but you will have to decide which map format to look at and what zoom level fits your needs.

2.1 OVERVIEW

As indicated earlier, XBRL partners perfectly with IFRS in delivering better and faster business reporting. Significant initiatives continue to move this union into the global domain so as to maximise the benefits arising from increased acceptance and implementation of both standards. In this regard it is worthwhile referring to the XBRL and IFRS website at www.ifrs.org/XBRL/XBRL.htmm.

History

The connection between XBRL and IFRS commenced in 2000, as captured by the following commentary:

Another key member of the XBRL constituency in Europe is the IASC Foundation's XBRL team (the team). This group works to create and maintain the IFRS taxonomy based strictly on the ‘bound volumes' produced by the IASB. The IASC Foundation joined the XBRL consortium as one of the founding members at the instigation of Kurt Ramin and Sir Brian Carsberg. An initial, basic taxonomy for International Accounting Standards (IAS) as they were then known was completed in 2000 by Kurt Ramin, Ian Wright and Mark Deakin [sic]. The work continued on to the taxonomy by David Pranther [sic], at various meetings in Europe and at a meeting of a group of over 40 volunteer experts in Singapore in 2002 organised by Kurt Ramin, Roger Debreceny, Glenn Gray and Charlie Hoffman with the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Singapore. Josef Macdonald as appointed as chairman of the XII IAS Taxonomy Working Group in 2002 and Charlie Hoffman (the inventor of XBRL) joined this group in the same year.

In 2003, Josef Macdonald was appointed as the inaugural IASC Foundation XBRL Practice Fellow (on secondment from Ernst & Young). In 2004, Kurt Ramin, then Chair of XBRL International, together with Josef Macdonald established the IASC Foundation XBRL team to which a number of student interns were appointed and the system of six-month internships was established. Since then 16 interns have worked as part of the team. Olivier Servais now heads up the team which also has three full-time and three part-time members.

Source: Joanne Locke, Andrew Lymer and Alan Lowe, (2010), Digital Reporting Options for Europe, ICAEW, London

Note: Digital Reporting Options for Europe is a study of interactive data from the perspective of non-professional investors. This report considers the potential for Level 2 reporting to be required by capital market regulators in the European Union in the light of the SEC's interactive data project. The perspective of non-professional investors in the analysis is taken because the purpose of the SEC's interactive data project is framed around the provision of improved data for their investment decision making. This 120-page publication is downloadable at www.icaew.com/en/products/information-technology-publications/digital-reporting-options-for-europe.

Note: Mark Dekan is incorrectly spelled in the original as Mark Deakin. David Prather is incorrectly spelled in the original as David Pranther.

Of course, as might be apparent, much has happened since that seminal time. The partnership between XBRL and IFRS is a phenomenon, and one that continues to gain momentum. One of the primary reasons for this success is the considerable and concerted effort by all parties involved with XBRL and IFRS, as reviewed in the next section.

Mutual partnership

As indicated by the IFRS Foundation, IFRS and XBRL are intended to standardise financial reporting in order to promote transparency and to improve the quality and comparability of business information. Therefore, the two standards are ideally suited. Given the importance of XBRL in this situation, it is worthwhile exploring more detail about the XBRL team.

The IFRS XBRL initiative

Essentially, the goal of the IFRSF is to provide the world's integrating capital markets with a common language for financial reporting. XBRL was developed to provide a common, electronic format for business and financial reporting.

The IFRS Foundation XBRL team

The team is responsible for developing and maintaining the XBRL representations of the IFRS, known as the IFRS Taxonomy. The IFRS Taxonomy is used around the world to facilitate the electronic use and exchange of financial data prepared in accordance with IFRS.

The team's mission is to create and provide a framework for the consistent adoption and implementation of IFRS with a high-quality IFRS Taxonomy in the same languages and at the same time as the IFRS. This mission is part of the adoption and implementation strategy of the IFRSF and is integrated with the development of IFRS.

Advisory committees

The IFRSF XBRL team is supported by two external committees, summarised next.

XBRL Advisory Council (XAC)

The XAC provides strategic advice on the IFRSF's XBRL activities and on the adoption and implementation of the IFRS Taxonomy throughout the world.

XBRL Quality Review Team (XQRT)

The XQRT reviews developed taxonomies in order to achieve the highest level of quality by providing input and offering practical recommendations on the usability of the IFRS Taxonomy from both an XBRL technology and a financial reporting perspective.

Responsibilities

The IASB XBRL team is responsible for developing and maintaining the XBRL representation of the IFRS Taxonomy. The IASB's XBRL activities include:

• taxonomy development – for companies reporting in IFRS, the Foundation publishes tags for each IFRS disclosure. These tags are organised and contained within the IFRS Taxonomy;
• support materials – the Foundation produces support materials to facilitate use and understanding of the IFRS Taxonomy;
• translations – translations of the IFRS Taxonomy into key languages are provided to support users of IFRS and the IFRS Taxonomy whose primary language is not English;
• global outreach – the Foundation makes a concerted effort to promote the use of XBRL in conjunction with IFRS around the world. The Foundation also encourages cooperation and communication with users of the IFRS Taxonomy.

For more information related to the XBRL team, see www.ifrs.org/The+organisation/About+XBRL/About+XBRL.htm.

Achievements – a retrospective view

The effectiveness of the XBRL and IFRS partnership, the team and all stakeholders directly involved is evident in the depth and pace of related developments, demonstrated by the achievements of XBRL and IFRS projects. Table 2.1 gives a view of the achievements thus far.

Table 2.1 Achievements of the XBRL and IFRS partnership.

For more information on the strengthening connection between XBRL and IFRS, particularly the individual projects contained Table 2.1, see www.ifrs.org/XBRL/XBRL.htm.

2.2 THE IFRS TAXONOMY

A fundamental element of the means by which XBRL and IFRS garner continued and accelerating success is the Taxonomy. In general, taxonomy means a catalogue or a set of rules for classification; in XBRL, a taxonomy is a dictionary, one containing computer-readable definitions of business reporting terms, as well as relationships between them and links connecting them to human-readable resources (metadata) – a typical taxonomy consists of a schema (or schemas) and linkbases.

XBRL taxonomies are the dictionaries which the XBRL language uses. These are the categorisation schemes that define the specific tags for individual items of data (such as ‘net profit'). National jurisdictions have different accounting regulations; so, each may have its own taxonomy for financial reporting. Many different organisations, including regulators, specific industries or even companies, might also require taxonomies to cover specific business reporting needs.

Figure 2.1 Elements of the IFRS Taxonomy.

Source: IFRS Foundation, 2012, Webcast: exposure draft IFRS Taxonomy 2012, 2 February, presentation, as at www.ifrs.org/NR/rdonlyres/B1C761F1-F563-4ACB-84C9-C637D8BAEB67/0/IFRSTaxonomy2012EDwebcast2Feb2012.pdf.

As illustrated in Figure 2.1, it is noteworthy that there are 3,770 elements in the Taxonomy. The triangular diagram shows what comprises this number. For instance, it does not include local/regulatory concepts or company concepts. Even so, the large number can seem overwhelming, especially when this amount is not split by way of industry-specific elements. However, it needs to be said that a company is likely to need only 300 elements when making good use of XBRL.

Figure 2.2 Translations of the IFRS Taxonomy.

Source: IFRS Foundation, 2012, Webcast: exposure draft IFRS Taxonomy 2012, 2 February, presentation, as at www.ifrs.org/NR/rdonlyres/B1C761F1-F563-4ACB-84C9-C637D8BAEB67/0/IFRSTaxonomy2012EDwebcast2Feb2012.pdf.

As Figure 2.2 illustrates, the IFRS Taxonomy is translated from English into more than 10 languages.

Note that a special taxonomy was designed to support collation of data and internal reporting within organisations. This is the GL Taxonomy. In fact, there are two taxonomies:

• XBRL GL Taxonomy;
• XBRL IFRS Taxonomy.

These are important for the future of IFRS and are described next.

The XBRL Global Ledger taxonomy

Originally named XBRL for General Ledgers, XBRL GL, or Journals, is a significant step forward in the capabilities of XBRL (and XML) in handling financial and business information. The XBRL Global Ledger (XBRL GL) taxonomy allows the representation of anything that is found in a chart of accounts, information found in a typical ERP system, journal entries or historical transactions, financial and non-financial. It does not require a standardised chart of accounts to gather information, but it can be used to tie legacy charts of accounts and accounting detail to a standardised chart of accounts to improve communications within a business.

The XBRL – IFRS taxonomies

Public taxonomies, such as IFRS, define elements and relationships between them according to particular legislation or standards, for example IAS or IFRS. These XBRL-described concepts allow companies to create financial statements that are valid and compliant with the requirements of regulators. The IASB, through its foundation, was very early on involved in developing taxonomies. Annually, two main IFRS taxonomies are published, one incorporating the complete set of standards and one for IFRS for SMEs. These taxonomies are similar in design and content. Compared with the US GAAP taxonomies, the IFRS taxonomies carry considerably fewer elements. This is due to the fact that US GAAP is richer in content and rules that are based on industry segmentation. In order to satisfy preparer needs, the IFRS taxonomy requires a significant number of extensions, depending on company size and industry in which the entity is operating. These extensions are currently being developed.

Taxonomy update

Note that the IFRSF published an exposure draft of the IFRS Taxonomy 2012. The proposed taxonomy is consistent with IFRS, including IAS and the IFRS for SMEs. The IFRS Taxonomy 2012 is a translation of IFRS as issued at 1 January 2012 into XBRL. The proposed taxonomy includes ‘common practice' extensions, which were derived from an analysis of IFRS financial statements and are designed to diminish the need for preparers to customise the taxonomy to fit their individual business. The need for these extensions originally arose from SEC concerns about the suitability of the existing IFRS taxonomy for US filing purposes and the outcomes of a pilot XBRL study conducted in 2011.

Extending taxonomies

Ordinary users of XBRL may be largely or totally unaware of the technical infrastructure which underpins the language. However, software companies, such as accountancy software providers, need to take account of XBRL and its features when producing their products. For instance, consider that extending the taxonomy may involve performing the following operations:

• adding an element that was not described in the base taxonomy but is required;
• modifying the relationship between elements in terms of their order, addition or deletion.

There are several rules that must be obeyed while building an extension to a taxonomy. The most important one states that the extension should not physically modify the content of any of the files of the base taxonomy. This is usually made impossible by locating the base taxonomies on their website, which prevents other users from making changes to the files.

Building an extension that involves the modification of linkbases requires that the creators are familiar with the use and priority of attributes, as well as the concept of equivalency. With these attributes you can prohibit a relation (an arc) or override it. The so-called use attribute may take the values ‘optional' and ‘prohibited', of which the latter implies that the relationship will not be processed by a computer. Priority assigns relations with ranks that inform the computer about the processing order.

For further details related to taxonomy extension, see www.ifrs.org/XBRL/IFRS+Taxonomy as well as eifrs.iasb.org/eifrs/Menu?view=eifrsXBRL. Certainly, a taxonomy guide is useful, as discussed next.

IFRS Taxonomy Guide

The IFRS Taxonomy 2011 Guide is a technical supporting guide for users of the IFRS Taxonomy. This 2011 version supersedes the version released in 2010. The guide addresses both the financial reporting content and the XBRL framework of the IFRS Taxonomy. It is intended for use by those who are already familiar with and able to apply XBRL with IFRS using the IFRS Taxonomy.

The IFRS Taxonomy 2011 Guide includes:

• an overview of the architecture of the IFRS Taxonomy;
• guidance for preparers and issuers of financial statements when creating instance documents and IFRS Taxonomy extensions;
• XBRL Fundamentals – an introduction to the basics of XBRL;
• a glossary of commonly used XBRL terminology.

The guide (available at www.ifrs.org/NR/rdonlyres/E6CFBA23-71CF-410B-8C35-445BA17C2A6A/0/IFRSTaxonomy2011Guide20110325.pdf or see www.ifrs.org/XBRL/Resources/IFRS+Taxonomy+Guide.htm) provides technical guidance on how to apply the IFRS Taxonomy 2011. Readers who are not familiar with the fundamentals of XBRL should refer to the appendices at the end of this guide.

The IFRSF, together with other members of the ITA (Interoperable Taxonomy Architecture) project, has published The GFM (Global Filing Manual), which contains a set of rules providing guidance on the preparation, filing and validation of XBRL filings. Preparers should follow the guidelines in The GFM unless the receiving institution to which they are filing prescribes additional or amended filing rules. This guide is software neutral and does not require the use of any specific tools.

In addition to the preface, the content of this 72-page publication is as follows:

• Introduction
  • The IFRS Taxonomy 2011
  • Overview of amendments in the IFRS Taxonomy 2011
• IFRS Taxonomy Architecture
  • Financial reporting
    • Standard Approach
    • Release, issue and effective dates
    • Interim releases
  • IFRS modelling in the IFRS Taxonomy
    • Hierarchical modelling
    • Axes modelling
  • The structure of the IFRS Taxonomy
    • Folder and file structure
    • Absolute and relative paths
    • DTS discovery
    • Namespaces
    • Core, role and entry-point schemas
    • Deprecated schema
    • Linkbases
    • Linkbase modularisation
    • Reference linkbases
    • Label linkbases
    • Total and net labels
    • Negated labels
    • Presentation linkbases
    • Calculation linkbases
    • Definition linkbases
    • Generic label linkbases
    • Generic reference linkbases
  • New XBRL technologies
    • Versioning
    • Formulae
    • Inline XBRL
• Preparer's Guide
  • Introduction
  • Learning and mapping the IFRS Taxonomy
  • Customising the IFRS Taxonomy
  • Creating an entity-specific extension
    • The structure of an extension
    • Adding extended link roles (ELRs)
    • Adding concepts
    • Adding links
    • Validation
  • Creating an instance document
    • Reported facts
    • Context of the reported facts
    • Units for numeric facts
    • Accuracy of reported numeric facts
    • Validation of an instance document
• Extender's Guide
  • Introduction
  • Scenarios for creating an extension
    • Open reporting
    • Closed reporting
    • Reuse of IFRS Taxonomy concepts vs. reuse of the entire IFRS Taxonomy
  • Developing an extension
  • The physical composition of an extension
    • File names and file and folder structures
    • Addition and reuse of concepts
    • Addition and reuse of labels
    • Addition and reuse of references
    • Addition of linkbases
    • Addition and reuse of ELRs
• Appendices
  • XBRL Fundamentals
  • XBRL Glossary
  • Style Guide

How to read the XBRL information

Note that it is possible to access xIFRS, a new tool developed by the IFRSF to support viewing and understanding of the IFRS Taxonomy. xIFRS provides a view of the electronic IFRS with embedded XBRL, and is available for the IFRS and the IFRS for SMEs, as well as all published interim releases.

This section explains the format and content of XBRL information in the xIFRS. The explanations given here apply throughout all pages.

Figure 2.3 Comprehensive income.

Example: IFRS 8 – with reference to Figure 2.3

An entity shall present a statement of changes in equity showing in the statement:

First column – hierarchy

• The first column represents the IFRS hierarchy.
• Column headings represent the name of an IFRS or IAS component.
• Rows below column headings represent the elements belonging to this component, which are IFRS or IAS disclosure requirements.

Second column – disclosure format

The second column illustrates the possible formats that a given disclosure may take. These are:

• text block – denotes that the disclosure format is explanatory text;
• text – denotes that the disclosure format is text;
• yyyy-mm-dd – denotes that the disclosure format is a date;
• X – denotes that the disclosure format is a monetary value;
• (X) – denotes that the disclosure format is a monetary value presented as being negative;
• X.XX – denotes that the disclosure format is a decimalised value;
• shares – denotes that the disclosure format is a number of shares;
• table – denotes the beginning of a two-dimensional disclosure;
• axis – denotes an axis on a two-dimensional disclosure;
• member – denotes a member on an axis;
• line item – denotes the beginning of a series of disclosures for a table;
• blank column – denotes that no disclosure is required.

For monetary values:

• instant or duration – denotes that the disclosure represents a stock (if instant) or a flow (if duration);
• credit or debit – denotes the ‘natural' balance of the disclosure.

Third column – IFRS reference

The third column indicates an additional IFRS or IAS paragraph/section for a given disclosure.

Fourth column – extended link roles (ELRs)

ELRs are used in the IFRS Taxonomy to identify sections of the taxonomy. They appear as six-digit numbers in square brackets with a value between [100000] and [999999]. These numbers are artificial and provide viewing and sorting functionality (they are not related to IFRS or IAS).

Taxonomy support materials

The IFRSF is pleased to provide the following support materials specifically developed to aid understanding and use of the IFRS Taxonomy. In the first instance, this is presented in Figure 2.4.

Figure 2.4 Taxonomy support materials.

Source: www.ifrs.org/XBRL/Resources/Resources.htm.

Additional resources are also available, as shown in Figure 2.5.

Figure 2.5 Additional resources.

Source: www.ifrs.org/XBRL/Resources/Resources.htm.

2.3 IFRS FOUNDATION AND TRANSLATION

Expanding the general acceptance and actual implementation of IFRS requires appropriate translation, a point and process that are overlooked easily when many people operate in only one or two languages during the course of their day.

Translation is a necessary and vital part of achieving the IASC Foundation's mission to develop a single set of high-quality global accounting standards for use around the world. The official working language of the IASCF and the IASB is English. The text of the standards has grown over at least 20 years and this is influenced by styles and semantics of various parts of the English-speaking countries, mainly that of the United States and the United Kingdom. This makes the text difficult to translate into other languages.

Additional complications are that certain terms which are used in the standards (for example, financial derivatives, defined benefit pension plans, as well as for insurance) do not exist in some languages, since the underlying concepts are not in use in a particular country. The IASCF translation policy also does not allow splitting of sentences of the original English text in the target language and does not allow explanatory footnotes. All these complications make the translated text even more difficult to read. Perfect localisation would require the IFRS text and standards to be rewritten by legal and accounting domain experts in the particular country. However, this would require significant resources and expertise which are not always available, particularly in smaller countries. Since the translated standards are binding law in many countries, as outlined earlier, an understanding of the detailed translation process might be important from a legal perspective. In this regard, the following is an excerpt from the official IASCF translation policy:

The IASC Foundation recognises the central role of the provision of IFRS and supporting material in other languages. It therefore seeks the close cooperation of jurisdictions and organisations interested in producing translations of IFRS and related material. Moreover, the translation of IFRS is often also an important component in a country's decision to adopt IFRS. It is in the interest of any country adopting or using IFRS or the IFRS for SMEs that the translated IFRS are of a high quality. Countries adopting or permitting the use of IFRS will be able to benefit from the comparability and transparency that the use of IFRS provides only if the IFRS are rendered accurately and completely into each language. To ensure that all countries adopting or using IFRS will reap the full benefit of IFRS, the cornerstones of the IASCF translation policies are as follows:

• Official translation process involving expert review of translations. To ensure the best technical translation possible, all translations of IFRS are reviewed by a committee of accounting experts who are native speakers with proven knowledge and expertise in the area of the IFRS.
• The IASCF maintains control of the translation process. To ensure that IFRS remain uniform across all languages and that translations are of the highest standards, the IASCF maintains ultimate control over the translation process for IFRS and other official material such as the IFRS Taxonomy.
• Only one translation per language. Multiple translations of IFRS into the same language would endanger comparability, transparency and the long-term sustainability of high-quality IFRS translations. The IASCF therefore supports only one translation per language.

For additional information, refer to www.ifrs.org/Use+around+the+world/IFRS+translations/IFRS+translations.htm.

Translation process and policies

The IFRSF has a set translation process used for all languages. The process is based on two key steps:

• professional translation;
• review by a committee of accounting experts who are native speakers with proven knowledge and expertise in the area of the IFRS.

The IASCF owns the copyright to all material it produces and all the translations. It is therefore essential that the Foundation is contacted before any material is translated. For more information on this, see ‘Adoption and copyright'.

To check whether there is already a translation in your language, see ‘Available translations', later. The IASCF often works with accounting institutes and standard-setting bodies around the world to produce the translations according to the Official Translation Process (see previously).

The adoption of IFRS in the EU countries and the localisation and translation of the EU directives into the 20 European languages was a major stepping stone in the acceleration and adoption of IFRS around the globe. European public entities have worldwide subsidiaries and the adoption was automatically carried or jump-started in many of these countries.

In comparison, due to its sheer volume of literature and a rules-based approach, the international adoption of US GAAP would not have been possible in this relatively short time frame. Translation and localisation, education and training costs would have been prohibitive. Figure 2.6 shows the steps for translation of IFRS.

Figure 2.6 The translation of IFRS.

For additional information, refer to www.ifrs.org/Use+around+the+world/IFRS+translations/Official+translation+process+and+policies.htm. Also, for a European view, see ec.europa.eu/internal_market/accounting/ias.

Available translations

The end result of the preceding process, and related policies, is a wide variety of available translations, as presented Table 2.2.

Table 2.2 Available IFRS translations.

More information related to the aforementioned translations, such as the associated links to additional information, can be obtained at www.ifrs.org/XBRL/Taxonomy+translations.htm.

Worldwide adoption and compliance of IFRS

It is estimated that as many as 170 countries now use, or have adopted, IFRS. However, the actual number is difficult to determine because many countries claim that their local financial reporting principles are based on, are similar to, or are nearly identical to IFRS. For some countries, the wording changes seem minor; for other countries, whole sections of standards are missing, or not applied.

The reasons for these differences are often not so transparent. Some countries try to avoid paying licence fees to the IASCF for using the standards. However, it is the policy of the IASB and its legal entity, the IFRS Foundation, to waive the related copyright if a governmental body (for example, the EU or a specific country) adopts the standards in full. Another reason is that the markets for the use of a standard (for example, financial instruments) are not developed. Sometimes, the IFRS are not translated into the local language and a comparison of local standards to IFRS is difficult. Of course, the IASCF is encouraging the translation of the standards. Understandably, the translation and localisation of standards was a major contributor in the successful and speedy adoption of the standards in the EU and globally.

Perhaps the best summary of the use of IFRS by jurisdiction is on www.iasplus.com, a website originally started and developed in 1997 by the IASC in London. Listed on the website are 174 countries regarding their status of adoption of IFRS (‘required or permitted') and whether the audit report states compliance with IFRS. Specifically, see www.iasplus.com/country/useias.htm.

2.4 SUPPORT MATERIALS

Numerous support materials are available for XBRL. There are educational programmes, seminars and conferences available on a global basis. The large accounting firms list educational materials on their websites. The IASB holds annual seminars in selected cities around the world that feature board members and other IFRS experts. IFRS certification programmes are embedded in various professional degree courses. Furthermore, good sources for local programmes associated with XBRL are the accounting associations in each country.

This section provides selected references, as well as sources of additional information in relation to XBRL, and the implementation of that standard. The glossary is an instructive source of descriptive detail for additional understanding of XBRL.

Glossary – XBRL

The glossary is a further guide in relation to XBRL, published by the IFRS. It contains short definitions of terms related to IFRS Taxonomy as well as explanations of major XBRL concepts. For further details, especially in relation to links leading to additional information, such as specifications, associated terminology and illustrative examples, see www.ifrs.org/XBRL/Resources/Glossary.htm.

The glossary also appears in The IFRS Taxonomy. In addition, a shorter glossary, hosted by the SEC, is available at www.sec.gov/spotlight/xbrl/glossary.shtml.

A

abstract attribute

an abstract attribute appears on items definitions in schemas; its possible values are ‘true' and ‘false'; ‘true' indicates that the item must not appear in instance documents; abstract elements (elements for which abstract attribute is ‘true') are intended to support the presentation of business reports in XBRL;

arc

according to XBRL Specification 2.1 arcs relate concepts to each other by associating their locators; they also link concepts with resources by connecting the concept locators to the resources themselves; arcs are also used to connect fact locators to footnote resources in footnote extended links; arcs have a set of attributes that document the nature of the expressed relationships ; in particular they possess attributes: type (whose value must be ‘arc'), from, to and arcrole;

Example:

<calculationArc
 xlink:type=‘arc'
 xlink:arcrole=‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/summation-item'
 xlink:from=‘AssetsTotal' xlink:to=‘AssetsCurrent'
 weight=‘1.0' order=‘1'/>

arcrole attribute

an arcrole is an XLink attribute that describes the meaning of resources within the context of a link; it may be used on arc- and simple-type elements; on arcs it determines the semantics of the relationship that is being described or, in other words, it documents the kind of relationship that the arc expresses; there is a set of standard arcroles defined for specific arcs (labelArc, referenceArc, calculationArc; definitionArc, presentationArc and footnoteArc); the value of arcrole must be an absolute URI, (e.g. in presentation linkbase on presentationArc it is ‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/parent-child'),

attribute

according to the XML Specification 1.1, attributes are used to associate name-value pairs with elements; attribute specifications must not appear outside of start-tags (<...>) and empty-element tags (<.../>); each attribute specification has a name and a value; XML attribute types are of three kinds: a string type (any literal string as a value), a set of tokenised types (varying lexical and semantic constraints), and enumerated types;

B

balance attribute

a balance is an optional attribute that appears on items which type is monetaryItemType; it is tokenised and may be assigned values ‘credit' or ‘debit'; according to the basic rule of double entry accounting, assets and expenses have a normal debit balance while equity, liabilities and revenues have a normal credit balance; other monetary elements may be assigned a balance attribute to improve calculation validation by restricting the sign of the value;

base taxonomy

a base taxonomy is a taxonomy that is used as the foundation for the creation of an extension;

C

calculation linkbase

a calculation linkbase is a linkbase that contains mathematical relationships such as addition and subtraction (see weight attribute) between numeric items defined in a schema document;

calculationArc element

a calculationArc is an XLink arc element; it defines how concepts relate to each other for calculation purposes; one standard arcrole value defined for this element is ‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/summation-item';

Example:

<calculationArc
 xlink:type=‘arc'
 xlink:arcrole=‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/summation-item'
 xlink:from=‘AssetsTotal' xlink:to=‘AssetsCurrent'
 weight=‘1.0' order=‘1'/>

concept

concepts are defined in two equivalent ways:

concept-label relation

a concept-label relation concerns arcrole value on a labelArc element which is ‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/concept-label'; it is used from a concept locator (loc element) to a label element and it indicates that the label conveys human-readable information about the concept;

concept-reference relation

a concept-reference relation concerns arcrole value on referenceArc element which is ‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/concept-label'; it is used from a concept locator (loc element) to a resource element and it indicates that the reference is to materials documenting the meaning of the concept;

context (inc. context element)

context is defined as:

Example:

<xbrli:context id=‘Current_AsOf'>
 <xbrli:entity>
 <xbrli:identifier scheme=‘www.example.com'>Sample Company</xbrli:identifier>
 </xbrli:entity>
 <xbrli:period>
 <xbrli:instant>2005-12-31</xbrli:instant>
 </xbrli:period>
</xbrli:context>

cross-context rule

the cross-context rule concerns instance documents and calculation linkbase and relates to impossibility to perform calculations between numeric items appearing in different contexts (i.e. when one is a flow and in its definition periodType value is set to ‘duration' and the other is a resource and it is described as instant); typically, flows appear in Income statements and Statements of cash flows while resources are listed on Balance sheets; mix contexts (flows and resources together) occur whenever movements from a resource state at one point in time to another are to be calculated in a report or any kind of explanatory disclosure (for example, in the Statement of changes in equity, Changes in assets, etc.); the cross-context problem may be overcome using a formula linkbase and the functions that it provides;

D

decimals attribute

the decimals attribute appears on numeric items (facts) in instance documents; it specifies the number of decimal places to which the value of the fact represented may be considered accurate, possibly as a result of rounding or truncations; it must be an integer or possess the value ‘INF' meaning that the number expressed is the exact value of the fact; the decimals attribute must not occur together with the precision attribute on the same fact element;

definition linkbase

a definition linkbase is a linkbase that is intended to contain a wide variety of miscellaneous relationships between concepts in taxonomies; four standard relations expressed by this linkbase are ‘general-special', ‘essence-alias', ‘similar-tuples' and ‘requires-element';

definitionArc element

a definitionArc is an XLink arc element; it defines different types of relationships that may appear between concepts; there are four standard arcrole values defined for this element and they are:

‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/general-special'

‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/essence-alias'

‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/similar-tuples'

‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/requires-element'

Example:

<definitionArc xlink:type=‘arc' xlink:from=‘postalCode' xlink:to=‘zipCode' xlink:arcrole=‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/general-special' order=‘1'/>

dimensions

the term dimensions in XBRL relates to the ability to express multidimensional financial information; for example profit from sales could be presented by products, regions, segments, and so on; to express such relations, XBRL International developed the Dimension 1.0 Specification that enriches the general XBRL Specifications with rules and procedures on how to construct dimensional taxonomies and instance documents; this specification has been a Candidate Recommendation since December 31, 2005;

DTS

a DTS is a collection of taxonomy schema documents and linkbases; the bounds of a DTS are such that the DTS includes all taxonomy schemas and linkbases that can be discovered by following links or references in the taxonomy schemas and linkbases included in the DTS; at least one taxonomy schema in a DTS must import the xbrl-instance-2003-12-31.xsd schema;

E

element

according to the XML Specification 1.1, each XML document contains one or more elements, the boundaries of which are either delimited by start-tags (<…>) and end-tags(</…>), or, for empty elements, by an empty-element tag (<…/>); each element has a type, is identified by name and may have a set of attribute specifications; in XBRL, elements are defined and assigned attributes in schemas and may appear either as items or as tuples; instance documents contain elements together with the content and information about the context that they are associated with;

Example:

<element
 id=‘ifrs_AssetsTotal' name=‘AssetsTotal'
 type=‘xbrli:monetaryItemType' substitutionGroup=‘xbrli:item'
 xbrli:periodType=‘instant' xbrli:balance=‘debit' nillable=‘true' />

element's content (value)

an element's content appears between a start-tag (<...>) and a closing-tag (<.../>); in the example <Asset>1000</Asset> the number ‘1,000' is the content; content depends on the type of an element; empty elements (<.../>) have no content but they may carry information in their attributes or simply appear in instance documents;

entity element

an entity is a required element in a context; it identifies the entity that is reporting the facts; it must contain an identifier element and may include a segment description;

Example:

<entity>
 <identifier scheme=‘http://www.nasdaq.com'>COMPANY</identifier>
 <segment>
 <my:state>MI</my:state>
 </segment>
</entity>

essence-alias relation

an essence-alias relation concerns arcrole value on a definitioneArc element which is ‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/essence-alias'; it connects items that have similar meaning in terms of business reporting and must be consistent as described in XBRL Spec. 5.2.6.2.2;

extended link element

an extended link is a link that associates an arbitrary number of resources; the participating resources may be any combination of remote an local; in other words, extended links represent a set of relationships between information that they contain and information contained in third party documents; as a part of a taxonomy, extended links are grouped in linkbases and provide additional information about concepts by expressing relations they come into; in particular, extended links contain locators, resources (e.g. label, reference,...) and arcs;

F

fact

a fact is a concept placed in a context and has an assigned value; facts appear in instance documents; they can be simple, in which case their values must be expressed as simple content (except in the case of simple facts whose values are expressed as a ratio), and facts can be compound, in which case their value is made up from other simple and/or compound facts; on the schema level, simple facts are expressed using items and compound facts are expressed using tuples; the comparison between a concept and a fact is presented in the table below:

footnote

footnotes appear in instance documents and provide additional information about facts; for example, several facts may be linked to the sentence: ‘Including the effect of merger with Sample Company'; to express these connections; XBRL utilises footnoteLink extended link element; as a kind of linkbases, footnoteLinks enclose locators to the instance documents' facts; footnotes use footnoteArcs with arcrole value set to ‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/fact-footnote' to connect facts to additional information;

<Assets id=‘AssetsID' decimals=‘0' contextRef=‘Current_AsOf'
 unitRef=‘GBP'>20000</Assets>
<link:loc xlink:type=‘locator' xlink:href=‘#AssetsID'
 xlink:label=‘AssetsLocator'/>
<link:footnoteArc xlink:type=‘arc'
 xlink:arcrole=‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/fact-footnote'
 xlink:from=‘AssetsLocator' xlink:to=‘AssetsFootnote' order=‘1.0'/>
<link:footnote xlink:type=‘resource' xlink:label=‘AssetsFootnote'
 xlink:role=‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/role/footnote' xml:lang=‘en'>
 For more information see Disclosures on Asset</link:footnote>

footnoteArc element

a footnoteArc is an XLink arc element; it appears in instance documents in footnoteLink extended link and connects facts with additional human-readable information (footnote) relating to them; one standard arcrole value defined for this element is ‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/fact-footnote'.

Example:

<link:footnoteArc
 xlink:type=‘arc'
 xlink:arcrole=‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/fact-footnote'
 xlink:from=‘iascf-fs_ContributionsReceivedInAdvance'
 xlink:to=‘iascf-fs_ContributionsNote' order=‘1.0'/>

footnoteLink element

a footnoteLink element is an extended link appearing in instance documents; it contains locators, resources and arcs which describe additional information for facts by providing footnotes;

formula linkbase

a formula linkbase is a new linkbase that is being developed by XBRL International; it aims to satisfy the formula linkbase requirements document by providing a generalised mechanism to build formulae based on XBRL concepts and XBRL dimensions; formulae can be used to describe business rules for creating new XBRL facts in new instance documents and for describing consistency checking for instance documents; the formula linkbase specification is at the stage of Internal Working Draft;

from attribute

from is a XLink attribute and appears on arcs; its value must be equal to the value of a label attribute of at least one locator or resource on the same extended link as the arc element itself; its value must be an XML NCName (i.e. it must begin with a letter or an underscore);

FRTA

FRTA stands for Financial Reporting Taxonomy Architecture; it is a document published by the XBRL International Consortium that recommends architectural rules and establishes conventions that assist in comprehension, usage and performance among different financial reporting taxonomies; it is aimed to be applied mainly by public taxonomy developers (authorities); its latest version is a recommendation from April 25, 2005;

functions

the term functions in XBRL relates to XPath 2.0 functions adapted to aid in the querying and creation of XBRL instance documents; XBRL Functions 1.0 is at the stage of Internal Working Draft;

G

general-special relation

a general-special relation concerns arcrole value on a definitionArc element which is ‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/general-special'; it is used to express relationships between concepts when one has more generic meaning than the other; the most common example is Postal Code for which the specific case is Zip Code used in the United States;

H

href attribute

href is an attribute that supplies the data that allows the XLink application to find a remote resource (or its fragment); it must be used on locators; its value must be a URI;

I

id attribute

an id attribute may appear on elements and attributes; its value must fulfil the same requirements as those imposed on the name attribute; it uniquely identifies elements or attributes which bear them; locators point to elements using the elements' ids; the id attribute must appear on context and unit elements;

identifier element

an identifier is an element that appears on the entity element; it specifies the scheme for identifying business entities using a required scheme attribute that contains the namespace URI of the identification system; it provides a framework for referencing naming authorities;

IFRS Taxonomy

the IFRS Taxonomy is a taxonomy developed by the IFRS (International Accounting Standards Committee) Foundation that represents concepts defined in IFRSs and relations between them; its latest version dated May 15, 2005 is Acknowledged under the XBRL International Taxonomy Recognition Process; it contains three schemas, 40 relationship linkbases; reference linkbase and labels in English, German, Portuguese and Japanese; more details can be found on its summary page;

import element

an import element is used to add many schemas with different target namespaces to a schema document; it contains a required attribute namespace and optional id and schemaLocation; at least one taxonomy schema in a DTS must import the xbrl-instance-2003-12-31.xsd schema;

Example:

<include
 namespace=‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/instance'
 schemaLocation=‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/xbrl-instance-2003-12-31.xsd' />

include element

an include element is used to add multiple schemas with the same target namespaces to a schema document; it contains a required attribute schemaLocation and optional id;

Example:

<include schemaLocation=‘../../bus/gl-bus-2005-07-12.xsd'/>

IFRSs

IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) together with International Accounting Standards (IAS) constitute a set of accounting rules issued by the International Accounting Standards Board; they are regarded as a ‘principle-based' set of standards and are used across the world;

instance document

an instance document is a business report in the XBRL format; it contains tagged business facts (whose definitions can be found in the schemas that the instance document refers to), together with the context in which they appear and unit description; the root element of XBRL instances is <xbrl>;

item

an item is referred to in two ways:

1. ‘item' is a value of the substitutionGroup attribute on an element in a schema;

2. an item is an element in the substitution group for the XBRL item element; in an instance document an item contains the value of the simple fact and a reference to the context (and unit for numeric items) needed to correctly interpret that fact; when items occur as children of a tuple, they must also be interpreted in light of the other items and tuples that are children of the same tuple; there are numeric items and non-numeric items, numeric items require to document their measurement accuracy (precision and decimals) and units of measurement;

ITMM

ITMM stands for IFRS Taxonomy Modules Manager; it was developed by the IFRS Foundation XBRL Team to help users manage the modularised IFRS taxonomy; it generates a ‘shell' schema or an instance document that imports presentation and calculation linkbases as specified by the user;

J

No entries at present.

K

No entries at present.

L

label element

label elements appear in label linkbases on labelLink extended links; they provide human readable information about concepts they are connected to (using arcs and locators); this information may be carried by a label element which may vary from a simple label to a wide documentation of the concept; the content of the label element can be mixed and it may contain any string and/or a fragment of XHTML; it must contain the xml:lang attribute that describes the language of the content; an optional role attribute may provide additional information about the type of a label (details in XBRL Spec 5.2.2.2.2 Table 8) indicating whether the label is a standard one (no role or role set to ‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/role/label') , a documentation one (‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/role/documentation'), a measurement guidance one (‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/role/measurementGuidance'), etc.;

labelArc element

a labelArc is an XLink arc element; it connects concepts with label resources; one standard arcrole value for this element is ‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/concept-label';

Example:

<labelArc xlink:type=‘arc'
 xlink:arcrole=‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/concept-label'
 xlink:from=‘AssetsTotalLocator' xlink:to=‘AssetsTotal_LabelLocator' />

label linkbase

a label linkbase is a linkbase that contains relations between concepts defined in a schema and human-readable resources such as labels and documentation in different languages;

label attribute on locators

a label attribute on locators identifies the locator so that arcs in the same extended link can reference it; xlink:label attribute value is an NCName (this requirement means that it must begin with a letter or an underscore);

lang attribute

lang is an XML attribute that is used to identify the language in which the element's content is written; the values of this attribute must be language identifiers as defined by IETF RFC 3066;

linkbase

a linkbase is a collection of XLink extended links that document the semantics of concepts in a taxonomy; linkbases (often referred to as ‘layers') fall in one of the three categories:

linkbase element

a linkbase element is the root element of linkbases and is intended to be used as a linkbase container, holding namespace prefix definitions and the schemaLocation attribute; it may enclose one or more extended links;

loc element

a loc element appears on extended links and is used to locate elements defined in a schema (is acts as a locator); locators require attributes xlink:href and xlink:label;

Example:

<loc
 xlink:type=‘locator'
 xlink:href=‘ifrs-2005-05-15.xsd#ifrs_AssetsTotal'
 xlink:label=‘ifrs_AssetsTotalLocator' />

locator

locators supply an XPointer reference to the taxonomy schema element definitions that uniquely identify each concept; they provide an anchor for extended link arcs; for consistency there is only one locator defined for use in all XBRL extended links and it is <loc> element;

M

maxOccurs attribute

a maxOccurs attribute appears in XBRL mainly on element references in tuples; it indicates the maximum number of an element's occurrences on the tuple; its value must be a positive integer and the default is ‘1'; to express an unknown or infinite number the expression ‘unbounded' is used;

Example:

<element ref=‘ifrs:NatureOfClassOfProvision' minOccurs=‘0' maxOccurs=‘3'/>

metadata

metadata is data about data (literally, since it is composed of Greek word meta and Latin term data, both meaning ‘information'), in XBRL it could be explained as a computer understandable information about business concepts; the accounting term Asset is very meaningful to a persons familiar with financial reporting, but has no meaning to a computer until it is told how to interpret it; these definitions appear in schemas and are enriched by linkbases (which inform computers about the relationships between elements and between the elements and other resources); together schemas and linkbases constitute taxonomies;

minOccurs attribute

the minOccurs attribute appears in XBRL mainly on element references in tuples; it indicates the minimum number of an element's occurrences on the tuple; its value must be a positive integer and the default is ‘1';

Example:

<element ref=‘ifrs:NatureOfClassOfProvision' minOccurs=‘0' maxOccurs=‘3'/>

N

name attribute

a name attribute appears on the definitions of elements and attributes and assigns them with a unique name; it begins with a letter (or one of the punctuation characters from a specific set) and continues with letters, digits, hyphens, underscores, colons, or full stops which together are known as name characters; they must not begin with the string ‘xml' (upper or lower case in any combination), since it is reserved for the XML standardisation and specification;

namespace

an XML namespace is a collection of names, identified by a URI reference, which are used in XML documents as element types and attribute names; XML namespaces differ from the ‘namespaces' conventionally used in computing disciplines in that the XML version has an internal structure and is not, mathematically speaking, a set; the XML namespace attribute (xmlns) is placed in the start tag of an element (typically the root element e.g. <schema> or <linkbase>) and possesses the following syntax–xmlns:prefix=‘namespaceURI';

Examples:

xmlns=‘http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema'
 xmlns:xbrli=‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/instance'
 xmlns:link=‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/linkbase'
 xmlns:xlink=‘http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink'
 xmlns:ifrs=‘http://xbrl.iasb.org/int/fr/ifrs/2005-05-15'
 xmlns:ifrs-typ=‘http://xbrl.iasb.org/int/fr/ifrs/2005-05-15/types'
 targetNamespace=‘http://xbrl.iasb.org/int/fr/ifrs/2005-05-15'

non-numeric item

a non-numeric item is an item that is not a numeric item, for example dates;

numeric item

a numeric item is an item whose content is derived by restriction of XML Schema types decimal, float or double, or has complex content derived by the restriction of the XBRL defined type fractionItemType; reported in an instance document it needs the reference to a unit;

O

No entries at present.

P

parent-child relation

a parent-child relation concerns an arcrole value on the presentationArc element which is ‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/parent-child'; it is used to express hierarchical relations between concepts that appear in paper form business reports and stem from financial and accounting principles, rules and regulations;

period element

in XBRL, the term period relates to instant or duration time; in business reporting, financial facts are reported either ‘as of' a particular date (for example in Balance Sheet) or ‘for period' (i.e. for the time between two specified dates of which one begins the period and the other ends it); the period element constrains the instant or interval time for reference by an item element in instance documents; different periods are carried by different contexts; to reflect the business reporting idea of instant and duration, the period element may carry either a single instant element or a sequence of startDate and endDate elements or an element forever; the first three elements' content must be a date TimeType (yyyy-mm-dd:Thh:mm:ss) or dateType (yyyy-mm-dd) while the last one is empty;

<xbrli:period>
 <xbrli:startDate>2005-01-31</xbrli:startDate>
 <xbrli:endDate>2005-12-31</xbrli:endDate>
</xbrli:period>
<xbrli:period>
 <xbrli:instant>2005-12-31</xbrli:instant>
</xbrli:period>

periodType attribute

a periodType attribute appears on element elements in schemas; it must be used on items; it may be assigned one of the two values ‘instant' and ‘duration'; the first one indicates that the element, when used in an XBRL instance, must always be associated with a context in which the period is instant (that is, at the point of time); the later means that this period in instance documents must be expressed either using a sequence of startDate and endDate elements or an element forever;

precision attribute

a precision attribute appears on numeric items (facts) in instance documents; it conveys the arithmetic precision of a measurement and, therefore, the utility of that measurement to further calculations; it must be an integer or possess the value ‘INF' meaning that the number expressed is the exact value of the fact; the precision attribute must not occur together with the decimals attribute on the same fact element;

prefix

when declaring namespaces, they may be associated with prefixes which are used to qualify references to any schema components belonging to that namespace; prefixes, that precede names of elements, attributes and some of their predefined values, provide an indication of where to find definitions of these properties;

presentation linkbase

a presentation linkbase is a linkbase that contains hierarchical presentation relationships between concepts defined in the schemas it refers to; it includes extended links that contain locators of elements and arcs reflecting parent-child relations between them;

presentationArc element

the presentationArc is an XLink arc element; it is used in presentation linkbases to define hierarchical relations between concepts in terms of their appearance in business reports; one standard arcrole value defined for this element is ‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/parent-child'.

Example:

<presentationArc
 xlink:type=‘arc'
 xlink:arcrole=‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/parent-child'
 xlink:from=‘ifrs_Assets'
 xlink:to=‘ifrs_AssetsCurrent'
 order=‘1' use=‘optional'/>

Q

No entries at present.

R

reference element

a reference element appears on referenceLink extended links; it is intended to enable taxonomies to ground the definitions of concepts in authoritative statements in published business, financial and accounting literature; it should provide the information necessary to find the reference materials that are relevant to understanding appropriate usage of the concept being defined, but does not include the reference materials themselves; the reference element carries an arcrole attribute that describes the type of reference being defined (presentation, measurement, definition, etc...); it also contains a set of elements called parts (from their substitutionGroup which is ‘link:part'), because the structure of reference materials may differ, taxonomy creators are allowed to define their own parts; however, there is a predefined universal set of parts available (http://www.xbrl.org/2003/xbrl-linkbase-2003-12-31.xsd and http://www.xbrl.org/2004/ref-2004-08-10.xsd);

Examples:

<reference xlink:type=‘resource'
 xlink:role=‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/role/presentationRef'
 xlink:label=‘CashFlowsFromUsedInOperationsTotal_ref'>
 <ref:Name>IAS</ref:Name>
 <ref:Number>7</ref:Number>
 <ref:Paragraph>14</ref:Paragraph>
</reference>
<reference xlink:type=‘resource'
 xlink:role=‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/role/measurementRef'
 xlink:label=‘CashFlowsFromUsedInOperationsTotal_ref'>
 <ref:Name>IAS</ref:Name>
 <ref:Number>7</ref:Number;>
 <ref:Paragraph>18</ref:Paragraph>
 <ref:Subparagraph>a</ref:Subparagraph&>
</reference>

reference linkbase

a reference linkbase is intended to contain relationships between concepts and references to authoritative statements in the published business, financial and accounting literature that give meaning to the concepts; it includes extended links referenceLink that contain locators of elements defined in schema, reference elements describing resources and arcs presenting concept-reference relations between them;

referenceArc element

a referenceArc is an XLink arc element; it connects concepts with reference resources; one standard arcrole value for this element is ‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/concept-reference';

Example:

<referenceArc
 xlink:type=‘arc'
 xlink:arcrole=‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/concept-reference'
 xlink:from=‘AssetsTotalLocator' xlink:to=‘AssetsTotal_LabelLocator' />

requires-element relation

a requires-element relation concerns arcrole value on a definitionArc element which is ‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/requires-element'; it is used to indicate elements required in business reports i.e. concepts that must appear in instance documents;

role attribute

a role is an XLink attribute that describes the meaning of resources within the context of a link; it may be used on extended- and simple-type elements as well as locators and resources; the value of role must be an absolute URI;

root element

a root element is the top level element fulfilling the role of a container for a larger whole; in XBRL such elements could be schema, xbrl and linkbase;

S

schema document

a schema document contains definitions of concepts; together with linkbases which refer to it, it constitutes a taxonomy; a schema document should specify a target namespace; its root element is schema;

schema element

a schema element is the root element of schema document; it opens and closes every taxonomy schema; it specifies the target namespace and may assign prefixes to other namespaces used;

Example:

<schema
 xmlns=‘http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema'
 xmlns:xbrli=‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/instance'
 xmlns:link=‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/linkbase'
 xmlns:xlink=‘http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink'
 xmlns:ifrs=‘http://xbrl.iasb.org/int/fr/ifrs/2005-05-15'
 xmlns:ifrs-typ=‘http://xbrl.iasb.org/int/fr/ifrs/2005-05-15/types'
 targetNamespace=‘http://xbrl.iasb.org/int/fr/ifrs/2005-05-15'
 elementFormDefault=‘qualified'
 attributeFormDefault=‘unqualified'>
 <!-- content - definitions -->
</schema>

schemaLocation attribute

a schemaLocation attribute is used in four circumstances:

Example:

<xbrl
 xsi:schemaLocation=‘http://xbrl.iasb.org/int/fr/ifrs/2005-05-15/proof
 Proof-ifrs-2005-05-15.xsd'>

schemaRef element

a schemaRef element must appear in every instance document as a child of an xbrl element before other parts of an instance; it specifies the taxonomy schemas an instance belongs to.

segment element

a segment element appears on an entity element in a context definition; it is an optional container for additional tags defined by the instance preparer; it is intended to identify the business segment more completely in cases where the entity identifier is insufficient; in general, the content of a segment will be specific to the purpose of the XBRL instance; this element must not appear empty;

Example:

 <segment>
 <my:stateProvince>MI</my:stateProvince>
 </segment>

scenario element

a scenario is an optional element that appears in instance documents; it allows for additional information to be included in instances; the preparer of an instance defines the tags used to describe the information; this information shall enclose in particular the type of data reported (for example actual, budgeted, restated, pro forma, …)

‘shell' schema

a ‘shell' schema is produced by the ITMM tool; it refers to the IFRS Taxonomy by importing its schema and user-selected linkbases;

similar-tuples relation

a similar-tuples relation concerns arcrole value on definitionArc element which is ‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/similar-tuples'; it represents relationships between tuple concepts that have equivalent definitions; for example, this kind of relationship would be appropriate to use between two different tuple concepts that are both designed to describe mailing addresses;

substitutionGroup attribute

a substitutionGroup attribute appears on elements' definitions in schemas; XBRL defines two basic substitution groups: items and tuples; its purpose is to indicate which type you can substitute with the actual definition;

summation-item relation

a summation-item relation concerns arcrole value on a calculationArc element which is ‘http://www.xbrl.org/2003/arcrole/summation-item'; it represents relationships only between concepts that are in the item substitutionGroup and whose type is numeric (e.g. monetary or decimal); the weight attribute defines the algebraic sign of the operation;

T

tag

mark-up languages such as XBRL use tags to describe data; for example <Asset>1000</Asset> - the word Asset together with the brackets ‘<‘ and ‘>‘ is called a tag; there are opening tags: <…> and closing tags: </…>.

taxonomy

taxonomy in general means a catalogue or a set of rules for classification; in XBRL, a taxonomy is a dictionary, containing computer-readable definitions of business reporting terms as well relationships between them and links connecting them to human-readable resources (metadata); a typical taxonomy consists of a schema (or schemas) and linkbases; a set of taxonomies that can be discovered from one entry point schema is called DTS;

taxonomy extension

taxonomy extensions add concepts and modify the relationships among the concepts in the base taxonomies that they extend; they are created to support specialised reporting requirements in specific accounting jurisdictions, in specific industries, or for specific companies; taxonomy extensions consist of a set of taxonomy schemas and/or linkbases that augment a DTS that includes the base taxonomies.

to attribute

to is a XLink attribute and appears on arcs; its value must be equal to the value of a label attribute of at least one locator or resource on the same extended link as the arc element itself; its value must be an XML NCName (i.e. it must begin with a letter or an underscore);

tuple

a ‘tuple' is one of two standard values of the substitutionGroup attribute on element element in an XBRL schema; elements possessing this value are often referred to as tuples; according to the XBRL Specification, tuples associate facts that cannot be independently understood and their meaning depends on their relationship to other elements; an example of such a set of facts is a payroll row which consists of the name of the employee, his/her position and salary; each of these elements does not have full meaning without being associated with the others; tuples are commonly used to express tables with known headings and an unknown number of rows; tuples do not carry any human-readable content; instead, they contain other elements; in XML, elements that contain other elements are said to have complex types; additionally, tuples do not possess any content other than their various elements so their complexContent restricts anyType only to the elements referred to; a tuple definition may also contain information on the number of minimum and maximum occurrences of elements possessed as well as their sequence;

<element name=‘ifrs_ElementReclassified' substitutionGroup=‘xbrli:tuple'>
 <complexType>
 <complexContent>
 <restriction base=‘anyType'>
 <sequence>
 <element ref=‘ifrs:DescriptionOfElementReclassification'
 minOccurs=‘0' maxOccurs=‘1'/>
 <element ref=‘ifrs:CodeOfElementReclassification'
 minOccurs=‘0' maxOccurs=‘1'/>
 <element ref=‘ifrs:FinancialImpactOfReclassification'
 minOccurs=‘0' maxOccurs=‘1'/>
 </sequence>
 </restriction>
 <attribute name=‘id' type=‘ID' use=‘optional'/>
 </complexContent>
 </complexType>
</element>

type attribute

a type attribute may or must appear on different elements; from an XBRL perspective, the most important type attribute appears on concepts definitions in schema which indicate the data types of the described items; XBRL item types were derived from XML data types; the most common types used in financial reporting taxonomies are stringItemType that may contain any string of characters, monetaryItemType that is used in concepts for which there is a need to specify a currency and decimalItemType which is carried by other numeric items; taxonomy creators may create their own types as necessary to express financial information by extending or restricting the available XBRL or XML predefined types; a type attribute must also appear on XLink simple- and extended-links (in particular on schemaRef and linkbaseRef elements);

U

unit element

a unit is an element that appears in instance documents and specifies the units in which numeric items (that refer to its required id attribute using unitRef attribute) have been measured; it may define simple units using a measure element and complex units providing divide element and its subelements (unitNumerator and unitDenominator); there are several constraints imposed on this element, its children and their content; for example monetary concepts must refer to ISO 4217 currency codes;

URI reference

URI stands for Uniform Resource Identifier and is a compact string of characters used for identifying an abstract or physical resource; it appears in absolute or relative form; URI references are not allowed to contain characters such as all non-ASCII characters and excluded characters listed in IETF RFC 2396, except for number sign (#) and percent sign (%) and the square brackets; example: http://www.iasb.org/xbrl;

use attribute

use is an optional attribute that appears on arcs; its two possible values are ‘optional' and ‘prohibited'; ‘optional' is a default value (that is the value that the attribute is assigned when it is not specified) and represents a relationship that may participate in the network of relations defined in a DTS; ‘prohibited' indicates that the relationship does not exist; the use attribute is used by taxonomy extension creators to prohibit and override relations defined in linkbases of the base taxonomy;

V

versioning

the term versioning in XBRL relates to issues and problems that occur when implementing changes to an existing taxonomy; any changes to a taxonomy may particularly affect extensions that are based on it; versioning aims to help applications and people involved in taxonomy building and instance creation to tack these changes; first set of requirements concerning this issue was released by XBRL International on 1 October 2002; the second edition called the Taxonomy Life Cycle is at the stage of Internal Working Draft;

W

weight attribute

weight is a required attribute on calculationArc elements; it must have a non-zero decimal value; for summation-item arcs, the weight attribute indicates the multiplier to be applied to a numeric item value (content) when accumulating numeric values from item elements to summation elements; a value of ‘1.0' means that 1.0 times the numeric value of the item is applied to the parent item; a weight of ‘−1.0' means that 1.0 times the numeric value is subtracted from the summation item; there are also rules that are applied to the calculation of elements possessing opposite balance attribute values (‘credit' and ‘debit'),

X

XBRL

XBRL stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language; it is an XML dialect developed for business and financial reporting purposes by a non-profit consortium XBRL International which has members from 400 companies and institutions that represent finance and IT sector organisations from all over the world; learn more from our Fundamentals of XBRL section or visit the XBRL International website;

xbrl element

an xbrl element is usually the root element of instance documents; in files, it serves as a container of data in XBRL format; first and foremost it contains an element that refers to the schema (schemaRef), provides contextual information (context and unit) for included facts and may provide them with footnotes (footnoteLink);

XBRL Specification

an XBRL Specification defines the rules and fundamentals of the language; it is designed to communicate information to IT professionals who develop applications and tools intended to be XBRL compatible and to a lesser extent is assists taxonomy creators; to find out more and obtain the latest version of the XBRL Specification visit XBRL International website;

XLink

XLink (XML Linking Language) is a language for creating hyperlinks in XML documents; it works in a similar way to the <a> element and its href attribute in HTML; to get access to its features there should be an XLink namespace declared usually at the top of the document (‘http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink'),

XML

XML stands for Extensible Markup Language; it was developed by W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) to describe and carry data by allowing users to define their own tags (in contrast to HTML where the tags are predefined); this data (tags) is characterised using a Document Type Definition (DTD) or XML Schema which are self-descriptive;

xmlns attribute

an xmlns attribute is used to declare namespaces and their prefixes; in XBRL it is usually used on root or top level elements (schema, linkbase, xbrl);

XML Schema

an XML Schema defines the structure and the content of the XML documents that refer to it, by defining, in particular, the elements and attributes and providing information about their type and possible content;

XPath

XPath was developed to help finding information in XML documents; it is mainly used in XSLT to navigate over elements and attributes; XPath provides a set of functions that allows specific actions to be performed on XML data;

XPointer

XPointer supports XLink by providing solutions to locate specific fragments of the XML document; its full name is XML Pointing Language; XBRL uses two specific XPointer schemes: the element pointer (works by counting) and the shorthand pointer(works by referencing to an id);

XSLT

XSLT stands for eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations and has been developed to facilitate conversions of XML documents into other XML documents or into other formats (e.g. XHTML); to perform these transformations, XSLT uses XPath expressions;

Y

No entries at present.

Z

No entries at present.

Useful papers, presentations and links

There are a large number of white papers and articles about XBRL. For example, in June 2011, IFAC and the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) jointly developed and published Leveraging XBRL for Value in Organizations, a short document that provides an excellent overview of XBRL. This can be obtained at

www.isaca.org/Knowledge-Center/Research/ResearchDeliverables/Pages/Leveraging-XBRL-for-Value-in-Organizations.aspx or via

www.ifac.org/publications-resources/leveraging-xbrl-value-organizations-0.

The contents of the document are as follows:

• Introduction
• XBRL. An explanation
• Leveraging XBRL for value
• Strategies for addressing XBRL within the organization
• Conclusions

Leveraging XBRL for Value in Organizations was developed to provide accounting and assurance professionals with guidance in relation to leveraging value from XBRL initiatives and compliance requirements. It is strongly suggested that the benefits and opportunities of embedding XBRL within internal processes can enhance management communication, thus increasing the value of information used within an organisation. Examples and case study material are included.

ISACA is an international professional association that deals with IT governance. It is an affiliate member of IFAC. Previously known as the Information Systems Audit and Control Association, ISACA now goes by its acronym only, to reflect the broad range of IT governance professionals it serves. As an independent, non-profit, global association, ISACA engages in the development, adoption and use of globally accepted, industry-leading knowledge and practices for information systems. It was incorporated in 1969 by a small group of individuals who recognised a need for a centralised source of information and guidance in the growing field of auditing controls for computer systems. Today, ISACA has more than 95,000 members worldwide.

In addition, see Implementing XBRL – A practical guide for accountants in business and practice, published in 2010 by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), in conjunction with Thomson Reuters, available at www.icaew.com/en/technical/information-technology/~/media/6A67108711334E1DA9F17FB0456F721C.ashx.

It features the HM Revenue & Customs' online services in the United Kingdom – all statutory tax returns must be filed electronically, online, through the Government Gateway, in a special format using XBRL.

This short, 12-page document contains the following:

• Introduction
• Choices
• Approaches
• Sources of Further Information
• XBRL and iXBRL Products and Services

Following on from this particular topic, specifically the use of XBRL by the pioneering HM Revenue & Customs, see XBRL – when to tag, how to tag, what to tag (Figure 2.7). This document of only nine pages is available at www.hmrc.gov.uk/ct/ct-online/file-return/online-xbrltag.pdf.

Figure 2.7 XBRL – when to tag, how to tag, what to tag. Reproduced by permission of HM Revenue & Customs.

In January 2010, staff of the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) issued a Q&A publication, XBRL: The Emerging Landscape, accessible at www.ifac.org/sites/default/files/publications/files/xbrl-the-emerging-landscape.pdf.

XBRL: The Emerging Landscape highlights the growing interest in, and use of, XBRL. It raises awareness of how XBRL-tagged data is prepared and how it may affect financial reporting. It also clarifies that the IAASB's auditing pronouncements did not impose requirements on auditors with respect to XBRL-tagged data or the representation of this data.

The key messages of this paper are:

• XBRL is an electronic business information format expected to provide benefits in the preparation, analysis and communication of business information;
• the use of XBRL can vary by jurisdiction and may be driven by regulatory requirements or voluntary application;
• under the current International Standards on Auditing (ISAs), auditors are not required to perform procedures or provide assurance on XBRL-tagged data in the context of audited financial statements. Accordingly, the audi­tor's report in accordance with the ISAs on the financial statements does not cover the process by which XBRL data is tagged, the XBRL-tagged data that results from this process, or any repre­sentation of XBRL-tagged data;
• the IAASB is currently undertaking a consulta­tion to determine the needs of preparers and users of XBRL-tagged data. This consultation will assist the IAASB in assessing whether it is necessary and in the public interest to develop a pronouncement addressing association with and/or assurance on XBRL-tagged data.

For more information, see the following:

XBRL-related articles from CMA Canada
www.cmamagazine.ca

• XBRL on the rise
• XBRL – are we close to the tipping point?
• The information supply chain – changing the landscape: XBRL – eXtensible Business Reporting Language – is at the heart of a revolt

eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) – The Impact on Accountants and Auditors

2.5 FUTURE STEPS

While progress related to XBRL development, acceptance and implementation is impressive, it is necessary to maintain, if not increase, the momentum. That additional impetus comes from the dedicated contemplation of people who review past successes, as well as spell out what the future entails in terms of issues and opportunities. In this regard, consider the impact that can come from thoughtful research effort, as per IFRS Compass: IT Systems Implications , which was published by the www.ifrs.com/publications.html). The authors, well versed in accounting and IT, are:

• Janis W. Parthun, CPA/CITP;
• John Barile, CPA/CITP, CISA, CBC, CIS;
• Greg Zegarowski, CPA;
• Khalid Wasti, CPA/CITP, CISA.

With the US market in mind, although still very relevant from a technical perspective otherwise, it is strongly suggested in this publication that IFRS convergence will have a critical impact on IT systems. As organisations move towards standards convergence, changes to IT systems will require astute planning and potentially capital-intensive investments in order to address reporting, calculations and new data requirements. As such, IT systems issues generated by the IFRS convergence need to be addressed now in order to have the necessary programming and systems in place to meet the requirements of the standards.

IFRS Compass: IT Systems Implications provides a guideline to navigate the intricacies of successful IT systems implementation, including how to:

• understand the core differences between US and international standards;
• effectively address the effects that convergence will have on calculations and reporting;
• identify and capture the new data that you will be required to collect;
• create, modify and adapt your IT systems in order to complete a successful IFRS implementation.

Case studies show examples of four international companies which updated their IT systems for IFRS and the valuable lessons learned. Additional case studies provide a deeper insight into project management considerations, financial systems impact and obstacles encountered during the process. This book provides a valuable starting point to plan a timely and cost-effective technology update for convergence.

The contents of this 93-page publication are as follows:

• Background of International Financial Reporting Standards and IT Impact
  • Background and System Effects of IFRS Conversion
    • Background of IFRS
    • Potential System Effects of an IFRS Conversion
  • Key Differences Between International Financial Reporting Standards and Generally Accepted Accounting Principles
    • Transaction Differences
    • Impact to Financial or Business Reporting
• IT Systems and Project Management Considerations
  • System Design and Implementation Considerations
    • System Implementation Impact
    • Summaries of Implementation Results and IT Lessons Learned Based on Case Studies
    a. Case Study A: Japanese Automotive Company

    b. Case Study B: Japanese Consumer Electronic Company

    c. Case Study C: Multinational Company

    d. Case Study D: Global Steel Company
    • Conclusion
  • Project Management Considerations
    • Project Cost Considerations
    • The Extent of IFRS Conversion
    • Project Governance
    • Training Considerations
    • Project Risk Factors
    • Internal Control Considerations
    • Alignment to Regulatory Requirements
  • Project Planning and Implementation – Suggested Activity Checklist
    • Phase I – Diagnostic
    • Phase II – Design and Planning
    • Phase III – Solution Development
    • Phase IV – Implementation
  • Making the Right Decision – Selecting a Technology Solution
    • View from the Top: ERP System Maturity and the IFRS IT Strategy
    • Selecting a Technology Solution
• The Current Environment and Lessons Learned
  • Learning From the European and Canadian Experiences
    • IFRS Conversions in Europe
    • IFRS Conversion in Canada
    • IFRS and XBRL
  • Other Examples From Current Implementers
    • Case Study Example 1
    a. Background Information

    b. Project Management Considerations

    c. Financial System Impact

    d. Obstacles Encountered During the Process

    e. Conclusion
    • Case Study Example 2
    a. Background Information

    b. Project Management Considerations

    c. Financial System Impact

    d. Obstacles Encountered During the Process

    e. To Date (September 2010)
    • Case Study Example 3
    a. Background Information

    b. Project Management Considerations

    c. Financial System Impact

    d. Obstacles Encountered During the Process

    e. To Date (October 2010)
    • Case Study Example 4
    a. Requirements

    b. Why XBRL?

    c. The Convergence Assistant

    d. Process Overview

    e. Conclusion

    f. Conclusion
    • References
    • Online Resources
    • AICPA Publications

Another publication that is worthwhile reviewing in relation to current trends and future possibilities, specifically in relation to XBRL tagging requirements, is SEC Reporting and the Impact of XBRL: 2011 Survey , published by Financial Executives International (FEI) and available from www.financialexecutives.org/ferf/download/2011 Final/2011-031.pdf.

For publicly held companies that file reports, the SEC now requires tagging of quarterly and annual reports on Forms 10-Q and 10-K using XBRL. XBRL tagging is a key part of the financial statement production process. In many companies, this entails a number of different players using a variety of documents and spreadsheets, providing the opportunity for error, inconsistency and inflated costs.

To find out how companies are complying with these XBRL tagging requirements, the Financial Executives Research Foundation (FERF) surveyed members of FEI and other financial statement preparers. Executives from 300 unique companies responded to the survey. Key findings in SEC Reporting and the Impact of XBRL: 2011 Survey are:

• The most significant challenges mentioned in complying with the XBRL mandate are getting educated on XBRL and addressing the review process;
• XBRL had a limited impact on respondents' SEC filing dates;
• 72 per cent of large accelerated filers (Tier 1 and Tier 2) reported one day or less delay due to XBRL;
• Over 90 per cent of Tier 3 filers reported one day or less delay due to XBRL;
• The majority of respondents found that XBRL was either somewhat or significantly easier the second time around;
• Tier 1 and Tier 2 XBRL filers predicted a higher likelihood than Tier 3 XBRL filers of changing their XBRL process, with the vast majority of companies anticipating a change opting for an in-house software solution;
• In-house and built-in solutions continue to increase their significant market share;
• Registrants using built-in solutions (software solutions used by in-house reporting teams in which the creation of the EDGAR document and XBRL instant report are fully integrated) are significantly more satisfied than those using other approaches.

Contents of this 37-page publication are as follows:

• Executive Summary
• Purpose and Design of Survey
• Profile – Survey Respondents
• Size of SEC Reporting Team and Core Responsibilities
• SEC Reporting Filing Data
• SEC Reporting Practices
• XBRL Creation Approach
• Number of Hours to Create XBRL Reports
• XBRL Experiences
• Impact of XBRL on SEC Filing Date
• XBRL Providers
• ‘Pencils Down' Experience
• XBRL Provider Satisfaction
• Acknowledgements