Real World XBRL

External Reporting

A very large bank reports in the millions with multiple reporting periods in each filing. Their filings are very complex. Reporting sections include balance sheet, income statement, statement of cash flow, statement of shareholders equity and multiple disclosure reports.

There are hundreds of disclosure paragraphs. Some paragraphs are text only, others retain their formatting. Some disclosures constitute complete tables and are text blocked.

Numerical data needs to be quality controlled against a variety of source documents. Some numerical data is footnoted. Totals in the filings must be verified as matching those within the source documents. Quality control is important.

The bank has a need to extend for new elements, labels and references. In some cases, they extend for new labels only, because their description of an existing element is different than as stated in the US-GAAP. Their extended elements must be positioned with presentation arcs and new elements must be included in domain member relationships. In most cases, their extended elements must become part of an existing calculation.

The bank files year after year, quarter after quarter. Their filings apply against multiple versions of the US-GAAP. Their 2008 filings use the 2008-03-31 version. Their 2009 filings use the 2009-01-31.

There are lots of files and many reporting periods. These must be managed and organized in a meaningful way. There is a requirement for checks and cross checks.

Analytical Reporting

A large international company has offices throughout the United States and the world. People in these offices speak different languages. Many divisions of the company were purchased as existing businesses and have their own proprietary accounting systems. Many employees use spreadsheets to do their jobs. Those spreadsheets live on employees personal desktops and few others get to see or use their data.

The company wants to create a centralized international based reporting system. One of the goals of the reporting system is to put an end to personal spreadsheets. All business information gets reported to a centralized database for access by all authorized. The company wants reports generated in the language of the user, using centralized data common to all. The company wants to generate consolidated financial statements by merging data from all subsidiaries, regardless of their proprietary accounting systems.

Information must be timely and accurate. The company has specific business goals and objectives. Employees need timely and accurate information in order to meet those goals. A centralized data warehouse reporting system provides a solution. XBRL becomes the extract, transform and load (ETL) process that allows the process to happen. Data is transferred through instance data.

The data warehouse is designed and managed through one or more XBRL taxonomies and the company’s policies and procedures are evaluated and expressed through XBRL taxonomies.