Thursday, October 28, 2010

What is XBRL filing? (Part 2)

Remember that as you complete your XBRL filing, that it is very important to get your facts and values right. Your data should be mapped to the appropriate element in the UGT or extension taxonomy. Make sure the definitions and attributes or properties of your selected elements properly represent what you are reporting. It is especially important to get the period type, balance type, data type and other taxonomy attributes (or properties) correct. In addition, the calculation relationships between your data must mathematically work. All of your facts and values should be mapped to the proper taxonomy at the appropriate level.
Your financial statements are required to be detail tagged and your footnotes must be tagged at the following four levels:
·         Level 1: Each complete footnote tagged as a text block
·         Level 2: Each significant accounting policy within the significant accounting policy footnote tagged as a text block
·         Level 3: Each table within each footnote tagged as a text block
·         Level 4: Within each footnote, each amount (i.e., monetary value, percentage and number) is required to be separately tagged
As you complete your XBRL filings, remember to focus on your facts and values and their relationships to the UGT or extension taxonomy. Also give significant consideration to the definitions and attributes of the elements chosen. By doing so you will emphasize the data being reported, not how poorly the formatting of a rendering tool is. Remember too that the purpose of your XBRL filing is to make your data machine readable, not beautiful to look at. We have HTML and PDF versions of your filings for view ability.

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