Wednesday, December 27, 2017

IFRS Foundation Publishes Preparers' Guide for the IFRS Taxonomy

The IFRS Foundation recently published a guide to the preparation of financial reports for filing purposes using the IFRS Taxonomy.

This is of particular interest to companies that need to comply with the SEC requirements for Foreign Private Issuers - which includes over 300 Canadian public companies. The filing deadline for most of these companies is March 31, which is rapidly approaching. The new Guide can be located at the IFRS website. XBRL Canada will be offering some workshops to help companies with their preparation. If interested, please contact info@xbrl.ca.

Monday, December 18, 2017

Expanding the use of XBRL

At present, XBRL is used by over 100 regulators in 70 countries around the world. In the UK alone, some 2.3 million companies use XBRL. Yet, there is a widespread feeling that the full potential of XBRL has not yet been met.

Comparisons often are made with bar codes, which have revolutionized the retail industry by making it possible to read information about products automatically, and facilitate the automated processing of transactions.  XBRL has the same potential to revolutionize corporate reporting.

Last year, the SEC substantially expanded the use of XBRL with its new regulations for foreign direct filers. In 2020, it will again be considerably expanded when the requirements by ESMA for making XBRL the  standard for corporate filings in Europe.

A recent report by the Financial Reporting Council of the UK expands on the opportunities presented by these developments and points the way to a new direction in corporate financial reporting over the next several years. It can be found at the FRC site.

In its press release, "The Lab recommends that a single committee be formed with representatives from regulators and Government to drive digital reporting in the UK by;

  1. Exploring the potential benefits of data reuse in the UK, and where needed, align reporting requirements;
  2. Ensuring that regulators work together to adopt ESEF, or UK alternative, to provide better quality corporate reporting data; and
  3. Engaging with companies and investors about this work.

The FRC fully supports the recommendation in the report to form a committee to help promote digital reporting in the UK and will look into how this can be taken forward.

Other recommendations in the Lab’s report include:

  1. Technology companies need to focus on producing tools and packages for non-technical users who create, distribute and consume XBRL data;
  2. Companies should develop a strategy at Board and audit committee level to discuss how  they implement XBRL; and
  3. Investors should engage with regulators, auditors/assurance providers and companies so that XBRL data is of value to the investor community.

Monday, December 04, 2017

Corporate Actions Should be Reported in XBRL


It’s time to report Corporate Actions in a standardized electronic format such as XBRL

Corporate actions includes events like dividends, stock splits, mergers, rights, options etc. Such actions are announced by companies through news releases, prospectuses, regulatory filings and more frequently lately, social media, particularly Twitter.

They are extremely time sensitive, because all investors must have access to the information at the same time. Even seemingly innocuous differences can lead to significant unfair trading advantages. Also, the traditional means of communication means that the information must be copied from one document to another, which increase the likelihood of errors being made.

The DTCC, SWIFT and XBRL US released a business case several years ago for the use of XBRL in such filings. This could reduce the timing issue significantly as well as the risk of error.

Since then an international Working Group of XBRL International has been working on this at the international level.


There has been some interest in Canada in this approach and XBRL Canada has been pursuing it. For more information see www.xbrl.ca and www.xbrl.us .