Johannesburg, 08 May 2017
Whether the abbreviation XBRL is new to you, or the process leaves you with more questions than answers, you only have a short time left to get your head around it before implementation in 2018.
XBRL - short for eXtensible Business Reporting Language - is the digital financial reporting standard that the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) wants qualifying entities in South Africa to implement next year.
The commission launched a programme in February to implement XBRL and has subsequently had a session with stakeholders and representatives from a selected group of 100 JSE listed companies, where the plans for the implementation of XBRL were shared. While the CIPC is working closely with various stakeholders in the South African business and regulatory sphere, the move has many companies still trying to figure out what XBRL is, and feeling the pressure to initiate preliminary work in order to be able to accommodate the planned changes.
In a nutshell, XBRL is a communication method for electronic business reporting to provide standards-based methods of preparing, extracting, publishing and exchanging financial data. This open, royalty-free standard for expressing business reports and related information comes under the constant custodianship of XBRL International, an international non-profit consortium of approximately 450 major companies, government agencies, and non-governmental organisations.
According to the XBRL home page: "XBRL is a language for the electronic communication of business and financial data which is revolutionising business reporting around the world. It provides major benefits in the preparation, analysis and communication of business information. It offers cost savings, greater efficiency and improved accuracy and reliability to all those involved in supplying or using financial data... The idea behind [XBRL] is simple. Instead of treating financial information as a block of text - as in a standard internet page or a printed document - it provides an identifying tag for each individual item of data. This is computer readable. For example, company net profit has its own unique tag.
"CIPC's objective with XBRL is not only to improve efficiency, effectiveness and the quality of financial reporting to the commission, but also to pave the way for other regulators in South Africa to adopt XBRL, which will improve information exchange among regulators and stakeholders."
While a relatively new concept to South Africans, XBRL has been a reporting standard for international financial markets for some time, and there are technologies available to address the XBRL reporting mandates, such as IBM's Cognos Disclosure Management. Synergy is proactively working with IBM, as well as with one of its IBM CDM clients included in the commission's XBRL pilot.
"This is a great opportunity to showcase IBM CDM's ability to offer a unified financial governance solution focused on improving financial processes and controls, particularly in the final stages before disclosure," says Sunet Leimecke, CA(SA), CTA FPM Solutions Manager, Synergy.
"It helps the finance department improve the timeliness and quality of financial management processes and reporting; and also facilitates audits, extends enterprise resource planning (ERP) transactional controls, and improves financial risk management. IBM CDM also offers clients the ability to automate the process of XBRL tagging for compliance with the various XBRL mandates around the world."
Leimecke lists some of the features and benefits of IBM CDM as:
* Enhancing the internal controls over financial reporting;
* Improves visibility and the audit trail throughout the entire reporting process;
* Links source data to report data;
* Can use a prior report as a template for the next report;
* Integrates the Tag Once XBRL function;
* Contains tools to promote collaboration;
* Delivers workflow and task management tools;
* Includes business rules and validation; and
* Has multiple output options, such as XBRL, EDGAR, HTML, Microsoft Word, and Adobe PDF.
"We believe that our involvement in the pilot will help us provide our customers with the necessary insights to stay informed of new developments, regulations and time-frames, and look forward to assisting current and new customers with the implementation and automation of their XBRL projects."
For additional features and benefits of IBM Cognos CDM, please click here.
View original article here.
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