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August 5th, 2011 by Phil Mennona, CPA - Senior XBRL Compliance Manager
Phil Mennona, CPA – Senior XBRL Compliance Manager discusses issues with incorrect signs in filings and how it can significantly impact the quality of data.
Through our experience with providing over 2,000 XBRL Exhibits to SEC filers, we have worked with a number of audit firms (primarily the Big 4) that assist clients in the review of their XBRL Exhibits. If you have been following the SEC’s Staff Observations, it should be no surprise that one of the common areas of auditor focus is on negative values. This is often an area of primary focus by the SEC in its published guidance, as well as reports and presentations throughout the XBRL marketplace. This area is very important because issues of incorrect sign have an extremely significant impact on the quality of data.
Are you okay with reporting an expense as a credit? I guess if you are Bernie Madoff you might not care, but the thought of misreporting expenses as credits sends a shiver down all good accountants’ spines. An issue of incorrect sign usually means that a Debit was incorrectly reported as a Credit, or vice versa. Because these issues have so much impact, it is no wonder they are spoken about so much and represent a critical area of focus. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: negative values
Posted in Compliance, XBRL | 1 Comment »
August 3rd, 2011 by Phil Mennona, CPA - Senior XBRL Compliance Manager
Phil Mennona, CPA – Senior XBRL Compliance Manager introduces a 5 part blog series on simple ways to improve the quality of your XBRL filings.
As more companies start to abide by the SEC’s XBRL mandate, this process has forced everyone to learn from their mistakes and evolve with the changes it has produced. Not only software vendors like us, but also the SEC, FASB, and XBRL US have made mistakes; software vendors had to learn to create complex validation rules to prevent technical syntax errors flagged by the EDGAR system while the FASB learned it needed to improve definitions on some standard elements. These changes have allowed the market to mature quite a bit, but as XBRL continues to grow and fulfill its role as the global language of finance, we all still have more learning ahead of us. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: quality
Posted in Compliance, XBRL | No Comments »
July 12th, 2011 by Raul Varela, CFA - VP, Strategic Initiatives
Raul Varela, Rivet’s VP of Partnerships, comments on the importance of Rivet’s recently announced partnership with CoreFiling. The end of limited liability and the publishing of the AICPA’s Agreed Upon Procedures Engagements for XBRL Tagged Data deepen the need for a comprehensive XBRL review and validation tool – now available from Rivet-CoreFiling.
We recently announced our partnership with CoreFiling to help companies achieve SEC compliance. Rivet Software is at the forefront of standards-based business reporting and analytics, and Corefiling is an expert in validation and regulatory compliance rules. Essentially our partnership is putting two of the smartest guys in the room together and we’re really excited about what this means for our customers. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: AICPA’s SOP 09-1 (Agreed Upon Procedures), CoreFiling, Dragon View, limited liability, Magnify, XBRL Auditing Package
Posted in Auditing, Compliance, Transparency | No Comments »
June 17th, 2011 by Phil Mennona, CPA - Senior XBRL Compliance Manager
Last night the SEC posted new Staff Observations dated 6/15/11which include the SEC’s observations about some of the most common and significant issues from the filings analyzed by the SEC. Some of the more notable items included in the document are: 1) Format of the statements, 2) Negative Values, 3) Extended Elements, 4) Completeness of tagging, 5) Modeling of Level 4 tagging, and 6) Units. Understanding each of these items can greatly assist in the quest for submitting SEC compliant, high-quality XBRL.
Link: Staff Observations From Review of Interactive Data Financial Statements »
Tags: SEC Staff Observations
Posted in Compliance, XBRL | No Comments »
June 10th, 2011 by Jordan Woodard - Senior Compliance Manager
From tube to flat screen, standard definition to high definition, 2D to 3D we have seen television technology progress for our view pleasures. If you look at the US GAAP 2012 Draft Taxonomy as much as I do you will be excited to hear about the NEW “2012 Development Taxonomy”. The new taxonomy allows you to see changes to the taxonomy as they are made, it’s alive!
For those filers planning for 2012 early, you can see advances in the taxonomy as they occur. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: FASB
Posted in Compliance, Taxonomies, XBRL | No Comments »
June 9th, 2011 by Jordan Woodard - Senior Compliance Manager
Element selection can be one of the more challenging parts of preparing XBRL filings. With SEC guidance like “Filers should select elements after a thorough search of the standard taxonomy and careful consideration of elements’ standard definitions, standard labels, and other attributes.” (SEC Staff Observation from October 6, 2009) and “Filers should concentrate more effort in the area of finding existing USGAAP elements so as to avoid creating custom elements.” (SEC Staff Observation from November, 1 2010), navigating approximately 15,500 elements may seem like daunting task. With the right tools and knowledge of how to utilize the taxonomy, element selection feels natural. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: FASB, webinar
Posted in Compliance, XBRL | No Comments »
April 27th, 2011 by Phil Mennona, CPA - Senior XBRL Compliance Manager
Sign Values in XBRL – Part 3: Features and Tools to Assist in the Review Process
Now that we have discussed some of the complexity surrounding appropriate sign, filers should not be scared. Mature software tools can do much of this review work for you as well as highlight areas of risk visually.
First, the software tool should be able to validate against patterns for one-way reporting elements. If Accumulated Depreciation is entered as a negative, sophisticated tools like Crossfire can warn the user of a potential issue. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Compliance, XBRL | No Comments »
April 26th, 2011 by Phil Mennona, CPA - Senior XBRL Compliance Manager
Sign Values in XBRL – Part 2: How to Apply the Sign Concepts to an Indirect Cash Flow Statement
Applying the correct sign to an indirect cash flow statement may be particularly confusing because the correct balance types for Net Income and Adjustments to Net Income are considered differently than the balance types for elements in the rest of the cash flow statement. The following information provides clarification.
In the figure below, the taxonomy used was created in such a way that the Adjustments to Net Income section uses some of the same elements that are used in the income statement. The instance document values in the Adjustments to Net Income section of the cash flow statement should be reported with an instance document balance that is consistent with its income statement balance. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Compliance, XBRL | No Comments »
April 25th, 2011 by Phil Mennona, CPA - Senior XBRL Compliance Manager
A recent hot topic in XBRL is the issue of reporting the appropriate sign for associated values in an SEC submission. The SEC has focused on this issue in their November 1, 2010 staff observations (http://www.sec.gov/spotlight/xbrl/staff-review-observations-110110.shtml) as have many analysts in the marketplace. The most common of these errors cited by the SEC relates to incorrectly entering an amount as negative when it should be positive. Many XBRL teams and their providers suggest clients carefully review all negative amounts in the submission to diminish the risk of filing with errors, particularly given the SEC’s recent focus.
While less prevalent, there is also a risk of incorrectly submitting a fact with a positive sign when it should be negative. This risk is usually more prevalent with “two-way” reporting concepts (explained later) that could be entered as a positive or negative. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Compliance, XBRL | No Comments »
April 20th, 2011 by Rivet Software
We’ve had such a great response to our XBRL Comparative Report, that we’ve scheduled another informative webinar. Hosting the webinar will be Ted Stavropoulos (co-creator of the report) and Alice Coyne (Subject Matter Expert Extraordinaire and original member of Rivet’s Pro Services Team)!
Join us next Tuesday at 11am MT / 1pm ET to get a front row seat! Register »
Tags: webinar, XBRL Comparative Report
Posted in Compliance, XBRL | No Comments »
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