Today’s regulators are not challenged by Technology, but by enomority of data. For MCA (Minstry of Company Affairs), it is more than 60 e-forms, 100s of data fields, 850000 companies and cores of pages of PDF documents & attachments. The complexity with respect to processing & analysis of e-data before different Regulators viz., SEBI, RBI & MCA & IT department are montrous. Internationally, XBRL is the proved to be an effective solution.

MCA has mandated certain class of companies (refer below) to file BS & P/L alongwith Director’s Report and Auditor’s report for the year 2010-11 onwards by using XBRL Taxonomy vide circular no.9/2011 dated 31/3/2011 and circular no. 25/2011 dated 12/05/2011.

 

Coverage in Phase 1:

The following class of companies have to file the financial statements in XBRL form only from the year 2010-11

1)       All companies LISTED in India and their Indian subsidiaries.

2)       All companies having a paid up capital of INR 5 Crore and above

3)       All companies having a turnover of INR 100 crore and above.

 

However banking companies,insurance companies, power companies and NBFC are exempted for XBRL filing till further orders.

 

Additional Fee exemption for Phase 1 companies above. In other wards, whose BS are ADOPTED in the AGM held before 30th Sept 2011 are permitted to file upto 30th Sept 2011 without any additional fee. If AGM hel in Septemeber month then they will file the BS within 30 days from the date of adoption in AGM as per section 220 of Companies Act,1956.

 

The SEBI has introduced Clause 52 in the equity listing agreement, requiring listed companies to file information with the exchange only through Corporate Filing and Dissemination System (CFDS)

a XBRL-enabled common platform for listed companies to fi le such information, statements and reports as may be specifi ed by BSE and NSE in a phased manner like MCA.

 

Now question comes,

Like telugu is local language, Hindi is national language & English is international language similarly XBRL is Business Reporting Language.

 

XBRL-India (an ICAI initiative) is a Company registered under Section 25 of Companies Act, 1956, incorporated for managing the affairs of Indian Jurisdiction of XBRL International. XBRL International is comprised of Jurisdictions which represent countries, region or international bodies and focus of XBRL in their area. XBRL Indian Jurisdiction is an established Jurisdiction of XBRL International.

 

 

 

*EDIFAR- Electronic Data Information Filing And Retrieval System. EDIFAR is discontinued by SEBI with effect from 1^st April 2010 and a new portal has come i.e. CFDS (Corporate filing & Disemination System).

*ORFS—Online Reporting Filing System of RBI efiling portal where commercial banks /FI/authorized dealers & NBFC etc files their returns.

*ACES—Automation of Central Excise & Service tax of CBEC (Central board of excise & service tax) . Here Central excise returns & service tax returns are e filed.

 

 

XBRL can be applied to a very wide range of business and financial data. Among other things, it can handle:

§ Company internal and external financial reporting.

§ Business reporting to all types of regulators, including tax and financial authorities, central banks and governments.

§ Filing of loan reports and applications; credit risk assessments.

§ Exchange of information between government departments or between other institutions, such as central banks.

§ Authoritative accounting literature – providing a standard way of describing accounting documents provided by authoritative bodies.

A wide range of other financial and statistical data which needs to be stored, exchanged and analysed.

XBRL increases the usability of financial statement information. The need to re-key financial data for analytical and other purposes can be eliminated. It will also meet the requirements of regulators, lenders and others consumers of financial information, who are increasingly demanding reporting in XBRL. This will improve business relations and lead to a range of benefits.With full adoption of XBRL, companies can automate data collection.

 

Several software vendors are developing such tools in India and the companies are free to choose the one that suits them to create XBRL document.

XBRL benefits comparability by helping to identify data which is genuinely alike and distinguishing information which is not comparable.

1)       XBRL ‘instance document’ creation software has to be purchased from the software vendors in the market. This software is used to create XBRL instance documents that would be uploaded on the MCA portal. MCA21 system shall provide a facility for validation of the instance document and filing of the same. MCA is not recommending any specific XBRL software.

NOTE: Subsidiary of listed company is required to file in XBRL format, irrespective of its paid up capital.

 

 

Once the tool has been downloaded, the next step is to validate the instance document. The following validations shall be performed by the tool-

§ Validating that the instance document is as per the latest and correct version of taxonomy prescribed by MCA

§ All mandatory elements have been entered

§ Other validations as per taxonomy

Taxonomy:is an electronic dictionary of the reporting concepts. It’s a rule book as well as a year book (will be updated annually as regulations are updated). It is a classification listing, a catalogue, nomenclature or categorization of elements of financial/business statements.

 

Taxonomies may represent hundreds or even thousands of individual business reporting concepts, arithematical

and definition a l relationships among them, along with text labels in mu l t i p l e languages, references to authoritative literature, and information about how to display each concept to a user. Banks, Insurance, NBFC, etc., will be subjected to distinctive taxonomies. Taxonomies are based on the regulatory requirements and standards which are to be followed by the companies. Accordingly, depending on the requirements of every country, there will be country-specifi c taxonomies. Public taxonomies such as the MCA’s Final Taxonomy and Business rules for XBRL reporting cannot always meet the precise needs of every individual     fi nancial report. For this reason, XBRL is designed to be eXtensible, allowing preparers to create an extension taxonomy (customised) that adds to the public taxonomy.

 

Tagging” is a symbolic term for assigning coded identifi ers to information. The most fundamental steps in developing an XBRL report are tagging data and applying a style sheet to the tagged data to convert XBRL files into a document that looks similar to the paper reports users of financial statements have been accustomed to. The tagging process is governed by the XBRL Specifi cation (taxonomy), a detailed descripttion of how to go about complying with the XBRL language. Not all information in business reports needs to be tagged. the user’s application would be able to interact directly with the reported data. The tags (ticket, label, mark, card) are read by the computer, by programmers, and by other parties who need or want to see the tags. Users typically get what they need from readable printouts and the interfaces created by their software applications.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tag:The elements as defined in taxonomy are also referred as XBRL tags or only tags. Mark-up languages such as XBRL and XML use tags to describe data < opening tag & > is closing tag. In between, elelements/data are given.

 

FACTS:The values included in the instance document, which correspond to the concepts included in the taxonomy, are called as facts. These facts can either be numeric (monetary, shares or other numeric information) or non-numeric (string, date or text block). E.g.

 

 

 

The degree of proficiency required with regard to the technology would depend on the area of specialization that a CA intends to focus viz. developing Taxonomies and Extension would require a significant

degree of expertise in related tools. ICAI members need to evaluate the various opportunities that will present themselves in XBRL reporting and develop their own professional roadmaps.