The educational course on XBRL is designed to study the electronic format for collecting and processing reporting data based on XBRL specifications (eXtensible Business Reporting Language, extensible business reporting language) by employees of financial market organizations.

The main goal of creating the course is to provide employees of non-credit financial institutions with the necessary information about XBRL, which will facilitate their transition to submitting reports in XBRL format to the Bank of Russia.

An online course is a collection of theoretical materials grouped by topic. To test and consolidate the acquired knowledge during the study of the course module, the user is offered test tasks, and for control - final testing.

About the standard

XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language - “extensible business reporting language”) is an open business information exchange standard widely used in the world, which allows expressing by semantic means common requirements for business reporting for financial market participants and regulators. XBRL is a means of communication and exchange of business information between systems. These communications are based on sets of metadata (data about data) that contain a description of both individual reporting indicators and the relationships between them and other semantic elements of taxonomies.

XBRL taxonomies contain definitions and properties individual elements reports, as well as the properties of relationships between these elements. The presence of these properties allows you to implement a number of operations with reporting data, as well as provide automatic connection with the requirements of regulators and various reporting standards. Based on the taxonomy, organizations form a package of reporting data (numbers, text and graphic elements linked to the taxonomy).

XBRL standard specifications are developed and published in the public domain by the independent international organization XBRL International, which has more than 600 members from 35 countries. The goal of XBRL International is to improve the presentation of business information and increase the transparency of doing business around the world by providing an open standard for data exchange.

In connection with the creation on the basis of the Bank of Russia of a mega-regulator of the financial market and the convergence of the regulatory norms of the Russian financial market with the regulatory norms of the G20 countries, it becomes necessary to carry out a number of systemic transformations in the area of accounting, organization of regulation and supervision, as well as the collection and processing of reports of non-bank financial institutions (hereinafter - NFIs). One of the priority tasks is to transfer NFI reporting to a single modern format data transfer of financial, supervisory and other business reporting based on a data model enriched with descriptions of reporting forms, libraries of directories and classifiers, rules for matching and verifying data.

The main objectives of introducing a single electronic format for NFO reporting are:

1. Elimination of redundancy and duplication of reporting data by building a unified system for collecting and processing reports for the NFO block based on IFRS by the mega-regulator;

2. Increasing the reliability and quality of reporting data by unifying and automating processes;

3. Increasing transparency and openness of financial information for all market participants;

4. Unification of formats for interdepartmental and international electronic data exchange.

The introduction of a unified electronic format for NFO reporting will be implemented taking into account the timing and scope of work on projects of the Bank of Russia in terms of introducing a unified chart of accounts for NFOs, industry standards for accounting and reporting of NFOs, unification of requirements for statistical reporting and reporting in the order of NFO supervision.

Bank of Russia project to introduce XBRL for NFOs

The Bank of Russia receives a significant amount of various types of NFO reporting in accordance with the law Russian Federation. Reporting is used to analyze the financial situation, identify violations and negative trends in the activities of supervised organizations, the purposes of state statistics, monitor the state of the market and determine the vector of its development.

The Bank of Russia is carrying out comprehensive work to assess and implement the best international reporting practices in Russia. In this regard, the Bank of Russia is implementing various projects for the development of the existing accounting, supervisory and statistical reporting of NFOs, technologies for its collection and processing, as well as analysis and supervision.

The Board of Directors of the Bank of Russia approved the implementation of the project for the transition of NFIs to an electronic reporting format based on XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) specifications (hereinafter referred to as the XBRL Project for NFIs).

The implementation of the XBRL Project for NFOs is the first step towards the transition to a single electronic format for all financial market participants.

The project to develop a targeted technology for collecting and processing reports from non-credit financial institutions within the perimeter of regulation and supervision of the Bank of Russia based on the unified XBRL electronic format is the final stage of the program for creating a unified data set based on the Unified Chart of Accounts based on IFRS, taking into account supervisory and statistical needs

XBRL - Extensible Business Reporting Language

Oleg Grubin, Leading Consultant, Expert Systems

Nadezhda Antufieva, Expert Systems consultant

What is XBRL?

XBRL is an abbreviation for the English eXtensible Business Reporting Language. It is translated into Russian as "extensible business reporting language".

XBRL is a universal XML-based standard for publishing, exchanging, analyzing and comparing financial data and business information. The purpose of creating XBRL is to develop an optimal scheme for the exchange of financial information between participants in the international market and methods for creating, exchanging and comparing business reporting.

Why was this standard called the extensible business reporting language? Let's take a closer look at this.

eXtensible– “expandable”, “flexible” or “adaptable”. The standard can be easily adapted to any standards of business (financial, management, accounting, tax, statistical) reporting and can be used for various purposes.

business- "business" - the standard is focused on the needs of business users (both commercial and government).

Reporting– the standard is designed to provide facts about the business. To be more precise, the language marks up business reporting by matching the individual facts stated in the reporting to certain data labels or so-called "tags" (tags). The use of labeled data makes it possible for them to be processed automatically by computers.

language is a marking computer language, a language for marking up or labeling information. It acts as a standard format for transmitting data electronically.

So, XBRL is a language for the electronic exchange of business and financial data. This is a real revolution in the formation of business reporting! It is the best tool for preparing, analyzing and communicating business information. It reduces costs, improves efficiency and data quality.

On the this moment business information presented in doc or pdf format is perceived as a display of certain symbols that do not have their own characteristics and history. XBRL gives each piece of information individual labels (tags). For example, to describe the value of a company's current assets, the CurrentAssets tag can be used, enclosed in brackets: . Then the asset value itself is indicated between two tags: 1000 , the first tag being the opening tag, and the second one (with a slash) closing. Thus, XBRL provides a translation (translation) of accounting concepts into a computer-friendly set of financial data.

But how will the computer know that these are current assets? This is the case when such a scientific concept as "metadata" comes to the rescue. Briefly, metadata is data (information) about data. For example, the programmer must explain to the computer how he should interpret the term and what kinds of values ​​can be associated with this concept (concept).

From an accounting point of view, current assets () should have a monetary value (type attribute), and the side of the account that usually shows the value of current assets is the "debit" (balance attribute). This refers to the basic accounting rule double entry, according to which assets and expenses are usually shown on the debit account, and capital, liabilities and income on the loan. Another characteristic of current assets is their presence in the company at a certain point in time. Current assets are reflected in the company's balance sheet, which is a "snapshot" of the company's financial condition at the date (period type attribute). The opposite of the value of the indicator for the date is the indicator (in the form of a flow of something) for the period. For example, Net Income () is an example of a metric shown over a period of time, say a year.

The above description shows that information about current assets, in addition to the value, must contain at least three additional characteristics (attributes) so that the computer can correctly (from an accounting point of view) process this information.

Tags relieve users of time-consuming and costly manual data entry by automating this process. Ultimately, a computer "intelligently" recognizes XBRL data, selects, parses, stores, and exchanges with other machines. Users can receive data in different sections in real time. XBRL speeds up the collection of financial data, reduces the risk of errors, and allows automatic check data.

XBRL can be used to represent data in a variety of languages ​​and accounting standards. V currently there are various taxonomies of the language that comply with IFRS, US GAAP, and other national and industry standards.

XBRL Use Cases and Target Audience

The XBRL standard is intended to be used by a wide range of people involved in the preparation or analysis of financial statements. One way or another, XBRL can be in demand among government agencies, commercial companies, banks, insurance companies, software manufacturers, financial analysts, auditors, accountants.

Possible use cases for this standard include:

1. Publication (disclosure) of financial information on the Internet, provision of free/limited access for interested parties.
2. Data exchange between various applications (for example, transferring information from transactional systems to analytical systems or report generators).
3. Collection of reports in a unified format:
   • for government agencies (FTS, FFMS, Rosstat, Pension Fund, etc.);
   • for exchanges, for information disclosure systems;
   • for the purposes of consolidation by the parent company of the statements of its subsidiaries and affiliates.

Benefits of XBRL

XBRL has a lot of advantages. It saves time, money and effort and provides unlimited possibilities for analyzing financial statements.

Publicity

The XBRL standard is completely open and free. In addition, at the moment there are already a large number of tools for transforming data into this format.

Improving the quality of information

Say goodbye to format mismatches

One of the benefits of XBRL is that it allows you to automatically format the style and fonts of your company reports. This saves a lot of time that was previously spent on bringing the report into the appropriate form.

Automatic data approval

Because XBRL tokenizes data, only the data you need can be extracted from reports. In addition, XBRL carries not only data, but also formulas. Thanks to this, there is no need to recalculate the manually calculated data. The computer provides automatic verification of reports submitted in XBRL format.

Since the American Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation began using the XBRL format, the number of mathematical errors in calculations has decreased from 30% to zero.

Audit trail automation

XBRL data includes an "automated audit trail". Typically, when data is moved from one application to another, it loses its properties and attributes. Auditors have to separately open the data source to establish their accuracy. Through XBRL, not only the data itself is transmitted, but also their attributes and properties contained in the metadata. Thus, the relying party has complete information in one file.

Support for notes and problem descriptions

Everyone knows that bare numbers cannot tell the whole story. Therefore, XBRL supports writing comments, notes. This allows auditors to see a more complete picture of the data, which helps them understand the situation effortlessly. At the same time, auditors are spared from viewing a bunch of documents, papers, etc., thereby facilitating the interaction of companies.

More accurate reporting

Each state (and not only) organization that accepts certain reports has its own individual requirements for the information collected. Therefore, companies had to compile such reports almost from scratch. XBRL allows you to select from the entire array of corporate data only those that are needed in a particular report. In addition, you can select only indicators, and numerical data will be loaded independently from the database.

Faster and better information search

Getting company data with a "single request"

XBRL allows you to extract exactly the data that is needed for analysis from all reporting, without wasting time searching for data. This saves time, especially if you need to analyze highly specialized data from different companies.

Get real-time data

Investors and analysts will certainly enjoy getting real-time reports. Despite the high technology, the main reporting is still provided on printed media. Therefore, the "relevance" of the report may be in doubt. XBRL allows you to get up-to-date reports in real time.

Increasing Data Transparency

Due to the fact that XBRL has high level the quality of reporting, it easily ensures their transparency.

Better information analysis

New ways to analyze data

The analysis of reporting in the understanding of many people is to take the necessary data, study them, move on to the next and draw the appropriate conclusions. XBRL allows you to do better work: for example, display summary data, move from it to more detailed data and perhaps compare numbers with other companies, view all comments on the data, return to summary data, and so on. Investors will especially like this approach to data analysis.

Comparison of companies' activities

Many have already been created software applications supporting XBRL, allowing to display in one window the reporting of several companies for certain periods for comparative analysis.

Obtaining Consistent Information for Comparison

Companies provide disparate data in reports. XBRL, through the use of markers (tags), provides the ability to receive and analyze (compare) sequential data for several reporting periods.

Improved data transfer system between companies

Overcome system and software limitations

XBRL allows you to link data from different systems. This helps to avoid common problems associated with the interaction of different formats, platforms, etc. The flexibility of the language helps to save time and conduct qualitative analysis.

Information has learned to overcome obstacles

There are situations when some security policies or personal settings interfere with the data transfer process and you have to enter the lost data manually. XBRL allows you to bypass the aforementioned obstacles and transfer quality data without loss.

Business processes become more efficient

XBRL helps to avoid looking for needed files in shared folders through Explorer. It offers more efficient and quick search the necessary information. It implements a simple data access policy, which increases the efficiency of processes.

History of creation and development

Christopher Cox, chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, kickstarted the development of XBRL.

year 2001. The first international XBRL taxonomy has been released. It was created for companies in the commercial and industrial sector. Protocols were signed with the WWW consortium, allowing the exchange of data from various systems, applications and platforms. An American bank has agreed to convert data from QuickBook (accounting software) to XBRL to speed up the credit review process. The US government has encouraged government companies to use XBRL.

2002 Microsoft was the first company to archive financial statements in XBRL.

2003 The National Japanese Tax Office has adopted the XBRL format for filing tax returns. Released new release the XBRL 2.1 specification, which specified how programs can retrieve XBRL tagged data. The Tokyo Stock Exchange provided investors with all of its annual financial statements in XBRL format.

2004 XBRL releases the Financial Reporting Taxonomies Architecture user guide. The Toronto Stock Exchange (Canada) has published its annual report in XBRL.

2005 year. To test the capabilities of the language, the US Securities and Exchange Commission created a voluntary program in which participants provided their financial statements in XBRL format. The first participants were such companies as Microsoft, EDGAR Online, United Technologies. In general, 47 leading companies with a total capitalization of $2 trillion participated in this program. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has begun accepting reports in XBRL format from 8,300 banks.

2006 The International Accounting Standards Board has completed the development of a taxonomy for IFRS. The SEC invested $54 million to convert all financial statements into XBRL format

2007 The German Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Legal Affairs have implemented a reporting tool in XBRL format. Also in 2007, Singapore and Japan started using XBRL.

XBRL is widespread in many countries around the world. Some of them already have experience, some are just considering this opportunity ... but, given the trend, XBRL is becoming more and more popular every year in the preparation and analysis of financial statements.

XBRL taxonomies

In accounting (management, tax) accounting, there are many concepts that can be described using XBRL. For example, revenue, cost, gross profit, deferred expenses - these and many other indicators are found in financial statements. Moreover, there are many accounting standards, and therefore the definition of current assets under IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) may differ from those contained in national accounting standards / principles (in particular, US GAAP or RAS). Therefore, it becomes necessary to describe the relationships (relationships) between financial concepts according to each national accounting standard. In fact, this means the need to determine whether there is a relationship between current assets and, for example, receivables, and if so, in what form. It is also necessary to provide references to regulations for each element of the financial statements.

At the beginning of this article, it was already said that the values ​​of individual elements of financial statements are shown in XBRL format using labels or so-called tags. For example, the value of current assets will be shown in a file reporting as 100. Such files, which contain the values ​​of financial elements themselves, are called instance documents in XBRL terminology.

Information about what current assets are () and how they should be processed by a computer is contained in files with schemes (schema files).

Relationships between elements of financial statements are described by what is known as link systems (linkbases), which are categorized according to what they describe.

According to the XBRL technical specification, taxonomy(Taxonomy) consists of one or more schemes (schema) and a system of links (linkbases). A schema is a part of a taxonomy that contains definitions of the elements of financial statements (such as current assets) and their properties, while a link system defines the relationships between them. If we draw an analogy with the classification of living beings, then the explanation of what an organism, domain, kingdom, class, species is will be placed in the scheme, while the hierarchical relationships between them will be described using a system of links. Visual representation The diagram below shows the structure of the XBRL language.

What is XBRL taxonomy from the user's point of view? A taxonomy is a way of describing the formal requirements for an XBRL report.

In order for a piece of information to be endowed with individual characteristics and recognized by a computer, the creators of XBRL endowed each unit with unique labels. They organized these labels into taxonomies - data vocabularies that define commonly used indicators and different forms of reporting (national, industry, special). Each taxonomy includes:

• Accounting concepts or concepts ( concept) are unique labels (tags) used to label individual elements of financial data. Such unique labels are needed for computer data processing; the end user himself does not see them.
• Shortcuts ( labels) – names of accounting concepts in various languages. It is the labels that determine which financial statement item names will be visible to the user.
• Definitions ( definitions) - regulatory definitions of accounting concepts;
• Relationships (l inkbases) is a formal description of the relationships between financial data elements. There are several categories of links between elements. The most popular are: Presentation view (a description of how a financial report should look like) and Calculation view (a description of how some financial statements should be based on others).

Thus, the taxonomy allows reporting data in accordance with various accounting and financial reporting rules.

Companies can create new taxonomies in-house. They can supplement the "library" with their own rules. Thus, the "extensibility" of the language is manifested.

Valid taxonomies

The development of taxonomies is carried out by various organizations at the national and international levels. So the international non-profit association XBRL International, which is the main ideologist and developer of the XBRL format, proposed a universal taxonomy XBRL-GP (http://www.xbrl.org/GLFiles/). This taxonomy is a universal format for working with financial information, not tied to any specific accounting standards or principles. This is the standard format for:

• transfer of recorded and unrecorded entries to financial reporting consolidation systems, budgeting and forecasting systems, reporting systems; - downloading general ledger information, as well as transferring financial information from one accounting system to another or uploading data to a web server;
• presenting data on settlements with customers and suppliers, the level of stocks and other balance indicators and solving other problems.

The International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation (IASCF) develops and publishes the IFRS taxonomy. The 2009 version has now been officially approved and published on the IASB website: IFRS Taxonomy 2009 (http://www.iasb.org/XBRL/IFRS+Taxonomy/IFRS+Taxonomy+2009.htm).

The IFRS Taxonomy 2009 is a complete translation (translation) of IFRS into XBRL format as of January 1, 2009. Previous Versions published in 2006 and 2008. There are also earlier versions (before 2006) of taxonomies for IFRS called IFRS-GP Taxonomy.

Taxonomy IFRS Taxonomy is the basis for the development of many national taxonomies of European countries that have adopted IFRS as a national accounting standard. As a rule, such countries expand the standard taxonomy by adding new elements to it, as well as titles (labels) of articles in their native language.

The United States has developed and operates its own version of the taxonomy, based on national accounting standards (US GAAP). Taxonomies are developed by the American division of XBRL International (http://xbrl.us). The American taxonomy consists of a whole set of industry and special taxonomies, the core of which is US GAAP Taxonomies (http://xbrl.us/taxonomies/Pages/US-GAAP2009.aspx) - five industry taxonomies that comply with the US GAAP standard:

• Commercial and Industrial Taxonomy (commercial and industrial companies);
• Banking and Savings Institutions Taxonomy (banking and savings institutions);
• Brokers and Dealers Taxonomy (brokerage and dealer companies);
• Insurance Taxonomy (insurance companies);
• Real Estate Taxonomy (development companies).

Currently, the 2009 version (US GAAP Taxonomies, Release 2009) has been approved and is in effect; previously approved versions of US GAAP Taxonomies were issued in 2008 and 2005. The American taxonomy is large and rather complex: it contains more than 10 thousand elements. The US is one of those countries where the use of XBRL for financial reporting is already mandatory for certain categories of companies. Over time, this requirement will become mandatory for all US companies. The plan, approved by the US Government through the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), includes the following milestones on the path to mandatory XBRL use in the US:

• 2009: All U.S. and international US GAAP companies with annual turnover greater than $5 billion;

2004-2019 "Expert Systems"

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Very soon, non-profit financial organizations are waiting for another innovation - reporting in XBRL format. The relevant regulations will come into force on January 1, 2018. The innovation also applies to insurance companies, NPFs, PURTSB, trade organizers. Now professional participants must submit supervisory, statistical and financial reports not in the form of forms, but in the form of an array of data.

What is XBRL

XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) translated from English is an extensible business reporting language that is widely used in the world. Business generates different forms of documents from tax returns to internal sales figures. Report data may relate to annual income, number of sales, inventory numbers. If earlier it was necessary to fill out pre-printed forms, now many are switching to a unified electronic reporting format. XBRL allows computers to automatically process the collected data.
The XBRL standard is based on the extensible XML markup language and uses XML Schema, XLink, XPath technologies. The entire language specification is developed by the international organization XBRL International. The company offers courses on its website for $700, though they are all in English.

How it all started

An accountant in Washington State, USA started developing XBRL in 1998. At first, the system was used by American regulators, and then a committee of European banks joined in. This was followed by financial institutions of different states. Today, XBRL has become the main form of reporting for the G20 and BRICS countries. In total, XBRL International has 550 members. The Bank of Russia joined the organization in 2015 as a special member and now aims to transfer all market participants to XBRL, and then become a permanent member of the organization.


Why is all this necessary

The mega-regulator needs reporting in order to better understand the work of the market, identify anomalies and abuses, and collect statistics. In time collected information is the key to any regulation. The Central Bank of the Russian Federation believes that the use of XBRL technologies will make it possible to get rid of redundancy and duplication of data. To do this, a unified system for collecting and processing reports based on IFRS will be created.
Also, electronic document management will increase the reliability and quality of data, reduce the burden on reporting organizations and help Russian NFI businesses enter the international information space.

Basic concepts of electronic reporting format

Data Templates
They are filled by market participants and are developed on the basis of taxonomy. For example, this is a table with information about insurance contracts.

metadata This is information about data in the form of directories and data characteristics. For example, a reference book of securities or a chart of accounts.

Data Model
Description of data objects and structures, as well as their relationships with metadata. For a specific category, a specific directory is applied.

Reporting Forms
They are built on the basis of metadata and data model. Let's say this is a note about the liquidity of balance sheet assets.

Taxonomy
This is a set of metadata, data models, descriptions of reporting forms, the order of their formation, formed according to certain rules. For example, the XBRL taxonomy for IFRS reporting.

Analytical reports
They are formed on the basis of a database provided by market participants. For example, this is the analysis of the profitability of securities.

In technical language, XBRL is an XML document with data with links to taxonomy elements. It can reach several gigabytes.

Mechanics of interaction with the Central Bank of the Russian Federation

It is assumed that organizations will send data to the Bank of Russia in digital form, signed by the qualification electronic signature through the personal account of the professional participant. The Bank of Russia has developed software A "converter" that is capable of converting NFO reporting data into XBRL format. The regulator plans to support software until 2021, counting on the fact that by this time professional participants will switch to their own software solutions for creating reports. The new format puts forward more serious requirements for reporting data - they are wider and more comprehensive. For those companies where the collection and processing of information is put on stream, it will be easier to enter a new rhythm, the rest will have to do a lot of methodological work.
“The technology itself is excellent, but this is not enough,” says Olga Goncharova, director of the department for collecting and processing reports from non-credit financial institutions of the Bank of Russia. - XBRL does not "fly" without putting things in order in the reporting itself. Must be common standards, duplication should be excluded, there should be supervisory indicators that will be tied to international reporting, there should not be a variety of forms. First of all, this is the cleaning of reporting forms, reporting indicators, statistical, financial, accounting. And only then is their description in XBRL format.

Underwater rocks

Many professional participants still do not know about the upcoming innovations, and those who do do not understand how to approach reporting. Whether to use the Central Bank's software solutions or other options, which of them are effective and which are not? Despite the fact that the regulator holds webinars and seminars on this topic, there are still no answers to these questions. They will appear only in the process of testing and gaining experience in new conditions. Most likely, decisions on how and what to do will be made by companies after the New Year. After all, the reporting period begins in February. Many are confused about how the Central Bank will react if the reporting provided is incomplete or erroneous. It is likely that at first the regulator will turn a blind eye to inaccuracies or lack of data. DiB Systems LLC will upload data in Excel document format and then send them to the CBR Converter. These are the first steps that will be taken towards the development of a methodology for working in the new conditions. In early 2018, the company plans to start developing its own XBRL solutions.

12/07/2017 \ Point of view

Julia Amiridi, Expert of the Association of Russian Banks, Deputy CEO for business development at Intersoft Lab, talked about what you need to know in order to prepare in advance for the transition to the international XBRL business reporting format.

The transition to an electronic format for collecting and processing reporting data based on XBRL specifications (from the English eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is one of the strategic projects of the Bank of Russia. XBRL - an international business reporting format - from the beginning of 2018 should become the standard for reporting to the regulator by non-bank financial organizations (NFIs): non-state pension funds, joint-stock and mutual investment funds, management companies of investment funds, insurance organizations, professional participants in the securities market securities, trade organizers, clearing organizations and persons performing the functions of a central counterparty.

The tremendous work done by the regulator to unify the reporting metrics and develop the XBRL taxonomy for NFIs, related regulations and the XBRL converter, coupled with strict adherence to the timing of the transition to XBRL for NFIs, indicates a determination to scale this progressive approach to credit institutions as soon as possible. The decision on the advisability of such a step will be made following the results of the transition of the NFO to XBRL. If it turns out to be positive, then the approaches used to develop the XBREL taxonomy for NFIs will become the basis for the approaches used to develop the taxonomy for banks.

What is XBRL Taxonomy

An XBRL taxonomy is a description of the data and metrics, provided with detailed analytical features, that reporting entities must submit to the regulator. The XBRL taxonomy for NFIs combines a set of data on the Common Chart of Accounts (UCA), as well as Accounting Financial Statements (FRSs), IFRS elements, and supervisory statistics. This set of data is sufficient to obtain all the necessary forms of control accounting (financial), supervisory and statistical reporting on the side of the regulator.

The XBRL taxonomy for NFOs is based on a data-centric approach. This means that the collected data is cleared of duplicate and redundant indicators and is provided to the regulator in the form of multidimensional structures built on the basis of accounts, parts of accounts and supervisory statistical indicators in those analytical sections that the regulator needs for advanced data analysis (for example, major currencies, geographical concentration, expected maturity, etc.). At the same time, the taxonomy includes elements of a form-centric approach, when each reporting indicator is identified at the level of economic entities in the BFO. This is a more familiar view of reporting for users, which simplifies the first steps in mastering the new reporting format. The taxonomy has more than 5,000 validation rules, including those of the usual cross-form control type.

The final taxonomy of accounting, supervisory and statistical reporting for NFIs was published on the website of the Bank of Russia on October 31, 2017. Updating the taxonomy in connection with the introduction of new supervisory requirements, etc. changes affecting less than 15% of indicators and/or analytical sections will be carried out in a planned manner at least twice a year. According to the regulations set for 2018, the updated taxonomies will be published on February 28 and August 31, and will enter into force on July 1, 2018 and January 1, 2019, respectively. Larger upgrades are also acceptable. In such cases, a separate change plan will be developed for them.

How is the process of preparing and submitting reports in XBRL format organized?

If we describe the process of generating XBRL reporting "on the fingers", then it comes down to filling out reporting forms, but more detailed than usual. They need to be entered manually or loaded from an external file with data and indicators in the required analytical sections. When filling out, duplicates are automatically excluded, that is, an indicator entered once is displayed in all forms where it is reused. After filling, automatic data validation is available, in other words, control of compliance with format, arithmetic and logical rules, comparison with reporting data of previous periods and fixing of detected errors.

According to this principle, the work of the Converter software for collecting NFO reporting in XBRL format, which is provided by the Bank of Russia free of charge, is organized. The result of the work of the "Converter" is a file in XBRL format, which can be signed with an enhanced qualified electronic signature and transferred to the regulator through the personal account of a financial market participant. It is planned that in 2021 the Converter will cease to exist, and organizations will prepare reporting files in XBRL format, relying on their own IT solutions.

Do not worry about this, there are many commercial and freeware on the market. software products to convert data to XBRL format. All XBRL converters work almost on the same principle as the "Converter" of the Bank of Russia:

On the one hand, the XBRL converter receives any XBRL taxonomy (in our case, the taxonomy of the Bank of Russia), on the other hand, an external file of a given format with data and indicators of the reporting entity. The XBRL converter automatically fills the taxonomy with data, evaluates the data for compliance with business checks taxonomies, if necessary, reports errors. The validation cycle can be repeated many times until the external data file is converted to the XBRL format without errors. The result of the XBRL converter is an XBRL format file that can be signed and sent to the controller.

However, the main difficulty in preparing reports in the XBRL format is not the conversion itself, but the preparation of primary data and indicators that will be converted to the XBRL format.

Why moving to XBRL reveals data quality issues for reporting

The key goal of switching to the XBRL format for reporting is to increase the transparency of information, the reliability and quality of reporting - is achieved by providing the regulator not with ready-made reporting forms, but with a layer of detailed data and indicators, on the basis of which on the side of the regulator:

all forms of control accounting and financial, supervisory and statistical reporting can be calculated, cross-checks of all reporting forms can be carried out simultaneously.

This means that the transition to the XBRL format can reveal deep problems with the quality of data used by organizations in the preparation of reports: their completeness, error-freeness and consistency. In addition, since XBRL reporting will become more granular, analytical features for indicators will be added, and so on, then at first data of the required detail and in the necessary analytical sections may simply not be available in accounting systems. It will take time for record vendors to fine-tune their software and for organizations to modernize organizational processes to bring the composition of primary data closer to that required by the taxonomy.

The future of regulatory reporting by credit institutions, given the scale of the upcoming changes, may come almost tomorrow. It is worth thinking in advance about preparing the IT infrastructure of banks for the transition to XBRL, primarily from the standpoint of supporting the processes of consolidating primary data, ensuring their quality and enriching them with the missing analytics. The experience of pilot projects for the transition to XBRL, implemented in the NFO, indicates that the most effective IT tool for solving these problems is a data warehouse (WD). As practice shows, it takes at least two years to introduce a data warehouse on the scale of a universal bank. It is possible that the time has come for credit institutions to seriously think about the advisability of deploying such solutions.

XBRL is a generally recognized and already widely used open standard (it is also a format or language) in the world for the presentation of financial statements in accordance with IFRS, US and UK GAAP, as well as other statements in electronic form.

The XBRL format is not a new separate programming language - it is based on the widely used programming language XML (eXtensible Mark-up Language) and is its "dialect" for reporting purposes in business. The openness of the new standard means that companies are not required to purchase software licenses and fees for using it.

Benefits of XBRL

XBRL has a number of advantages at all stages of business reporting (primarily financial reporting) and analysis of the company's financial performance. The benefits are clear in the field: automation, cost reduction, speed, reliability and more accurate data processing. There is an improvement in analysis and an increase in the quality of information for decision making.

The new format enables compilers and users of financial data (government bodies, regulators, economic institutions, stock exchanges, financial information collectors, auditors, corporate executives, financial analysts, investors, lenders, etc.) to free up resources from expensive manual processes where Significant time is usually spent collecting, reconciling and re-entering key information. These resources will be able to focus their efforts on data analysis, relying on XBRL format software that can validate and manage the information. At the same time, the use of XBRL does not mean the forced standardization of financial reporting. On the contrary, the language is flexible and this feature is designed to support all modern aspects of reporting across countries and industries. Extensibility means that XBRL can be adjusted to meet specific business requirements, even at the reporting level of individual organizations.

The practical side of using XBRL

An important point in the chain of reporting data providers is the involvement of more of these providers and the quality of the data supplied. If the standard's verification mechanisms can cope with the second, then there are ambiguous situations regarding "who" can become such suppliers. However, a certain traditional chain of suppliers-consumers has recently developed, which more accurately reflects the essence of reporting functions using XBRL. The figure "Where XBRL can be applied" shows the overlap of data processing processes and the approximate placement of participants at various stages of these processes, indicating the applicability of the XBRL reporting standard.

In general, the process (meaning the conceptual scheme of a very general description of the adaptation process, where only the most important sources of information are indicated) of reporting in XBRL is due to certain steps in adapting the standard XBRL taxonomy from IFRS (or another well-known financial reporting standard, for example, US GAAP, UK GAAP, HGB) taking into account local requirements and instructions from regulators. Then, after announcing the rules for generating financial reports in XBRL format, market participants and the regulator begin data exchange, as shown in the XBRL data exchange figure.

For direct publishing to websites, the iXBRL format is also very popular. A fragment of the same report in iXBRL format looks as shown in the figure "XBRL Report Fragment".

The process of implementing and working with the XBRL standard in different countries is as follows (according to XBRL International Inc.) (see the figure "XBRL adaptation in the world").

In Europe and the USA, the practice of successful application of XBRL has been going on for 8-10 years. In countries where such a format has become mandatory for use, one can see that this has happened with the direct participation of XBRL national jurisdictions, which, in turn, are under the umbrella of the global association XBRL International Inc. This practice of forming non-profit organizations to accumulate knowledge, methods of using and disseminating the new standard has justified itself not only in the G8 countries, but also in the BRICS countries (in particular, in Brazil, China and India).

XBRL in Russia

In Russia, there are a number of companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange, which are required to file reports in XBRL format. With Russia's accession to the WTO, on the eve of the construction of the International Financial Center and the further integration of our country into global financial projects, XBRL becomes the same essential tool, such as the cellular standard GSM communications or international financial reporting standards IFRS. Note that on the official IFRS website you can find a separate solid section on the use of XBRL for publishing IFRS statements.

At the end of 2012 working group under the leadership of the Bank of Russia with the participation of the FFMS, MICEX, the National Settlement Depository and PwC, began to actively work on the creation of the national jurisdiction of XBRL in Russia. At this stage, a letter of recommendation from the Bank of Russia is being developed on the start of the procedure for voluntary use of the XBRL standard for the publication of certain types of financial statements in accordance with IFRS.

We predict significant progress in the application of the new format in the next 2-3 years. From our point of view, the "coverage zone" of XBRL will most likely include not only companies publishing various types of international financial statements, but also tax authorities, statistical agencies and other public organizations. All this will significantly improve the quality of published reporting, reduce the time for its preparation and the cost of auditing published reporting data.