FASB : XBRL Functionality Added to Codification

Accounting Standards Codification

FASB announced that it has added new XBRL functionality to its Accounting Standards Codification Web site. http://asc.fasb.org

“ The new XBRL functionality provided by the Codification Web site will help entities as they prepare or plan to prepare XBRL financial statements using the U.S. Financial Reporting Taxonomy” .

“... Users will be able to very easily identify the XBRL elements associated with specific Codification paragraphs”, said FASB Chairman Robert Herz.

The FASB Codification, which is effective for interim and annual periods ending after Sept. 15, 2009, provides a list of all XBRL elements that contain an electronic link to a Codification paragraph. It provides the complete XBRL element names together with all Codification paragraphs referenced by a particular XBRL element.

To ensure that the taxonomy references the authoritative literature in the Codification rather than the superseded legacy literature, XBRL-US announced in August that it had published a taxonomy extension including the Codification references. The Codification references include both the text-based Codification reference (in the form of topic, subtopic, section, paragraph, and subparagraph) and an electronic link to the related codification paragraphs.

FASB’s Notice to Constituents (requires login to FASB Codification) provides additional background regarding Codification references and electronic links embedded in the U.S. Financial Reporting Taxonomy.

The current changes to the FASB Codification follow the SEC’s rule effective April 13, 2009, that requires all public companies to begin providing XBRL versions of their SEC filings over a three-year phase-in period. Approximately 500 of the largest public companies, each with a worldwide public float greater than $5 billion, began filing for interim financial statements with periods ending on or after June 15, 2009.

All other large accelerated filers (with public floats below $5 billion that file under U.S. GAAP) are expected to start filing in XBRL in June 2010. In 2011, all remaining companies using U.S. GAAP and all foreign private issuers that prepare their financial statements in accordance with IFRS as issued by the International Accounting Standards Board will be subject to the same requirements.

The XBRL data, which the SEC calls “interactive data,” is required to supplement—but not replace—a company’s traditional electronic filing formats (ASCII or HTML) for annual and quarterly reports, transition reports for a change in fiscal year, and reports that contain updated or revised versions of financial statements. Companies also are required to post the XBRL version on their corporate Web site, if they maintain one.

The U.S. GAAP Taxonomy for XBRL was developed by XBRL US—the nonprofit consortium for XML business reporting standards—under contract with the SEC as a digital dictionary containing a comprehensive set of reporting elements that include U.S. GAAP requirements and common reporting practices.

XBRL Update: IFRS for SMEs Taxonomy

IASC Foundation XBRL Team | xbrl@iasb.org

Recently, the IASB issued an International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) designed for use by small and medium-sized entities (SMEs), which are estimated to represent more than 95 per cent of all companies. The standard is a result of a five-year development process with extensive consultation of SMEs worldwide.

The IFRS for SMEs is a self-contained standard of about 230 pages tailored for the needs and capabilities of smaller businesses. Many of the principles in full IFRSs for recognising and measuring assets, liabilities, income and expenses have been simplified, topics not relevant to SMEs have been omitted, and the number of required disclosures has been significantly reduced.

To further reduce the reporting burden for SMEs, revisions to the IFRS will be limited to once every three years after an initial implementation review, when two years of financial statements using the IFRS have been published by a broad range of entities.

The IFRS for SMEs Taxonomy is currently being developed by the IASC Foundation XBRL Team. The exposure draft will be released in September, and the final version is scheduled for release by December 2009. Just as the IFRS for SMEs is based upon the full set of IFRSs, the IFRS for SMEs Taxonomy is built on the foundation of the IFRS Taxonomy 2009.

Release of translated IFRS Taxonomy 2009 labels

The IASC Foundation has released translations of the complete label linkbases for the IFRS Taxonomy 2009 in six key languages - Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, Italian and Spanish. Translations into other key languages such as German and Japanese are to be made available shortly.

In order to provide further support to international users of the IFRS Taxonomy, the following support materials and tools have also been released for viewing and use in Arabic, Dutch, French, Italian and Spanish:

The IFRS Taxonomy Modules Manager
An online tool that guides users through the process of navigating and customising the IFRS modules that make up the IFRS Taxonomy.

The IFRS Taxonomy Illustrated
A simplified view of the IFRS Taxonomy in an easy-to-read, visual format that does not require knowledge of XBRL, with links to the electronic IFRSs (eIFRS). It has been specially prepared for accountants, auditors and those wanting a comprehensive overview of the structure and content of the IFRS Taxonomy, in order to promote understanding of the Taxonomy and to assist with preparing IFRS financial reports in XBRL format.

IASC releases IFRS tool for open source

The International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) Foundation today announced the release of its IFRS Taxonomy Module Manager (ITMM) for open source.

Based on XBRL technology, the ITMM provides an interactive graphical interface that guides users through the process of navigating the IFRS modules that make-up the IFRS Taxonomy. The ITMM afterwards returns an entry point (in the form of a schema or empty instance document) and the according Taxonomy; therefore a starting point for entity-specific extensions or direct filing.

The most recent version of the ITMM has been fully integrated with the IFRS Taxonomy viewer, supports additional translation linkbases and is ready to support the IFRS Taxonomy 2009 (which is currently available for public review until March 24). A fully deployed version of the ITMM is available at http://www.xbrl-ifrs.org/ITMM.

The ITMM has been conceived with Open Source tools (Java, Groovy, Google Web Toolkit) and runs on Open Source servers (Apache Server, Tomcat). In order to support software developers, XBRL taxonomy developers (in particular IFRS Taxonomy extension developers) and the XBRL community in general, the ITMM has been developed in a generic way. Features such as the ITMM configuration XML file and ITMM properties file are adaptable to specific design requirements and specific XBRL taxonomies. The ITMM is distributed by the means of SourceForge under the Apache 2.0 Open Source license.

To access ITMM open source distribution follow this link:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/itmm/

The ITMM Open Source version comes with:
- All necessary Java, Groovy, Google Web Toolkit and supplementary source code, configuration files and styles, developed by the IASC Foundation XBRL Team
- Comprehensive guidance such as :
ITMM Developer Guide, ITMM Quick Setup Guide and JavaDoc comments on classes.

SourceForge.net also provides forums and mailing lists,
facilitating further Open Source development
around the ITMM and the community.
http://sourceforge.net/

XBRL Europe welcomes the European Federation of Financial Analysts Societies

http://www.xbrl.org/

XBRL Europe is pleased to announce that EFFAS, the European Federation of Financial Analysts Societies, will join XBRL Europe (X-EU) as a direct member. X-EU is a division of XBRL International, the global consortium leading the development and market introduction of XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language), an interactive data format which will radically change financial and business reporting.

Discover the XBRL history at:
http://xbrl.org/Home/AICPA_XBRL_history_09_web_final.pdf