13.
Does preparing XBRL Documents mean that the
entire report has to be typed (Data Entry) in XBRL ?
XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is
a language based on XML (Extensible Markup Language) family of languages. It is
an open standards-based reporting system that is built to accommodate the electronic
preparation and exchange of business reports around the world using internet as
a medium. It has been defined specifically to meet the requirements of business
and financial information.
It enables unique identifying tags to be applied
to items of accounting data. The tags provide a range of information about the
item, such as whether it is a monetary item, percentage or fraction. XBRL not
only allows labels in any language to be applied to items, it also allows the
accounting references or other subsidiary information to be added to the tags.
XBRL can be applied to a very wide range of business
applications including financial and cost data. XBRL has applications in the
following areas:-
Ø Reporting for
internal and external purposes by an entity involving financial and costing
data/information.
Ø Business
reporting to all types of regulators, including tax and financial authorities,
central banks and governments.
Ø Filing of
loan reports and applications; credit risk assessments.
Ø Exchange of
information between government departments, institutions and banks.
All types of organisations can make use of XBRL
to automate their process of data collection and distribution to various
stakeholders. It helps in saving costs and improving the efficiency in managing
business information – financial or cost. XBRL, being extensible and
flexible, can be adapted to a wide variety of requirements. All stakeholders
whether they are preparers, transmitters or users of business data in the
financial information supply chain can benefit from the use of XBRL.
XBRL has a bright future ahead of it that goes
way beyond the current focus on regulatory reporting and compliance. Businesses
that are now creating XBRL filings for regulatory bodies should be thinking
about how they can leverage their investment in understanding and using XBRL to
drive more consistent and comparable internal reporting. By tagging data at the
account/transaction level, by investigating how XBRL can help to deliver new
holistic reports that integrate and connect financial and non-financial data,
and by leveraging emerging online XBRL data streams for better industry
performance and peer group analytics, every business can power its own journey
towards financial transformation.
The Extensible Business Reporting Language
(XBRL) is managed and promoted by XBRL International, a not-for-profit
consortium, with companies, government bodies and other organizations as its
members. Currently over 600 organizations are associated with XBRL
International. It is comprised of jurisdictions, which represent countries,
regions or international bodies and which focus on the progress of XBRL in
their area.
Government and Regulators require cost data of
different sectors for policy making. The availability of cost data [without
compromising on the confidentiality] in XBRL format enables informed decision
making and for sectoral studies.
With full adoption of XBRL, companies would be
able to integrate its financial and cost data across its operational areas and
exercise better control on its activities.
Costing Taxonomy is a dictionary of all cost
elements required in the cost audit report and compliance report. The costing
taxonomy contains the properties and interrelationships of all these cost
elements for the purposes of capturing the required reporting data in XBRL
format.
The Costing Taxonomy and related Business Rules including
sample instance documents can be downloaded from the website of MCA (http://mca.gov.in).
The specific links are as follows:
Costing Taxonomy –
Business Rules –
The excel sheets are for reference and easy understanding
of various components of taxonomy in a human readable form.
The excel workbook contains the following worksheets:-
a. Elements: This worksheet contains all the concepts that form the costing taxonomy. The concepts are defined as elements/tags along with their characteristics such as data type, balance type, Nillable etc. E.g. Cost of sales of product or activity group is an element defined as:
|
Characteristic
|
Property
|
Meaning
|
|
Element Name
|
CostofSalesofProductorActivity
|
Name of the Element / Tag
|
|
Preferred Label
|
Cost of sales of product or activity group
|
Label that would appear in the rendered report
|
|
Label Role
|
Standard label
|
It is a standard label
|
|
Abstract
|
False
|
Abstract is False implies element can be used to tag
data. Abstract set to True indicates that the element is only used in a
hierarchy to group related elements together and cannot be used to tag data
in an instance document.
|
|
Data Type
|
Monetary Item Type
|
It is monetary data type
|
|
Balance Type
|
Debit
|
The balance is debit balance
|
|
Period
|
Duration
|
The concept is reported for the period (financial year)
|
|
Substitution Group
|
Item
|
This tells whether the element is item, tuple, hypercube
or dimension.
|
|
Nillable
|
True
|
Nillable set to true means the element can take empty
values. If set to False it would means that the element in the instance
should have non empty value.
|
b. Labels: This worksheet contains the 491 nos. of labels to be used as preferred labels in the final presentation (rendering) of the report in human readable format. A screenshot of the labels is given below:
c. References: This worksheet contains the relationships between elements and the references of the elements defined by authoritative literature. The reference parts used are listed below:
|
Reference part
|
Use
|
|
Name
|
CAS
|
|
Publisher
|
Institute of Cost Accountants of India
|
|
Section
|
Title of sections of standard or interpretation
|
|
Paragraph
|
Paragraph (number) in the standard
|
|
Subparagraph
|
Subparagraph (number) of a paragraph
|
d. Extended Link Cost Audit Report: This worksheet contains the Extended Link Role definitions contained in the Cost Audit Report. Extended Link Roles represents a set of relationships between concepts and are the logical grouping of elements. The extended links are then used in link bases to build the relationships. The list of extended link roles in the Cost Audit Report are:
e. Presentation Cost Audit Report: This worksheet defines the structure of the Cost Audit Report for displaying the data along with preferred label attribute and the specific order in which they appear. This enables the taxonomy users to view the representation of elements in the human readable format. The illustration below shows the presentation of Product or Activity Group Details (Para 3 of the Annexure to Cost Audit Report):
f. Calculation Cost Audit Report: This worksheet contains the Additive relationships between numeric items expressed as parent-child hierarchies in the Cost Audit Report. Each calculation child has a weight attribute (+1 or -1) based upon the natural balance of the parent and child items. Illustration below represents the calculation view of the Value addition and distribution of earnings of the Annexure to Cost Audit Report (Para 8):
g. Definition Cost Audit Report: It is used to express the dimensional relationship between elements of the Costing Taxonomy for the Cost Audit Report. An illustration of the definition linkbase for the Cost Audit Report showing elements of the Product or Activity Group Details is given below:
h. Extended Link Compliance Report: This worksheet contain the Extended Link Role definitions contained in the Compliance Report. Extended Link Roles represents a set of relationships between concepts and are the logical grouping of elements. The extended links are then used in link bases to build the relationships. The list of extended link roles in the Compliance Report are:
i. Presentation Compliance: This worksheet defines the structure of the Compliance Report for displaying the data along with preferred label attribute and the specific order in which they appear. This enables the taxonomy users to view the representation of elements in the human readable format. The illustration below shows the presentation of Quantitative Information (Para 2 of the Annexure to Compliance Report):
j. Calculation Compliance Report: This worksheet contains the Additive relationships between numeric items expressed as parent-child hierarchies in the Compliance Report. Each calculation child has a weight attribute (+1 or -1) based upon the natural balance of the parent and child items. Illustration below represents the calculation view of the Quantitative Information and Reconciliation Statement of the Annexure to Compliance report:
k. Definition Compliance Report: It is used to express the dimensional relationship between elements of the Costing Taxonomy for the Cost Audit Report. An illustration of the definition linkbase for the Compliance Report showing elements of the Quantitative Information (Para 2) is given below:
Taxonomy file has extensions of XML and XSD. An
XBRL processor (computer software that understands and/or manipulates XBRL
documents) will need those XML and XSD documents.
The Institute of Cost Accountants of India has
been organizing XBRL training programmes across the country to familiarize
interested professionals with the Costing Taxonomy. The details of the
programmes are available on the website of the Institute (www.icwai.org) as
well the website of MCA (www.mca.gov.in).
XBRL is an open source technology. Any of the following
methods can be adopted to create the instance document required for filing of
the respective reports.
Ø XBRL-enabled
software packages developed by different software vendors which support the
creation of cost reports in XBRL format can be used to create the necessary
document.
Ø Various
elements of Cost Audit Report and Compliance Report can be mapped into XBRL
tags of the costing taxonomy using specialised XBRL software tools specifically
designed for this purpose.
Ø Different
third party packages can be integrated into the existing accounting systems to
generate XBRL Cost statements.
Ø There are
various web based applications available that take input reports in various
formats viz. Microsoft Excel etc. and transform them into XBRL format.
The methodology adopted by an individual company will depend on its requirements and the cost accounting software and systems being used and other factors.
The methodology adopted by an individual company will depend on its requirements and the cost accounting software and systems being used and other factors.
13. Does preparing XBRL Documents mean that the entire
report has to be typed (Data Entry) in XBRL ?
XBRL software is required for creating instance
documents. The way of working and sequence of entering data in the software may
be different, but the output, i.e. the XBRL instance document has to be same
irrespective of the software used. The softwares developed by individual
vendors being different, some may require data entry to be done, while some
others may facilitate tagging on the document itself..
XBRL instance document creation software is
required to be purchased from the software vendors in the market. This software
is used to create XBRL instance documents for uploading on the MCA portal.
MCA21 system provides facility for validation of the instance document and
filing of the same. MCA is not recommending any specific XBRL software.
There are several software vendors in the
market, who are in the business of developing XBRL software tools. The users
are free to choose the one that suits their requirements in order to create
XBRL documents for filing.
MCA vide Circular No. 8/2012 dated May 10, 2012
has mandated filing of Cost Audit Reports and Compliance Reports in XBRL format
from the financial year 2011-12 (including the overdue reports relating to any
previous year).
MCA vide Circular No. 18/2012 dated July 26,
2012, has extended the last date of filing of cost audit reports and compliance
reports with the Central Government in XBRL format up to December 31, 2012.
The final costing taxonomy published by MCA is
to be used for mapping of individual cost elements of the company to the Taxonomy.
The Business Rules of the Costing Taxonomy published by the MCA provides
details of the character of individual elements of the taxonomy and the
validation checks built into the system to ensure correctness of the
information.
The following steps have to be followed in sequence:
·
Mapping the individual cost elements of the company to the
elements of the costing taxonomy.
·
Populating the relevant data in the software/filing tool.
·
Creating instance document.
·
Validating the Instance Document with the Validation Tool of MCA.
·
Use available tool to convert the Instance document to a human
readable format and check correctness of data.
·
Attaching the Instance Document to the e-Form and filing on MCA
Portal.
Though technically, it is not required to
convert the xml instance document into human readable / pdf format, it is advisable
to generate a human readable format of the instance document to ensure its
correctness by matching with relevant Cost Audit Report or Compliance Report
prepared by the Cost Auditor/Accountant before it is uploaded.
Yes, validating the instance document is a pre
requisite before filing the Cost Audit Report and Compliance Report on MCA
portal. A tool has been provided on the MCA portal for validating the generated
XBRL instance document. You are required to download the tool from the portal
and validate the instance document before uploading the same. The MCA XBRL
validation tool can be downloaded from the XBRL website of the Ministry of Corporate
Affairs.(www.mca.gov.in/XBRL)
No extensions are allowed in the Costing
Taxonomy. This means the tagging is required to be done with the elements
already defined in the Costing Taxonomy and additional elements cannot be
added.
Previous forms are no longer in existence. Only
the new forms 23CAR-XBRL and 23CR-XBRL are to be used for filing of Cost Audit
Report and Compliance Report respectively in the XBRL format.
