Friday 5 October 2012

Cost Audit FAQs

1.       What is XBRL?
5.       Who developed 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
CostofSalesofProductorActivityGroup
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:
http://www.mca.gov.in/XBRL/images/9_1.jpg
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

http://www.mca.gov.in/XBRL/images/9_2.jpg

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:

http://www.mca.gov.in/XBRL/images/9_3.jpg

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):

http://www.mca.gov.in/XBRL/images/9_4.jpg

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):

http://www.mca.gov.in/XBRL/images/9_5.jpg

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:

http://www.mca.gov.in/XBRL/images/9_6.jpg

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:
http://www.mca.gov.in/XBRL/images/9_7.jpg
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):

http://www.mca.gov.in/XBRL/images/9_8.jpg

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:

http://www.mca.gov.in/XBRL/images/9_9.jpg

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:
http://www.mca.gov.in/XBRL/images/9_10.jpg
   
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.
 
 
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.

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