Are you ready for iXBRL?

Reporting can be one of the biggest headaches for any company. Not only do financial departments have to ensure the veracity of their data, but there are myriad regulations that have to be taken into consideration, with each industry typically having its own specific regulations.

That's where XBRL comes in. Often termed "bar codes for reporting", the XBRL standard makes reporting more accurate and more efficient. It allows unique tags to be associated with reported facts, ensuring the information contained in published reports can be consumed and analysed accurately, and that the data provided in them conforms to a set of sophisticated predefined definitions. It enables reports to be tested against a set of business and logical rules, in order to capture and avoid mistakes at source, as well as allowing information to be used in the way that best suits a company's needs. This includes using different languages and alternative currencies, and in their preferred style.

XBRL is used all over the world, by organisations from both the private and public sectors. In South Africa, the use of the standard has not been legally required - until now, says Nicole Astfalck, Sales & Marketing Manager at Futuresense.

Effective 1 July 2018, the CIPC (Companies and Intellectual Properties Commission) has mandated iXBRL compliance for all public listed entities, state-owned companies, and companies whose memorandum of incorporation prescribes filing of audited financial statements.

The mandate also applies to any private or personal liability company if, in the ordinary course of its primary activities, holds assets in a fiduciary capacity for persons who are not related to the company, and the aggregate value of such assets held at any time during the financial year exceeds R5 million. It is also necessary for any private or personal liability company that compiles its financial statements internally and that has a public interest score (PIS) of 100 or more, as well as any private or personal liability company that has its financial statements compiled by an independent party and that has a PIS of 350 or more.

Benefits of iXBRL

iXBRL (Inline Extensible Business Reporting Language) maintains the independent presentation of statutory accounts so your electronic filing is the same as a paper copy. It ensures improved accuracy of data, as there is less manual intervention in analysing financial information, as well as improved comparability of financial information. This is as a result of the fact that a standard taxonomy is used.

Assembly of internal and external reports is faster and more efficient thanks to the automation enabled by iXBRL, and the efficiency of data is much improved as data needs only to be captured once. Similarly, the searchability of data is improved as each item is individually tagged according to the standard taxonomy.

iXBRL simplifies not only financial reporting, but sustainability, budgeting and tax reporting, to name a few. It removes all of the challenges associated with custom, proprietary reporting solutions, ensuring transparency of reporting procedures and intelligible reporting systems. In addition, it provides flexibility and stability.

Easy iXBRL compliance

Oracle already has the platform and tools available in order to assist your business to become iXBRL compliant. The Disclosure Management option in the Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Reporting Cloud Service (EPRCS) enables you to manage the creation of XBRL and iXBRL documents. Featuring deep integration with existing Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) financial reporting tools, it provides an easy and straightforward approach to XBRL reporting.

Oracle provides improved data quality and transparency as well as filing efficiency thanks to centralised XBRL metadata storage and direct mapping to Oracle EPM data sources. XBRL tag override and suppression capabilities provide added efficiency, and rollover report management streamlines the tagging process.

These are only a few features that ensure 100% validation of XBRL filings. Oracle's offering is quick to implement, and with the assistance of Futuresense, there is minimal IT commitment and hassle for your company.

Oracle Enterprise Performance Management is Futuresense's specialisation, and with its many years of experience and highly qualified team, it guarantees effective solutions. Futuresense understands the technology and knows which tool is the right one for the job, right from the start, while its in-depth business understanding greatly reduces the risk that business requirements would be misinterpreted and delay the project.

Futuresense's senior business consultants are financial gurus - many are chartered accountants - who have a knack for using enterprise technology to ensure the job of finance is done in the best and most efficient way possible. This is one of the reasons Futuresense has become known as the premier consolidations, reporting, budgeting, strategic planning and financial modelling expert in South Africa.

With the implementation of the iXBRL compliance requirement around the corner, make sure your business is prepared. Futuresense is ready to help corporate South Africa navigate this change easily and efficiently.