With the announcement of SEC regarding financial statement voluntary filing, everyone has become too concerned about the same. As filing has become voluntary now, several companies have already started adopting iXBRL tagging. With more companies shifting to eXtensible Business Reporting Language, there are certain tagging rules that need to be well acquainted with.

1. Aligning Value Formats

HTML report for SEC filing is well-defined by the reporting style of each entity and because of it different patterns may be seen for same reporting elements. The variations mentioned can be in regard of writing style, letter case or spellings etc. that are typically regulated while the taxonomy is defined. It is one amongst the common examples are dates where different companies adopt different formats for representing it in HTML report. It is however mandates the representation of dates in ‘YYYY-MM-DD’ format.

2.Reversing Value Signage

The document can be subjected to many errors among which incorrect signs to values are a common one. This makes calculations more visually clear. With XBRL taxonomy, calculation layer is separated from presentation layer. This means that the way in which information is captured to present is not the same as the way in which it is captured to calculate. As per the Edgar Filing Manual rule 6.6.30, it is instructed that only in case if the element’s balance type is inconsistent with the actually reported concept, then only a numeric fact’s sign should be inverted.

3.Tagging ‘Invisible’ Data

Sometimes data is not visible on HTML document but still it has to be subjected to XBRL tagging to enable machine’s consumption of data. Many times, HTML documents contain values just for current period. Also there are instances when values are mentioned just once even where they hold factual for both previous and current periods. XBRL sec filing rules may demand both periods’ values to be reported as well as tagged in the document. Also there may be some elements that may not have values appeared on to the HTML face but should be interpreted as per explanatory text. In such scenarios, inline tagging should conform to structured data format.

4.Not tagging what’s visible

During the preparation of inline XBRL tagging and reporting, entire information must be tagged according to the scope as well as tagging level. It should be ensured that no vital information is overlooked and left untagged. It is very important because in case if any piece of data is not recognized with an XBRL tag, information left untagged will not be taken out as XBRL data even if it is visible on HTML report face.

5.Tagging Duplicates Facts

You can find the same data point or information at multiple places in a financial statement. The information may appear in different or same scale. In case of non-numeric details, there is a chance that varied styles are followed and this make them look different which leads to issues during the process of data validation. XBRL software should be capable of handling duplicate facts when transformation to XBRL from inline XBRL is done for validation purposes. XBRL International already has furnished guidelines on handling duplicate information with special attention to duplication in the inline XBRL.

Experts offering XBRL services keep all the above rules in mind. There are several companies exclusively indulged in XBRL conversion services. Seek the best one to ensure that you get the finest quality results.