Why you should get to know xHTML and Inline XBRL
Digital Financial Reporting is the new phrase to come to terms with for European accountants, auditors, and IT departments, but what does it really mean?
The European Single Electronic Format (ESEF) reporting framework developed by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has been requesting Digital Reports for two years and around 5,000 companies across Europe have been preparing annual reports under its guidelines.
In addition, the EU is adopting the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which will mean that some 50,000 of the largest European companies will start formal Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reporting using a similar digital format over the coming years.
Of course, this is not new, the US SEC has required digital report submissions for over 10 years, as has the UK tax office, Japan, and a list of other global authorities. These reporting frameworks are all linked by the use of digital financial reporting formats, i.e., HTML rather than PDF, and key information tagging using the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), which itself has been around for more than 20 years.
Digital transformation comes slowly to accounting, auditing, and market regulators, but its impact will be great. Is it working? Where are the obstacles so far?
This paper tries to analyse the progress and attempts to look further into the future to see how we can improve the experience.
The rest of this article can be read on Medium for free – here