XBRL and Navision

nanopouk

I was searching the forum to find any topics on XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) and i saw that very few people are aware of this reporting language despite the fact that XBRL can be displayed through navision.

Moreover, there is a big debate between www.xbrl.org and internetional accounting standard board and they have published a Taxonomy which can be used by Navision in order to easily create reports and financial statements.

I would like to hear your opinion about XBRL and if you believe that this reporting language will be on the edge of financial reporting the following years.

Thank you in advanced.

Savatage

[August 02, 2000] "Navision Software Releases XBRL Solution; XML-Based Financial Reporting Language Now Available in Navision Financials 2.50." -

"Navision Software, a leading worldwide provider of business management solutions to the middle market, announced today that it has released its XBRL solution, one day after the publication of the official XML-based taxonomy.

XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is a free specification that first appeared on the financial and accounting scene in October of 1999. It uses a financial reporting specification, agreed upon by key members of the financial information supply chain, that allows an open exchange of financial reporting data across all software and technologies, including the Internet.

The XBRL coding contained in Navision Financials 2.50 will enable customers to more easily and efficiently connect and communicate with both competing products in the ERP space and complementary products such as Caseware. For example, a set of subsidiary offices using Navision Financials can now more quickly collaborate with a parent office using a larger ERP system, while realizing significant time and cost savings.

XBRL offers several key benefits: technology independence, full interoperability, efficient preparation of financial statements and reliable extraction of financial information. Information is entered only once, allowing that same information to be rendered in any form, such as a printed financial statement, an HTML document for the company's Web site, an EDGAR filing document with the SEC, a raw XML file or other specialized reporting formats, such as credit reports or loan documents.

More than 80 percent of major US public companies provide some type of financial disclosure on the Internet. Investors and users of the Internet need accurate and reliable financial information that can be delivered promptly to help them make informed financial decisions."

Savatage

Learn what XBRL is, what the Microsoft Navision view is on XBRL present and future, and finally some marketing tips for explaining and selling the XBRL idea.

XBRL
This document is aimed at Microsoft Country Offices and Microsoft Business Solutions Partners and is intended to give both marketing and product personnel an introduction to XBRL. The XBRL concept is relatively new and for many, unknown. Therefore, this document will explain what XBRL is and is not, what the Microsoft Navision view is on XBRL present and future, and finally some marketing tips for explaining and selling the XBRL idea.

What is XBRL?

XBRL is an XML-based specification that uses accepted financial reporting standards and practices to exchange financial reports across all software and technologies, including the Internet. XBRL is not a new accounting standard, it is an industry-specific application of the XML standard.

XBRL offers several key benefits: technology independence, full interoperability, efficient preparation of financial statements and reliable extraction of financial information. Information is entered only once, allowing that same information to be rendered in any form, such as a printed financial statement, an HTML document for the company’s Web site, a raw XML file or other specialized reporting format such as credit reports or loan documents.

XBRL allows companies, analysts, investors and other audiences to make better informed financial and management decisions and to leverage the capabilities of the Internet to facilitate the exchange of financial information. XBRL does not change existing accounting standards, it merely provides an efficient and reliable means for the exchange, based on standardized, underlying data tags. It should be noted that XBRL does not require a company to disclose any additional information beyond that which they normally disclose in their current financial statements.

Savatage

This paper will give you an overview of XBRL Specification 2 in Microsoft® Business Solutions-Navision®. It is written with the aim of helping anyone in the Navision channel who is consulting on or implementing a business solution including the XBRL granule.

Introduction

XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) is an XML-based framework for financial reporting. It has been undertaken by numerous ERP vendors and international accounting organizations, including the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). The main purpose of the XBRL initiative is to provide a standard for uniform reporting of financial information for banks, investors, governments, analysts, and so on. It is a distinct possibility that XBRL will become the standard for mandatory business reporting in some countries.

Why Have We Made XBRL Specification 2?

We made XBRL specification 2 for the following reasons:

To keep abreast of the developments in the XBRL organization, who, in December of 2001, released a new version of XBRL. Microsoft Navision now conforms to specification 2, though it still works with taxonomies which were prepared according to specification 1. The new specification was needed because of advances in technology since the previous specification – primarily in XML schema and XML linking. The new specification is based on implementation experience which suggested that more flexible metadata and easier addressing of metadata were required.
Given the new specification, most competing products in our market (for example SAP) were not able to implement specification 2 immediately, allowing us to position Microsoft Navision as a leader in the XBRL community and the marketplace by being first to market with this functionality.
Many national reporting bodies or XBRL groups were waiting on specification 2 before creating new taxonomies. Only one taxonomy – the US GAAP – existed on specification 1; we have seen the rapid creation of new taxonomies since the release of specification 2, which means more users can get more benefit from more taxonomies by using Microsoft Navision than by using other ERP products.
What is the Scope of XBRL Specification 2?
The XBRL specification 2 functionality in Microsoft Navision enables financial data exchange with authorities and other entities who have created specification 2 taxonomies. From Microsoft Navision, you will be able to import both the new specification 2 and specification 1 taxonomy schema from authorities and other entities, map the required financial data to the taxonomy and then send the information directly back to the sender, eg., as an e-mail.

Specification 2 differs significantly from specification 1. For more details on the extent of the change, please see the section, How We Have Made XBRL Specification 2.
Our specification 2, like our specification 1, does not enable creation of taxonomies.

What Do You Use XBRL For?
A public authority or other entity who needs or wants financial information from you, sends you a taxonomy. A specification 2 taxonomy is a set of XML documents describing a kind of schema to fill out. In many ways you can compare this with the various forms authorities send you to fill in and return. XBRL is a standard describing how to make these schemas to fill in. The taxonomy schema will contain one or more lines, each line representing an item, or ‘element’ of the required financial information. This schema is imported into Microsoft Navision, and you then fill out this schema by entering which account or accounts correspond to each line, what kind of timeframe to use (net change, balance at date etc) and similar information. In some cases you can enter a constant instead (eg. number of employees).

After filling out the relevant lines (mapping the taxonomy to your chart of accounts), you are ready to create and send the instance document. The instance document is an XML document to be sent back to the authority or entity that originally sent the schema. The idea is, of course, that this might be a recurring event, so unless changes are made to the taxonomy, you just export new instance documents for new periods on request, without having to reimport and remap the taxonomy.

Savatage

This is some info i found. it's pretty interesting. and i postied it here to make it easier to find.

Savatage

Data Structure
The data structure allows both XBRL specification 1 and specification 2 taxonomies to be imported, although only specification 2 documents can be layered properly because the relations between the two (or more) sets of elements are defined in the linkbases.

Layered Taxonomies
A taxonomy can consist of a base taxonomy, e.g. US-GAAP or IAS, and then have one or more extensions. The extensions may, for example, be country-, industry- or even company-specific. Microsoft, for example, has produced a taxonomy for financial reporting, which consists of the base US-GAAP taxonomy, plus a Microsoft-specific taxonomy which contains elements of particular relevance to the Microsoft business. To reflect this, each taxonomy created in Microsoft Navision can refer to one or several schemas which are all separate taxonomies. When the additional taxonomies are loaded into the database, the new elements are simply added to the end of the existing elements in the base taxonomy.
Linkbases
In XBRL specification 2, as already mentioned, the taxonomy consists of not just one, but several, XML files. The primary XML file is the taxonomy schema file itself (.xsd file) which only contains the names of an unordered list of elements or facts to be reported. In addition to this, there are usually some linkbase files. Linkbase files are XML files containing metadata about the elements in the taxomony schema file. The metadata determines how the elements should be structured, presented, calculated, and so on. There are currently (as of April 2002) six different linkbases defined, of which the following four have relevance for the XBRL functionality in Microsoft Navision:
• Label linkbase: This linkbase contains labels for the elements. The file may contain labels in different languages which are identified with an XML property called ‘lang’. The XML language property usually contains a two-letter abbreviation, and although it is relatively straightforward to guess what the abbreviation means, there is no connection to the Windows language code or to the language codes defined in the Microsoft Navision demo data. Therefore, when the user looks up the languages for a specific taxonomy, he will see the labels for the first element in the taxonomy, meaning that he then can see an example of each language. Several label linkbases can be attached to a taxonomy as long as they contain different languages.
• Presentation linkbase: This linkbase contains information about the structure of the elements –or more precisely – how the issuer of the taxonomy suggests that the program presents the taxonomy to the user. The linkbase contains a series of links that each connect two elements as parent and child. If all these links are applied, the elements will be shown in a hierarchical way. Note that the presentation linkbase only deals with just that; the physical presentation of elements to the user.
• Calculation linkbase: This linkbase contains information about which elements roll up to which. The structure is quite similar to the presentation linkbase, except that each link or ‘arc’, as it is called, has a weight property. The weight can be either 1 or –1 indicating whether the element should be added to or subtracted from its parent. Note that the rollups do not necessarily correspond to the visual presentation.
• Reference linkbase: This linkbase contains referential information or explanatory references or descriptions for each element. Typically references are made to various chapters and paragraphs in other written documentation.

Technical Issues
Parser
The XML documents are handled with the freely available xml parser from Microsoft version 3 which is standard with Windows XP or Internet Explorer 6 (or you can download and run msxml3.exe which installs it). The xml parser is operated as an automation server.
Long Texts
• Export:
Microsoft Navision only allows text variables up to 1024 characters, and can handle up to 2048 characters in one concatenation operation. This means that we can currently only export descriptions up to 2048 characters per line.
• Import:
When importing a taxonomy, you may run into long texts (explanatory text) which cannot be handled directly. These long texts are dealt with by writing the entire node to a stream and then by reading back from the stream one character at a time. This unfortunately gives rise to some problems with national character sets, since the XML documents write themselves to the stream in whatever character set Windows uses; Microsoft Navision uses a different character set internally. This may cause the import to show the imported comment lines ('Information') with incorrect national characters.
Potential New Element Types
As explained at the beginning of this document, XBRL is a meta language describing how to specify taxonomies. XBRL does not specify the taxonomies themselves. This means that there are essentially no limits set for the creativity of the taxonomy creators! This means, in turn, that we cannot prepare ourselves for every new element type in the future. Therefore the XBRL functionality in Microsoft Navision supports what we expect to find in taxonomies. Currently there are only very few available, and those that currently exist, we are able to import and interpret.

Additional Information
Further information on the xbrl functionality in Navision Microsoft Navision can be found on InfoWeb:
Fact Sheet XBRL Microsoft Navision Microsoft Navision
Fact Sheet XBRL for E-Business Microsoft Navision Microsoft Navision
Marketing White Paper
XBRL Jurisdiction List
Presentation of XBRL in Microsoft Navision
Demo Script of XBRL in Microsoft Navision

More information on XBRL in general can be found on the XBRL Organization Web site at http://www.xbrl.org/

Dr_mjh

Hi all,

Magnifecent Collection of information. Here is a case let say we a group of companies can they use the XBRL to import the financial statement in order for the consolidation process of the holding company? i.e.: I think it is a better way to have the financial statement based on IFRS and Globally standard. Is there any reason forbids the use of it in such manner?

Thank you all for your great efforts to make this website so much informative and a reference for the whole NAV community.

Best Regards