Issued: March 25, 2011
Impact: All US GAAP

Issue

Sometimes filers create an extended element when reporting partnership or other equity units in their Document and Entity Information (DEI).  The element EntityCommonStockSharesOutstanding includes documentation that is specific to “classes of common stock” and, therefore, some filers have chosen to extend an element to report partnership or other equity-related units.

Recommendation

Rather than extending with an element like Entity Partnership Units Outstanding, the filer should use the item EntityCommonStockSharesOutstanding.

Specifically for the disclosure in Document and Entity Information, filers should report partnership or other equity-related units with the element EntityCommonStockSharesOutstanding and modify the preferred label role to include text that would better characterize the equity units being reported (example: Entity Partnership Units Outstanding).