SEC filers, investors, XBRL providers encouraged to comment, and to use approved Ruleset 9
The XBRL US Data Quality Committee (DQC) has published its 10th Ruleset for a 45-day public review and comment period, which closes on September 16, 2019. DQC rules are developed to aid issuers in preparing consistent, error-free financials, by providing automated checks that test an XBRL-formatted financial statement prior to SEC submission. Issuers that use the rules can find and correct errors, to ensure that regulators and investors are provided with good quality data and the most accurate view of corporate financial health.
This latest Ruleset contains automated checks for inconsistent preparation of data related to variable interest entities; and for situations where values reported covering a duration of time do not sum to the value that should represent the total of those values over time.
The DQC has also finalized approved Ruleset 9, which contains rules identifying 667 IFRS concepts that should not be reported as negative values. Ruleset 9 also includes checks for calculation relationships between sibling/parent elements, to identify situations that contradict with relationships in the US GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy.
“We’re ramping up the pace of the rule publication as it becomes increasingly clear that use of the rules is having a positive impact on the market,” said Lou Rohman, Chair of the XBRL US Data Quality Committee, and Vice President at Toppan Merrill, “Analysis we’ve conducted shows that error counts decline as these rules are created, most pointedly in those areas where the rules have been steadily growing, like the non-negative rules. We’re very pleased that we’re able to cover IFRS submissions now too.”
Graphical depictions of error count, categorized by rule type, can be seen here: https://xbrl.us/data-quality/filing-results/dqc-results/
The DQC, which is funded through the XBRL US Center for Data Quality, is responsible for developing guidance and validation rules that can prevent or detect inconsistencies or errors in XBRL data filed with the SEC, and focuses on data quality issues that adversely affect data analysis. All approved rules and guidance are free and publicly available. To access the rules in public review, go to: https://xbrl.us/data-quality/rules-guidance/public-review/
Filers have immediate access to all final approved rules as well as the 10th Ruleset in public review so that they can check their filings prior to SEC submission. There are several options available to filers:
- Through software that has been certified to run with the ruleset: https://xbrl.us/certification
- Through the XBRL US checking tool: https://xbrl.us/check
- By downloading the Approved Rules and using them with Arelle – the open source version of the SEC’s EDGAR Renderer/Previewer: https://xbrl.us/dqc-releases
To access the approved rules and guidance, go to: https://xbrl.us/rules-guidance
Members of the XBRL US Center for Data Quality include Altova, the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), Broadridge Financial Solutions, Certent, DataTracks, Donnelley Financial Solutions (DFIN), P3 Data Systems, RDG Filings, and Toppan Merrill. Toppan Merrill is a founding member of the Center for Data Quality.
For more information on the XBRL US Data Quality Committee and the Center for Data Quality, go to: http://xbrl.us/data-quality
