The SEC has released a draft of the EDGAR Filer Manual (EFM) to reflect changes in the new EDGAR Release 18.3 which is scheduled to be published October 1, 2018. An update to the EFM test suite will be published soon with new test cases.
While a number of changes have been made to the EFM, we wanted to point out important changes related to the emphasis that the SEC places on data quality. For example, the EFM draft includes changes to the submission header which are noted in EFM 6.5.40. And even more importantly, the new EDGAR Release 18.3 will introduce error messages to flag a sampling of errors identified on submitted XBRL filings.
These new error messages are flagged as EDGAR warnings (not suspensions) when XBRL submissions contain one or more errors of these types:
- when certain US-GAAP and IFRS numeric reporting items are tagged incorrectly as negative
- if a filing uses deprecated tags in a submission
- if a filing contains custom Axis tags for purposes already served by certain existing standard taxonomy axes
It’s important to note that the SEC errors are a sample of the kinds of errors that can be identified. For example, the negative input errors are available for only three US GAAP and five IFRS concepts (although this list could expand over time). These error flags, however, demonstrate that the Commission is taking note of the quality of the XBRL data submitted by SEC filers and is bringing the importance of data quality to the attention of filers.
Read the draft EDGAR Filer Manual, Release 48
