The most common issues, challenges and solutions in ESEF reporting - "Quick advices for reporting"
1. Anticipate the latest available taxonomy
An adjustment as of January 1 in the Statement of changes in equity is very often a cumulative effect adjustment of the opening balance. Many entities use, in their ESEF reports, the dimension “Retrospective application and retrospective restatement [axis]” with the member “Increase (decrease) due to changes in accounting policy [member]”. This is not right when the comparatives are not restated.
Use the dimension (new in the 2021 IFRS taxonomy) “Cumulative effect at date of initial application [axis]” as the default member is “Opening balance before adjustment, cumulative effect at date of initial application [member]” which corresponds to the non-restated value in the comparative Statement of financial position.
Our tip: For reports using the 2020 ESEF taxonomy, create an extension to anticipate the 2021 taxonomy.
2. Presentation linkbase should mirror the human-readable report
The presentation linkbase shall mirror structure of the human-readable layer of the issuer’s report.
This is guidance 3.4.6 in the ESEF reporting manual. This guidance should not be restrictively interpreted. It means two things:
1. There must be no elements in the extended presentation linkbase that is not associated with a value in the ixbrl report.
2. The presentation relationships within a statement must be the same as the original ordering.
It does not mean that the labels defined in the extension taxonomy for existing IFRS concepts need to be identical to the line item used in the human readable layer of the report as the taxonomy standard labels may be used.
Our tip: Check the order of the elements in the extension taxonomy, group them under relevant [abstracts] and, if necessary, re-order them in the presentation linkbase.
3. Files to be published
Issuers must remit an Inline XBRL (iXBRL) report package to the regulators according to local requirements.
The package is a .zip file containing a XHTML file readable by humans in a browser. The issuers should also make the XHTML file available on their website.
However, the XBRL tags included in this XHTML file cannot be seen without a proper “viewer” that can be opened in a standard internet browser. name.
Our tip: Although it is not required in all countries, in addition to the XHTML file of their annual report, issuers should make available on their web site a XHTML viewer that enable humans to read the XBRL tags in the iXBRL report.
4. Reportwide Calculations
Calculations in XBRL reports can create a lot of questions, especially with SignLogic and balance types involved. Another topic which raises a lot of questions with calculations is: For which part of the report is a calculation valid? The short answer is: Everywhere!
For a given Extended Link role R and summation item S, another item I is a contributing item if all of the following conditions are satisfied:
In some cases there are validation errors in the calculation, although there is no calculation. Furthermore the rounded sum does not match, which is a typical calculation error.
Our tip: The problem can be solved via 3 different approaches:
1. Ignore the message and continue as usual, as it is only a warning
2. Remove the calculation from the P&L
3. Amend the calculation so it fits all occurrences of the tagged concept (with all dimensional variations)
5. Calculation - "Weights"
All the contributing concepts can be grouped up to the value of the summation concept. In an ideal case, these values are equal. One concept can be both a contributing and a summation concept at the same time. The plus and minus icons indicate that the value of the concept is either to be added or subtracted to/from the total. In XBRL this is called weight. This weight cannot be freely chosen, but has constraints defined in the XBRL specification:
Our tip: Make sure that you are familiar with the defined constraints in the XBRL specification and adjust the weights manually in the Tagger, if there are concepts without a balance type.