XBRL – It’s Status and Direction

1. XBRL – It’s Status and Direction Gerald Trites, FCA Project Director, XBRL Canada

2. Background on XBRL How did XBRL start; what was the thinking about who would benefit?

3. In the Beginning • Invented by Charles Hoffman, a CPA in the US • Supported initially by a small consortium of companies (Microsoft, Caseware, Bowne, etc.) and the AICPA • Seen as a way to expedite electronic reporting • Considered to be beneficial to: • Regulators • Reporting companies • Analysts

4. Regulators Ability to receive and process data without human intervention would promote greater efficiency Enable better file reviews Enable more time on analysis Reduce human errors in filings Enable faster turnaround

5. Reporting Companies Would enable companies to tell their own story Provide better analyst coverage When used by various government departments and agencies, it would reduce the cost of compliance with government filing requirements by standardizing the data fields to be reported and the systems used to do the filings.

6. Analysts Enable import of data into analyst tools Import and compare numerous companies’ results Less time handling data and more time available for analysis and reporting Time to analyze more companies (better analyst coverage)

7. First a Few Terms • Taxonomy • Canadian • US • IFRS • Instance document

8. The Canadian Taxonomy • What • Where • Why you need it • What you will do with it

9. What • Structuring Canadian GAAP into an electronic format suitable for tagging electronic information • Consists of elements that can be tied into specific financial statement items • Also contains definitions, descriptions and CICA Handbook references

11. Where • At XBRL Canada web site • http://www.xbrl.ca • http://www.xbrl.org

12. XBRL Canada

14. Why You Need a Taxonomy • It is the codebook you need to “tag” your financial statements in XBRL • It contains definitions and references to help you discover the correct choices • You may be customizing it (“extension taxonomy”) to better communicate your specific financial statements

15. Identifying the Correct Taxonomies • Canadian GAAP if you use Cdn GAAP and want to file with the Cdn VFP – limited choices • US GAAP if you use US GAAP and need to file with the SEC. You can also file this with the Cdn VFP – numerous choices • IFRS when you switch to IFRS. If you are an SEC accelerated filer, you will need to file with the SEC when you switch to IFRS

16. Web Sites • Taxonomy viewing • Numerous taxonomies at • http://bigfoot.corefiling.com/

17. The Steps: In Brief: • Analyze time periods and currencies from your financial statements to create contexts and units • If you are going to represent the Notes, consider how granular or broadly you are going to tag them. • Under the SEC rules, you can block tag them initially but must switch to detailed tagging after the first year.

18. The Steps: Cont’d • Identify items that are in your financial statements but not in the standard taxonomies, and create an extension taxonomy • Modify the taxonomies as appropriate so that human readable labels, calculations and presentation accurately reflect the information in your Financials • Validate the resulting XBRL files (instance documents) (a process in the software for the most part) • Make sure the documents run through sufficient governance, disclosure and quality control processes, involving management, investor relations, internal audit, external auditors and others as appropriate

21. Resources to Help • Software • Taxonomy viewers and editors • Instance document creation and editing • Validation • Services • Training • XBRL consulting • Other educational and technical resources

22. Software • Standard Software Selection Process • Software training

23. Some Software Web Sites • Corefiling- http://www.corefiling.com • Fujitsu - http://www.fujitsu.com • Rivet Software – http://www.rivetsoftware.com • Semansys - http://www.semansys.com • UBmatrix - http://www.ubmatrix.com • XBRLit - http://www.tntfilings.com

24. Taxonomy Sizes US GAAP Taxonomy - There are 15,968 concepts in the US taxonomy, including dimensional links, presentation headings IFRS Taxonomy – There are 2,333 elements in the 2011 IFRS taxonomy, including dimensions and headings Canadian Taxonomy – There are 1,307 elements. No dimensions. UK GAAP Taxonomy – 3000 elements

25. G20 countries using XBRL • Which are planning to adopt and when, what are their regulatory requirements and what has their experience been. • See separate report

26. .Who does the Tagging? US – The filers do all the tagging. Usually they outsource to companies like Edgar-Online and Donnelley UK – The filers continue to file PDF documents as always. Companies House uses XML to gather the fields and then tags them with XBRL. France – Similar to UK. Tagging done in the portal that receives the filings. China – Japan - Australia – Government worked with software companies to integrate XBRL tagging into the software they use for preparing financial statements.

27. Approaches to Tagging Top Level Tagging Deep Tagging

28. Top Level Tagging • The quick fix approach • Put financials into a spreadsheet • Tag the spreadsheet • Generate an instance document

29. Deep Tagging • Longer Term • Greater Benefits • More IT help required • Applications level • SAP, some accounting packages • CICA Research Study • Interactive data: Building XBRL into Accounting Information Systems (2007) – available at http://www.cica.ca/itac

30. Instance Documents The output of XBRL Combines Tags in taxonomies with actual data E.g. The tag “Cash and cash equivalents” would be matched to the dollar amount, say $50,000.

31. Questions?