The Italian Roadmap to XBRL electronic filing

1
The Italian Roadmap to XBRL electronic filing

• Paola Fumiani
• XBRL technical advisor at InfoCamere
• member of "Associazione XBRL Italia"

2
The filing of annual financial statements
The filing of annual financial statements

• Is a mandatory provision for limited liability
  companies
• Managed by the Italian Business Register
• The Register is held by the Chamber of Commerce
  network, on a territorial basis
• about 6.000.000 of Businesses are registered as
  per today
• processes financial Statements from about 950.000
  companies per year
• It relies on
• UnionCamere, the Union of the 103 Italian
  Chambers of Commerce, Industry and Handicraft
• InfoCamere, the technology provider
• Hosting of the Italian Business Register
• Storing data on the relevant companys events
  establishment, variations, winding-up,
  cancellation.

3
Who is involved ?

• The accountants, actually drawing up annual
  accounts for almost all companies in Italy
• The Italian accounting software development
  association
• The Italian Company Registration System

4
The key role of Assosoftware

• On-going collaboration with the public authority
  Tax Agency, Ministry of Technology Innovations,
  Business Register System
• Creating and managing an updated tools set
• Supporting the accountants action on operational
  duties
• 85 IT firms represented
• 80 of the SME sector
• 160.000 accountants
• 5.000 notaries
• Creating the real effective e-filing background

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E-filing to the Italian Business Registrer

• Its the fundamental XBRL background
• mandatory since year 2003

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Steps to the XBRL e-filing

• The law requirements
• The Italian government pushes for the adoption of
  a standard by approving the law decree (n. 223
  of July 2006) providing for the "mandatory
  deposit of annual financial statements related to
  the year 2007 via electronic support and with a
  processable format".
• The jurisdiction
• September 2006 foundation of Associazione XBRL
  Italia

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The Associazione XBRL Italia

• The association outreaches a community made up
  of
• 104.000 registered professional accountants
• 103 Chambers of Commerce
• 1.100 Financial analysts
• 250 Industrial enterprises association
• 193 Insurance companies
• 799 banks and 454 financial institutions
• 300 listed companies

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The members

• The highest Italian institutions in the field of
  financial information
• Associazione Bancaria Italiana (Italian Banking
  Association)
• Associazione Italiana Analisti Finanziari
  (Association of Financial Analysts)
• Consiglio Nazionaledei Dottori Commercialisti e
  degli Esperti Contabili
• (Doctors in commerce and Accountants and
  commercial estimators)
• Confederazione Generale dellIndustria Italiana
  (Association of Industries)
• Associazione Nazionale fra Imprese Assicuratrici
  (Association of Insurance companies)
• Associazione fra le società italiane per azioni
  (Association of Italian Limited by shares
  companies)
• Organismo Italiano di contabilità (Italian
  Standard Setter)
• Unione Camere di Commercio Italiane (Union of
  Italian Chamber of Commerce)
• Banca DItalia (Central Bank of Italy)
• Borsa Italiana (Italian stock exchange)
• Istituto Italiano Vigilanza Assicurazioni)
  (National institute of insurance oversight)

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The Roadmap 2007 pilot project set-up

• The commitment
• No extra investments !! by the Business Entities
  while supplying their XBRL Annual Accounts
• the environment (web sites, tutorial, training,
  tools)
• filing limited to PFS (Primary Financial
  Statements)
• figures of the pilot 2007 (voluntary filing)
• running from May 2007 ("Annual Accounts" filing
  campaign )
• All 103 Chambers of Commerce involved
• 80 volunteer users software providers and
  professional accountants
• 905 instance documents filed

10
The Roadmap 2007 Environment set up

• Publishing on the free access web site of
• the GAAP Italy Taxonomy
• an introduction to XBRL Technical
  Specifications
• the XBRL filing guidelines and tools tutorials
• Running training sessions on the XBRL standard
• Activating a rendering and validation tool for
  XBRL instances on the InfoCamere public website

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The Roadmap 2007 instance generation support

• .. for the users work station a downloadable
  package based on MS Office/Open Office,
  generating XBRL instances by
• Data entry on a specific application form
• Automatic import in the application form of the
  financial facts directly from the accounting
  management software using customized mapping
  tables

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The outcomes for XBRL instance documents

• 12 of incorrect XBRL instance documents
• XBRL related errors
• Calculation errors missing data in the sub
  total fields
• invalid mappings between taxonomy elements and
  the accounting process
• "abstract" items filled with values
• XML related errors
• incorrect usage of data types (numeric/alphanumeri
  c)
• Special characters used in the company name
  element ( typically '' )
• usage of delimiters in numeric items ( i.e.
  1,000 )
• usage of decimal digits (i.e. 2459,00 while
  the Italian Code provisions states that values
  must always be integers )
• XML validation errors not well-formed files

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The Roadmap 2007 the feedback

• Taxonomy design
• Concepts definition is governed and verified
  against the civil code provisions.
• Elements of the taxonomy have to describe the
  financial concepts consisting of elements and an
  un-limited number of nested sub-elements....
• common practice is
• Most companies are able to draw up their
  financial reports using the Italian GAAP
  taxonomy
• while exceptions are
• some companies want to deeply detail their
  financial facts no limits on detailing are
  imposed by the civil code
• How can a financial report with un-limited
  details be translated in an XBRL document,
  referring a mandatory taxonomy schema?

14
The Roadmap 2007 towards the legal provision

• Technical strategies/alternatives analized by the
  Italian XBRL Jurisdidtion
• allowing companies to define their own taxonomy
  extensions
• the consequence is a loss of standardization and
  interoperability.
• Adopting a maintenance program to update the
  existing taxonomy on demand and managed by the
  Xbrl jurisdiction
• increased work for the taxonomy management
  (definition of acceptance criteria, editing,
  testing etc)
• Organizational solution proposed to the Ministry
  of Reforms and Innovation in the Public
  Administration
• Companies needing extra facts definitions are
  allowed to add the PDF Annual account to the XBRL
  instance document

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The Roadmap the law decree enforcement

• The gradual adoption of XBRL
• 2008
• Mandatory for companies closing their fiscal year
  after March 2008
• About 10.000 companies starting filing after
  August 2008
• Limited to PFS (Primary Financial Statements)
• 2009
• Mandatory for all companies
• Based on approved and recognized taxonomies by
  the Italian jurisdiction

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Revision of existing filing procedure

• 2008 the filing process changes slightly
  according to the pilot 2007 steps
• Download the e-filing software from the central
  server
• Make the Dossier PDF
• XBRL mandatory
• eSign the Dossier components
• eFile the Dossier into the central server

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Financial reports different formats for the
same information
Business Register (Registro Imprese Italiane)
XBRL
financial information to be consumed directly by
software applications
PDF
Deeply detailed PDF financial report
18
Information handling through XBRL

• Benefits coming from XBRL are well known
• selection of key figures using a query language
• Multi-language features on viewing and reporting
• merging data from different Data Bases

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The link to XBRL exploitation Brite case

• XBRL is becoming a strategic data format
• XBRL has been adopted by some research projects
• Brite Business Registers Interoperability
  across Europe
• BriteCBD turnover figures

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The taxonomy building team

• The technical support for the development of the
  GAAP Italy taxonomy by the Trento University
• Professor Luca Erzegovesi head of (Department
  of Computer and Management Sciences ).
• Doctor Davide Panizzolo researcher of
  (Department of Computer and Management Sciences ).