1.
Public Working Draft - Review Period and Comments
The US Financial Reporting Taxonomy Framework (USFRTF) has been released as a Public Working Draft effective September 20, 2004. The public review period will run for 60 days ending November 19, 2004.
Comments and feedback on either accounting concepts within
the taxonomy or technical aspects of the US Financial Reporting Taxonomy
Framework are welcome, particularly ideas to improve this taxonomy. If you have
a comment or wish to report an error, email them on or before November 19, 2004
to Brad Homer (bhomer@aicpa.org).
To assist in the feedback process, a review template has been
provided for each taxonomy, these can be found on each individual taxonomy
summary page. Other feedback outside of this template will be accepted, however
it should be as specific as possible in identifying the taxonomy, elements,
links or other details that are being commented on. Feedback received will be
summarized and be made available to the XBRL-US Domain Working Group and also
publicly.
Detailed responses will not be provided for every comment
submitted, however a summary of which feedback has been incorporated will be
provided.
2. Overview
2.1. Purpose & Scope
The XBRL-US Domain Working Group is leading the development of this eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) Management Report (USRF-MR) Taxonomy for the purpose of expressing the report of management that typically accompanies publicly-held companies’ financial statements.
The purpose of the USFR-MR Taxonomy is to provide a framework for the consistent creation of XBRL documents for expressing the management report upon financial reporting by private sector and public sector entities. The purpose of this and other taxonomies produced using XBRL is to supply a framework that will facilitate data exchange among software applications used by companies and individuals as well as other financial information stakeholders, such as lenders, investors, auditors, attorneys, and regulators.
This taxonomy is part of the XBRL US Financial Reporting Taxonomy Framework and can be used in conjunction with the other taxonomies as depicted in Figure 1:
Figure 1: Interrelationship of Taxonomies and Instance Document
2.2. Taxonomy Status
The USFR-MR Taxonomy is an Acknowledged Public Working Draft. Its
content and structure have been reviewed by both accounting and technical teams
that comprise XBRL-US and XBRL International.
The XBRL-US Domain Working Group intends to have this taxonomy reach the
status of a approved taxonomy under the XBRL Taxonomy Approval Process (TAP)
2004. XBRL Taxonomies can exist in two states insofar as XBRL International TAP
is concerned:
- Acknowledged – A royalty-free taxonomy that
the creators have asked XBRL International to list at XBRL.org; XBRL
International confirms only that the taxonomy is compliant with the XBRL
specification and is available free of royalties. This classification
indicates to the business user the degree of endorsement by XBRL
International.
- Approved – A taxonomy which is technically
compliant with XBRL, is available on royalty free terms, follows best
practices prescribed by XBRL International (e.g. FRTA) and either has been
developed by XBRL International itself or that has followed a public
review process similar to XBRL International's own.
3. Reviewing This Taxonomy
There are a number of approaches to reviewing the taxonomy both from an accounting and technical XBRL perspective. For more information on reviewing taxonomies, reviewers should read the Reviewer’s Guide to Financial Reporting Taxonomies 1.0 as published by XBRL-US.
4. Updates and Changes
4.1.
Updates to this Taxonomy
This taxonomy will be updated with revisions for errors and new features within the following guidelines:
· Since financial statements created using a taxonomy must be available indefinitely, the taxonomy must be available indefinitely. All updates will take the form of new versions of the taxonomy with a different date. For example, the taxonomy http://www.xbrl.org/us/fr/rpt/mr/2004-08-15/usfr-mr-2004-08-15.xsd will never change. New versions will be issued under a different name, such as http://www.xbrl.org/us/fr/rpt/mr/2004-12-31/usfr-mr-2004-12-31.xsd. This will ensure that any taxonomy created will be available indefinitely.
- It is anticipated that this taxonomy will be updated as required to incorporate changes in generally accepted accounting principles and business reporting norms.