The Report Packages 1.0 specification defines a standard for distributing XBRL reports and their associated files a single file package.
This document defines requirements for a new version of the Report Packages specification. These additional requirements are motivated primarily by the requirements of the Digital Signatures in XBRL initiative, which aims to provide a standard way of applying digital signatures in XBRL reports.
The Report Packages 1.0 specification was finalised in September 2023, and is now widely supported in XBRL software, and has been adopted by a number of XBRL and Inline XBRL filing systems.
Digital Signatures in XBRL (D6) is an ongoing initiative to standardise the application of Digital Signatures to XBRL and Inline XBRL reports. The approach taken by D6 relies heavily on report packages to provide a container into which signatures can be added. The D6 initiative has identified a number of features of the current Report Package specification that hinder a clean approach to the implementation of D6. Rather than compromising the design of D6, it has been proposed that a new release of the Report Packages specification could incorporate the relatively minor changes required. This document describes the requirements for this.
Further, the current draft of the D6 specification describes an extension to the Report Package specification. It has been proposed that, given the tight coupling between D6 and Report Packages, the two specifications should be merged, with digital signatures becoming standard Report Package functionality.
Since the publication of Report Packages 1.0, development of a new version of the Taxonomy Package specification has started. The planned Taxonomy Packages 1.1 specification is a minor update to Taxonomy Packages 1.0 that add support for tracking dependencies between taxonomy packages. Report Packages 1.0 currently allows for the inclusion of a taxonomy within a report package that conforms to the Taxonomy Package 1.0 specification.
Report Packages 1.1 should add support for Taxonomy Packages 1.1.
Report Packages 1.0 should maintain support for Taxonomy Packages 1.0.
In order to ease migration to the new specification, it should be backwards compatible with the existing syntax. Specifically, this means that a package that is valid according to Report Packages 1.0 should remain valid under the new specification.
This requirement may be reconsidered if compelling benefits to taking a different approach are identified during implementation.
Report packages can contain XBRL reports in a number of formats, including:
An xBRL-JSON report is a JSON file, and an xBRL-CSV file includes a JSON
metadata file that serves as the "entry point" from which CSV tables and other
metadata files can be discovered. These JSON files share some common structure
in the form of a documentInfo object that identifies the type of the report.
The use of a JSON file with a consistent structure as the entry point for these reports provides a useful container for including additional information needed to support digital signatures.
xBRL-XML and Inline XBRL reports are XML files. In order to enable a consistent approach to digital signatures, the Report Packages 1.1 specification should define JSON-based entry point files for these two report types.
These entry point files should be permitted within the reports directory of a
report package, and should be used in the report discovery process.
There are additional requirements for Inline XBRL entry point files, described in the following sections.
Inline XBRL reports can contain multiple "target documents". This is a feature that enables multiple distinct XBRL datasets, potentially referencing different taxonomies, to be extracted from a single Inline XBRL Report.
In order to allow digital signatures to be applied to individual target documents, Inline XBRL entry points should identify a specific target document.
It should be possible to include multiple Inline XBRL entry points for the same Inline XBRL document or document set, in order to select multiple target documents, and apply signatures to each individually.
An Inline XBRL report comprises one or more XHTML files, referred to as an "Inline XBRL document set". The Inline XBRL specification does not provide a mechanism for discovering all files within a document set, or for defining the ordering of the files within a set.
Inline XBRL entry points should explicitly enumerate the files in the Inline XBRL document set, and their ordering.
The Report Package 1.0 constrains the inclusion of multiple separate reports in a single package.
Development of the Digital Signatures specification has identified a requirement for the application of a signature to an auditor's report that accompanies a company's annual report, in addition to the preparer's signature on the report as a whole. The auditor's report and the annual report are often integrated into a single document, but this creates complexity for the signing process. One possible approach to addressing this would be to include the auditor's report as a separate Inline XBRL report within the same report package.
In order to support this, Report Packages 1.1 should permit the inclusion of multiple related Inline XBRL Reports in an Inline XBRL report package.
This approach also allows for the inclusion of multiple auditor's reports within a single report package. This enables each auditor's report to be digitally signed individually by different auditors, supporting more complex assurance scenarios such as joint audits or component audits. By structuring each auditor's report as a separate Inline XBRL document, each report can be signed independently, avoiding introducing dependencies between the signing processes for the different reports.
Packages conforming to the Report Package 1.0 specification are required to be valid taxonomy packages. This approach reflects the fact that the Report Packages 1.0 specification was developed as a simple addition to the Taxonomy Package 1.0 specification and was originally motivated by the requirement of packaging an XBRL report with an extension taxonomy.
Usage of report packages has evolved beyond this original use case, and is now commonly used on XBRL reports that do not have an extension taxonomy.
Where reports make use of an extension taxonomy, the approach of having a single file conform to two specifications simultaneously adds some complexity, and a simpler approach would be to include extension taxonomies as "normal" taxomomy packages and include them as as separate files contained within the report package. This approach would also enable the inclusion of multiple extension taxonomies in order to support multiple Inline XBRL target documents.
The new specification should incorporate the functionality of the draft Digital Signatures in XBRL specification, and address the Digital Signatures in XBRL requirements.
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