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XBRL(eXtensible Business Reporting Language) Glossary - XBRL Glossary
Because XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is so important across the industry, we have put together this glossary. The XBRL Glossary defines terms that pertain to XBRL standard. The following definitions are designed to give you an understanding of technical terms regarding the XBRL standard. XBRL Glossary provides a comprehensive list of the technical terms that are used in describing XBRL instance documents, XBRL taxonomies, and the XBRL specification in general.
Abstract: An attribute of an element to indicate that the element is only used in a hierarchy to group related elements together. An abstract element cannot be used to tag data in an instance document.
Abstract Element: An element used in a taxonomy to organize or group elements, but does not itself contain any data. These elements are, therefore, only present in XBRL taxonomies, never in instance documents.
Abstract Attribute: An abstract attribute appears on item definitions in schemas and the possible values are true and false; true indicates that the item shall not appear in instance documents, while false indicates that the concepts will hold value. Abstract elements (elements with abstract as true) are defined to bind concepts in a hierarchical manner in the taxonomy.
Arc: An abstract element used to provide an explicit model for the relationship between two locators. Arc are used to connect two or more locators. According to the XBRL Specification 2.1, arcs link concepts to each other by associating their locators; they also link concepts with resources by linking the concept locators to the resources themselves; arcs are also used to link fact locators to footnote resources in footnote extended links; arcs have a set of attributes that document the nature of the expressed relationships; in particular they posses attributes: type (whose value shall be arc), from, to and arcrole.
Arcrole: An XLink attribute that describes the meaning of resources within the context of a link, or the kind of relationship that the arc defines - expressed as an absolute URI. It defines the use of arc. It documents the kind of relationship that the arc expresses; there is a set of standard arcroles defined for specific arcs (labelArc, referenceArc, calculationArc; definitionArc, presentationArc and footnoteArc); the value of arcrole shall be an absolute URI, (e.g. in the presentation linkbase on a presentationArc it is).
Attribute: An XML element property used to describe name-value pairs. E.g. name, balance, data type, and whether the element is abstract. Attributes of XBRL US GAAP Taxonomy elements cannot be changed.
Authoritative Reference: Citations to specific authoritative accounting literature (pronouncements, standards, rules, and regulations) derived from various authoritative sources (Securities and Exchange Commission, Financial Accounting Standards Board, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, etc.) and used to help define an element.
Axis: A grouping of facts based on certain criteria. For example, revenue may be for reported region, product, etc. Each of these are axes. An instance document contains facts; an axis differentiates facts and each axis represents a way that the facts may be classified. For example, Revenue for a period might be reported along a business unit axis, a country axis, a product axis, and so forth.
Balance: An attribute of a monetary item type designated as debit, credit, or neither - indicates what weight value (+1 or -1 for financial reporting) will be assigned to express calculation relationships. A designation, if any, should be the natural or most expected balance of the element and thus indicates how calculation relationships involving the element may be assigned a weight attribute.
Base Taxonomy: The public taxonomy used (US-GAAP, IFRS, COREP, etc.) as the basis for an extension taxonomy.
Calculation Linkbase: The linkbase used to relate XBRL concepts through the application of basic calculation rules (e.g., A + B = C). This ensures the accuracy of the many accounting equations that comprise XBRL reports and enables XBRL software to interpret these relationships correctly and automatically derive the correct values from the input data. The idea of a calculation linkbase is to improve quality of an XBRL report (XBRL instance). The calculation linkbase defines basic calculation validation rules (addition/subtraction), which must apply for all instances of the taxonomy. The arcrole for calculation relationships. It represents relationships between concepts that are of numeric nature and have similar period type. The weight attribute defines the algebraic sign of the operation.
Calculation Relationships: Additive relationships between numeric items expressed as parent-child hierarchies.
Concept: The XBRL specification defines concepts in two equivalent ways. In a syntactic sense, a concept is an XML Schema element definition, defining the element to be in the item element substitution group or in the tuple element substitution group. At a semantic level, a concept is a definition of a kind of fact that can be reported about the activities or nature of a business activity. Entity and report-specific information (reporting period, segment information, and so forth) required by XBRL that allows tagged data to be understood in relation to other information.
Concrete Element: An element for which the abstract attribute in its XML Schema declaration has the value "false" and which, therefore, may appear in an instance document. Because taxonomy elements are concrete by default, the abstract element is not always present.
Context: An element that occurs in an instance document and defines the entity to which a fact applies, the period of time for which the fact is relevant, and an optional scenario.
Data Type: Data types (monetary, string, share, decimal, and so forth) define the kind of data to be tagged with the element name. This attribute indicates the data expected for concepts. Most common data types are monetary, shares, string etc. In addition, taxonomy developers may create their own data types to represent the information in a more efficient manner.
Decimal: Instance document fact attribute used to express the number of decimal places to which numbers have been rounded.
Definition Linkbase: Provides taxonomy developers with a means to define additional logical semantic relationships between concepts, such as interdependency and other associations. Definition arcs use four standard arcrole values to express miscellaneous relationships between concepts: "general-special", "essence-alias", "similar-tuples", and "requires-element". It stores other pre-defined or self-defined relationships between elements. For example a relationship can be defined that the occurrence of one concept within an XBRL instance mandates the occurrence of other concepts, or relationships describing elements of general nature and elements which are very specific or elements which can be categorized based on parameters etc.
Definition Relationships File: Technical term for dimensional relationships file.
Dimension: XBRL technical term for axis. A tool in the XBRL standard that allows preparers to leverage XBRL tags to create simple tables and more complex pivot-style tables within financial statements.
Discoverable Taxonomy Set (DTS): A set of one or more XBRL taxonomies used to validate an instance document. This term evolved as taxonomies became more complex and interrelated.
Element: An XML technical term borrowed by XBRL and referring to business reporting concepts defined in a taxonomy and quantified in an XBRL instance document. XBRL components (items, domain members, dimensions, and so forth). The representation of a financial reporting concept, including: line items in the face of the financial statements, important narrative disclosures, and rows and columns in tables. Precisely, an element is a business or a financial concept which is defined in the taxonomy according to XBRL specifications. Each element has a type, is identified by name and may have a set of attribute specifications as per the XBRL standards.
Element Definition: A human-readable description of a reporting concept. From an XBRL technical point of view, the element definition is the label with the type “documentation,” and there are label relationships in a label relationships file, but from a user point of view the definition is an unchangeable attribute of the element.
Entry Point: A DTS contains many schema and linkbase documents A schema which imports the base (or as required) schema and necessary linkbases, is called entry-point. Entry-point schema is usually used to browse or view the taxonomy.
Extended Link: Relationships used in linkbases to further define concepts based on their associations with other concepts or documents. These are logical grouping of elements. Extended links (ELR) represent a set of relationships between concepts and are defined in schema. The extended links are then used in linkbases to build the relationships. Extended links contain locators, arcs, arcroles and resources.
Extension: A company-defined line item that is not available in the current taxonomy. Preparers have the ability to create new custom terms if they have a very unique reporting situation that is not available in the taxonomy terms. An XBRL extension is a taxonomy that extends an existing base taxonomy. The extension taxonomy may include, exclude or change information from the base taxonomy. The extension can be regarded as an overlay which modifies the structure of the taxonomy, adds and prohibits elements, their labels, linking, order of appearance and other characteristics. The main idea behind an extension is to encourage business users to tailor the taxonomy to their specific needs, while using the elements of the base taxonomy to ensure comparability.
Extension Taxonomy: A taxonomy that is created on top of a public taxonomy to further define necessary reporting concepts that have not been previously defined. It allows users to add to a published taxonomy in order to define new elements or change element relationships and attributes (presentation, calculation, labels, and so forth) without altering the original.
Fact: A concept that has been placed in a context and assigned a value. Facts appear in instance documents. The occurrence in an instance document of a value or other information tagged by a taxonomy element.
Footnote: Additional information that further explains certain facts.
Formula Linkbase: A formula is a specification is that is being developed by XBRL International; it aims to satisfy the formula linkbase requirements document by providing a generalised mechanism to build formulae based on XBRL concepts and XBRL dimensions; formulae can be used to describe business rules for creating new XBRL facts in new instance documents and for describing consistency checks for instance documents.
Hierarchy: Trees (presentation, calculation, and so forth) used to express and navigate relationships.
Hypercube: XBRL technical term for a table.
Identifier: An element that specifies the scheme for identifying business entities using a required scheme attribute that contains the namespace URI of the identification system.
Imputed Value: A value that is not specifically provided but could be calculated based on other provided numbers and calculation weights.
Instance: XML file that contains business reporting information and represents a collection of financial facts and report-specific information using tags from one or more XBRL taxonomies.
Instance Document: An XBRL-enabled business report containing tagged business facts together with their values and 'contexts' in which they appear and unit description. Represented in an XML document. Instances must be linked to at least one taxonomy which define their contexts, labels or references.
Item: XBRL technical term for a kind of element. It is an element used to define a concept which will hold single value in the given period. Most of the concepts represent one value in one period, and hence are defined as items. E.g. Total assets, depreciation etc.
Labels: If an element already exists within the standard taxonomy that can be used to represent your information but you do not like the standard label, do not add an additional element, just change the label. Human-readable name for an element; each element has a standard label that corresponds to the element name, and is unique across the taxonomy.
Label Type: A distinguishing name for each distinct element indicating the circumstances in which it should be used; each is given a separate defining role to use in different presentation situations.
Label Linkbase: A linkbase that contains human-readable definitions and descriptions of the concepts provided in an XML Schema such as element names and documentation in different languages. The goal of the XBRL Consortium is to create and develop a world-wide standard for electronic business reporting. This requires the taxonomies to represent business data in multiple language. Therefore it is possible to create an element (concept) in the taxonomy with labels in different languages and or for different purposes e.g. a short label PPE compared to its long label Property, plant and equipment. Those labels are stored and linked to their respective elements in a label linkbase.
Line Item: Elements that conventionally appear on the vertical axis (rows) of a table.
Linkbase: An XML document within an XBRL taxonomy that contains collections of inbound and third party links. This is the subset of the XLink specification that provides much of the semantic meaning to XBRL instance documents. XBRL linkbases and XBRL Schemas define together an XBRL taxonomy. Taxonomies with only the core elements (concepts) defined in an XBRL Schema would be useless. The purpose of XBRL linkbases is to combine labels and references to the concepts as well as define relationships between those concepts. There are five different kinds of linkbases viz. Label Linkbase, Reference Linkbase, Presentation Linkbase, Calculation Linkbase and Definition Linkbase. Each has a special purpose. In short Linkbase is an XBRL technical term for a relationships file.
Linkrole: An XLink attribute that describes the meaning of resources within the context of a link, used to group relationships across disparate linkbases - expressed as an absolute URI.
Locator: An element used in an extended link to point to external resources that uniquely define target concepts. It provides a reference to the taxonomy schema element definitions that uniquely identify each concept; they provide an anchor for extended link arcs.
Mapping: Process of determining the elements that correspond to lines and columns in a financial statement and which elements must be created by extension.
Name Unique identifier of an element in a taxonomy.
Namespace: An XML syntax that prevents naming collisions (i.e. errors that occur when two elements/attributes have the same name but different meanings). It is an defined collection of names. Every element has a Universal Resource Identifier (URI) that identifies the organization that maintains the element definitions, with an indication of what the term covers. The namespace for taxonomy usually contains the authority defining the taxonomy, date of taxonomy, in the form of web URL. The namespace specification however does not require nor suggest that the namespace URI be used to retrieve information; it is simply treated by an XML parser as a string. A namespace prefix is not the namespace.
Nillable: An attribute that appears on all taxonomy elements. If set to "true", that element can have an empty value. It is used (false) on elements that, if used in an instance document, must have a non-empty value. XBRL taxonomy tools normally have the default value for nillable as “true.” There is no need for any extension to define an element with nillable “false.”
Order Attribute: This attribute is defined on arcs and used to determine the sequence of relationship. In presentation linkbase, it is of prime importance as the display of elements will be based on the order as defined for every element.
Parent-Child Hierarchy: Relationship between elements that indicates subordination of one to the other as represented in a print listing or financial statement presentation. Relationships files use parent-child hierarchies to model several different relationships, including presentation, summation of a set of facts, and membership of concepts within a domain used as the axis of a table.
Period: An XBRL element that contains the instant or interval of time for reference by an item element.
Period Type: An attribute of an element that reflects whether it is reported as an instant or duration time period. It is used to describe the measurement period of the concept and may be assigned one of two values – instant and duration. Instant indicates that the concepts are measured as at a particular date, while duration indicates concepts hold value for a period.
Prefix: When declaring namespaces, a short name to identify the namespace is also defined and this is called as prefix. The schema components are associated with prefix belonging to that namespace. Prefixes precede names of elements, attributes and some of their predefined values provide an indication of where to find definitions of these properties.
Presentation Linkbase: Provides information about the structure of XBRL concepts, documenting hierarchical (parent-child and sibling) relationships between elements. Business reports are in general organized into identifiable data structures e.g. a Balance Sheet. The presentation linkbase stores information about relationships between elements in order to properly organize the taxonomy content. The arcrole used in presentation linkbase is.
Presentation Relationships: Relationships that arrange elements allowing them to navigate the taxonomy content in parent-child tree structures (hierarchies).
Reference Linkbase: A linkbase containing references to authoritative statements in published business, financial, and accounting literature or other useful guidance that gives additional meaning to concepts. Most of the elements appearing in taxonomies refer to particular concepts defined by authoritative literature. The reference linkbase stores the relationships between elements and the references e.g. Schedule VI, Part A or Accounting standard 23, para 2 etc. . The layer does not store the regulations themselves but the source identification names and paragraphs.
Render or Rendering: To process an instance document into a layout that facilitates readability and understanding of its contents.
Scaling: A process that automatically scales numeric data by value, thus saving time of entering zeros during the entry or creation process. XBRL does not support the scaling of numeric values (all values must be reported in their entirety); however, it is a feature commonly found in instance document creation software.
Scenario An optional element that may appear in an instance document and indicates the type of data being reported (i.e. actual, budgeted, restated, pro forma, etc.). Tag that allows for additional information to be associated with facts in an instance document; this information encompasses in particular the reporting circumstances of the fact, as for example “actual or forecast.” The scenario of any fact can be left unspecified.
Schema XBRL Schemas together with linkbases define an XBRL taxonomy. The purpose of XBRL schemas is to define taxonomy elements (concepts) and give each concept a name and define its characteristics. It can be regarded as a container where elements and references to “linkbase” files are defined. Technical term for an element declaration file.
Segment: An element used as an optional container to further identify a business segment when an identifier element is insufficient. This is also the primary tool used to indicate dimensional data in XBRL instance documents. Tag that allows additional information to be included in the context of an instance document; this information captures segment information such as an entity’s business units, type of debt, type of other income, and so forth.
Sign Value: Denotes whether a numeric fact in an instance has a positive (+) or negative (-) value.
Standard Label: The default label for an element. An extension may override the standard label.
SubstitutionGroup Attribute: Appears on element definitions in schemas; XBRL defines four basic substitution groups, items , tuples, dimensions ( axes) and hypercubes ( tables); its purpose is to indicate which type can be substituted for the actual definition.
Table: An element that organizes a set of axes and a set of line items to indicate that each fact of one of the line items could be further characterized along one or more of its axes. For example, if a line item is Sales and an axis is Scenario, this means that an instance document could have facts that are either for an unspecified scenario or for a specific scenario such as “actual or forecast.”
Tag: A mechanism used in markup languages, such as XML, to describe data. XBRL tags are generally a word or words written in camel case together with a "<" and ">" or "/>" to denote an opening or ending tag. Tags are the individual elements within a taxonomy, e.g., net income. Identifying information that describes a unit of data in an instance document and encloses it in angle brackets (<> and ). All facts in an instance document are enclosed by tags that identify the element of the fact. Tagging is applying tags to an instance document.
Taxonomy: Electronic dictionary of business reporting terms and elements used to describe report business data. A taxonomy is composed of element names file (.xsd), an XML Schema and one or more linkbases (relationships files) directly referenced by that schema. The taxonomy schema files together with the relationships files define the concepts (elements) and relationships that form the basis of the taxonomy. The set of related schemas and relationships files altogether constitute a taxonomy. E.g. XBRL US GAAP line items which include terms such as net income, EPS, cash, etc. Each term has specific attributes that help define it including label and definition and potentially references. An XBRL taxonomy can also be defined as an electronic description and classification system for the contents of financial statements and other business reporting documents. Taxonomies may represent hundreds or even thousands of individual business reporting concepts, mathematical and definitional relationships among them, along with text labels in multiple languages, references to authoritative literature, and information about how to display each concept to a user.
Tuple: A complex abstract element with the substitutionGroup tuple. Tuples are sets of facts that are dependent on each other for proper understanding and may contain both items and other tuples. Concepts which can have multiple values for the same period or if elements are required together to make the information more meaningful and complete, the substitution group is defined as tuple. E.g. Subsidiary information – there would be multiple values for name, shares held for any given period.
Unit: An element appearing in an instance document that includes an attribute that specifies the unit of measure applied to numeric values. Units can be simple operators or currencies (such as dollars, shares, Euros, or dollars per share), or more complex calculations based on several components.
Validation Process of checking that an instance document meets the syntactical and semantic rules provided in its associated taxonomy. Validation also confirms that both XBRL reports and taxonomies conform to the XBRL specification.
Weight: A required attribute in a calculation arc indicating the multiplier that is to be applied to a numeric value. Calculation relationship attribute (-1 or +1) that works in conjunction with the balance of the parent and child numeric elements to determine the arithmetic summation relationship.
XBRL: eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is an open standard for the electronic communication of business and financial data that supports information modeling and the expression of semantic meaning. XBRL is XML-based technology and uses XML syntax along with related XML technologies such as XML Schema, XLink, XPath, and Namespaces. XBRL improves the way information is created, processed, distributed and analyzed by using 'tags' that package information such as definitions, labels, references and time period around individual numbers or text.
XML: Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a general-purpose specification from the W3C for creating custom markup languages with the purpose of sharing data across disparate systems and the Internet.
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