An Ontological Approach to XBRL Financial Statement Reporting

As a standard for the exchange, transmission, and reporting of accounting and financial data, XRBL goes a long way towardstandardization. However, as the extent of contemporary financial markets is now global, XBRL reporting must transcend oraccommodate differences in reporting standards. While XBRL has been of great help in standardizing the presentation of theU.S. GAAP and IASB standards, reconciling meaning between these standards is still a manual and error-prone affair. As awide variety of stakeholders, spanning countries and cultures, will likely take part in digesting XBRL-formatted financialreports; how will they participate at an appropriate level that is meaningful for them? This paper focuses on an ontologicalapproach towards solving this problem by offering an XBRL ontology architecture for translation between XBRL formats.The architecture is explained, evaluation criteria offered, and future research towards realizing artifacts which use thisarchitecture are proffered

Tuple-based morphisms for interoperability establishment of financial information models

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e ComputadoresThe current financial crisis has demonstrated that there is a need for financial accounting data in a format which can be rapidly analyzed and exchanged. The appearance of XBRL in 2000 has helped create a ‘de facto’ standard data format for the exchange of financial information. However, XBRL by itself is not capable of ensuring a common semantic for the exchange of accounting information. Additionally, the existence of different accounting standards in different countries is a hindrance to efficient analysis and evaluation of companies by international analysts or investors. Therefore, there is a need to not only use a more advanced data format, but also for tools which can facilitate the exchange of accounting data, in particular when different accounting standards are used. This dissertation presents a tuple-based semantic and structural mapping for interoperability establishment of financial information models based on the use of ontologies and a ‘Communication Mediator’. It allows the mapping of accounting concepts of different accounting standards to be stored in the ‘Communication Mediator’. The mapping stored contains an ATL code expression, which with the aid of model transformation tools, can be utilized to perform the mapping between two different accounting models

X-IM Framework to Overcome Semantic Heterogeneity Across XBRL Filings

Semantic heterogeneity in XBRL precludes the full automation of the business reporting pipeline, a key motivation for the SEC’s XBRL mandate. To mitigate this problem, several approaches leveraging Semantic Web technologies have emerged. While some approaches are promising, their mapping accuracy in resolving semantic heterogeneity must be improved to realize the promised benefits of XBRL. Considering this limitation and following the design science research methodology (DSRM), we develop a novel framework, XBRL indexing-based mapping (X-IM), which takes advantage of the representational model of representation theory to map heterogeneous XBRL elements across diverse XBRL filings. The application of representation theory to the design process informs the use of XBRL label linkbases as a repository of regularities constitutive of the relationships between financial item names and the concepts they describe along a set of equivalent financial terms of interest to investors. The instantiated design artifact is thoroughly evaluated using standard information retrieval metrics. Our experiments show that X-IM significantly outperforms existing methods

Multimedia Annotation Interoperability Framework

Multimedia systems typically contain digital documents of mixed media types, which are indexed on the basis of strongly divergent metadata standards. This severely hamplers the inter-operation of such systems. Therefore, machine understanding of metadata comming from different applications is a basic requirement for the inter-operation of distributed Multimedia systems. In this document, we present how interoperability among metadata, vocabularies/ontologies and services is enhanced using Semantic Web technologies. In addition, it provides guidelines for semantic interoperability, illustrated by use cases. Finally, it presents an overview of the most commonly used metadata standards and tools, and provides the general research direction for semantic interoperability using Semantic Web technologies

A semantic Bayesian network for automated share evaluation on the JSE

Advances in information technology have presented the potential to automate investment decision making processes. This will alleviate the need for manual analysis and reduce the subjective nature of investment decision making. However, there are different investment approaches and perspectives for investing which makes acquiring and representing expert knowledge for share evaluation challenging. Current decision models often do not reflect the real investment decision making process used by the broader investment community or may not be well-grounded in established investment theory. This research investigates the efficacy of using ontologies and Bayesian networks for automating share evaluation on the JSE. The knowledge acquired from an analysis of the investment domain and the decision-making process for a value investing approach was represented in an ontology. A Bayesian network was constructed based on the concepts outlined in the ontology for automatic share evaluation. The Bayesian network allows decision makers to predict future share performance and provides an investment recommendation for a specific share. The decision model was designed, refined and evaluated through an analysis of the literature on value investing theory and consultation with expert investment professionals. The performance of the decision model was validated through back testing and measured using return and risk-adjusted return measures. The model was found to provide superior returns and risk-adjusted returns for the evaluation period from 2012 to 2018 when compared to selected benchmark indices of the JSE. The result is a concrete share evaluation model grounded in investing theory and validated by investment experts that may be employed, with small modifications, in the field of value investing to identify shares with a higher probability of positive risk-adjusted returns

Using SPIN to formalise Accounting Regulations on the Semantic Web

Spohr D, Cimiano P, McCrae J, O'Riain S. Using SPIN to formalise Accounting Regulations on the Semantic Web. Presented at the First International Workshop on Finance and Economics on the Semantic Web in conjunction with the 9th Extended Semantic Web Conference.The eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) has standardised nancial reporting and provide a machine-interpretable for- mat that makes nancial and business reports easier to access and con- sume. Leveraging XBRL with Open Linked Data for purposes such as multi-dimensional regulatory querying and investigation requires XBRL formalisation as RDF. This paper investigates the use of o-the-shelf Se- mantic Web technologies to formalise accounting regulations specied in XBRL jurisdictional taxonomies. Specically the use of the SPARQL In- ferencing Notation (SPIN) with RDF to represent these accounting reg- ulations as rule constraints, not catered for in the RDF abstract model is investigated. We move beyond previous RDF to XBRL transformations and investigate how SPIN enhanced formalisation enables inferencing of nancial statement facts associated with nancial reporting concepts and sophisticated consistency checks, which evaluate the correctness of reported nancial data with respect to the calculation requirements im- posed by accounting regulation. The approach illustrated through two use cases demonstrates the use of SPIN to meet central requirements for nancial data and regulatory modelling

The Development of a New Digital Business Reporting Standard - Inline XBRL

Digital reporting has become one of the key elements for regulatory reporting by businesses to the government in the UK. By tagging financial information with individual codes that are based on accounting standards and regulatory reporting regime, financial reports are now transformed into eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) instance documents and can be processed by XBRL-enabled software tools. This research explores how two of the governmental bodies in the UK - HM Revenue and Customs and Companies House - got involved in a close cooperation with the XBRL community in the UK and together with IT consultants and technical experts developed a human-readable format of XBRL, known as Inline XBRL (iXBRL). The central concern is the fabrication of the new standard through formation of a network of actors and objects involved in the process. The study adopts an Actor Network Theory perspective that highlights the complexity of technology implementation in regulatory environments using concepts from sociomateriality theory (Latour, 2005; Leonardi & Barley, 2008). It draws on documentary evidence and semi-structured interviews with regulators, software vendors, and other organisations involved in developing digital reporting facility in the UK. The study has found that iXBRL affordances acted as a catalyst for the network to grow and the regulators to fulfil their obligations by addressing the pressures from major consulting companies, accounting professional bodies, and software vendors. The XBRL rendering functionality produced the perception of both capability for users of financial reports and constraint for filers. To overcome this constraint, the network of actors directed all resources to producing a visually more accessible rendering mechanism that was inscribed in iXBRL. By focusing on the UK unique context of the mandate of iXBRL-based filing, the thesis contributes by illustrating what was compromised and what was gained for heterogeneous groups of actors when establishing the infrastructure for digital business reporting