USING WEB TECHNOLOGY TO IMPROVE THE ACCOUNTING OF SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES. AN ACADEMIC APPROACH TO IMPLEMENTATION OF IFRS

One way of supporting the accounting standard-setting process and to facilitatethe access to those standards is through the implementation of modern accounting reportingmethods using web technology. In this regard SMEs are under stress of two major factors:implementation of accounting standards and revolution in IT technology. The purpose of thispaper is to define the web accounting, explain the implications of web accounting for IFRSand discuss the key features in implementing this form of accounting for Small and MediumEnterprises(SME‘s). Web accounting is accounting software based on XML technology thatstores records and processes accounting transactions using HTTP as its primarycommunications protocol, and delivers web based information in HTML format and thentranslated in other formats. Web based accounting, will provide the benefit of cost savingsand increasing efficiency. It also will allows employees and external users (suppliers,customers and investors) a real time access to accounting data, translating reports in XBRLformat and facilitate adoption of IFRS.Web Accounting, SMEs, Web Technology, XML, XBRL, IFRS

XBRL-based projects for financial and prudential reporting – an empirical analysis in European banking system

Our paper approaches the extensible economic reporting language for collecting information on business processes, namely XBRL by analyzing its implementation in the European banking environment, closely related to the adoption of International Accounting Standards and Financial Reporting (IAS/IFRS). Our research problem mainly came from the accounting development issue, which is an evolutionary process dependent upon several factors. On the other hand, improving banking supervision on information reporting is a problem that needed special attention in order to increase its efficiency and effectiveness, especially in the latest period sprinkled with various banking failures. The results of the performed analysis using various statistical tools (descriptive statistic and correlation tests) reveal that the implementation of both XBRL-based projects (FINREP and COREP) is independent of a fully or partially adoption of IAS/IFRS, while the financial and prudential reporting frameworks are mainly inter-related. Thus, our paper came to point out XBRL’s major role in facilitating information communication in a homogeneous way that will allow the interchange of data between software applications, as well as the automatic analysis of financial information in a particular business field, the banking one

Environmental Protection and Sustainability Reporting:Extensible Business Reporting Language(XBRL)Interactive Data to the Rescue

A company‟s environmental performance is important to the financial markets because improved environmental performance generally leads to higher, more sustainable, financial values. Challenges that arise in environmental financial accounting border on proper accountability of environmental costs and liabilities, meaningful disclosure of enterprise environmental performance, and development/usage of appropriate management accounting procedures (e.g. costing out pollution controls; comparing alternative materials that can be used in manufacturing; and investigating recycling alternatives). The need for standardized environmental performance indicators (EPIs) which link financial and environmental performance in order to support the quality of decision making of stakeholders cannot be overemphasized. In spite of the existence or underway development of a number of guidelines for measuring and disclosing environmental performance, many environmental indicators are of a limited benefit due to the lack of standardization of environmental information. Most information today moves in a digital format and people often go to the internet for information. Sustainability information, however, has largely remained in print, but report preparers and users have much to gain by moving environmental and social performance information into the wider digital flow of information. This paper therefore, while showcasing the importance of and need for environmental accounting and reporting, provides a recipe underscored by information standardization through the engagement of the twenty-first century corporate reporting language known as eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). XBRL enables an electronic “tag” on numbers or other qualitative information in the report so that computers can recognize the information, select it, analyze it, store it, exchange it with other computers and present it automatically in different ways. It concludes that the assurance about a company‟s financial projections and nonfinancial information (customer satisfaction, employee retention, or environmental reporting) and the integrity of the information itself through XBRL would enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of resource allocation, increase income and welfare, as well as achieve the objective of an environmentally sound management which encompasses increasing eco-efficiency, reducing environmental impact, and increasing company value added. It thus recommends that Nigeria and the developing countries should embrace the XBRL technology as they cannot afford to be left behind by the fast spreading current worldwide future reporting standard

Implications of XBRL Adoption in Nigeria: Perception of Professional Accountants

XBRL is a recent development in the world of financial reporting. In view of its emerging preeminence in some countries of the world contrasted with the apparent backwardness of most African countries in respect of this move, this study sought to examine the implications of XBRL adoption in Nigeria. Adopting a survey design, mean scores and t-test statistic were employed to compare the perceptions of Nigerian professional accountants on the benefits and challenges of XBRL adoption in Nigeria. All these were based on questionnaire responses elicited from 54 out of the 100 copies of questionnaire generated for the study. The findings of the study, among others, revealed that there were perceptual differences among the respondents on the two issues. It is suggested that professional, national and sponsored international XBRL awareness and training would be of the essence if Nigerian Accountants are to find a space on the global map of professional relevance. Keywords: XBRL, XBRL adoption in Nigeria, Financial Reportin

Online Financial Reporting Disclosure Requirements Across Central and Eastern European Countries

The business community has admitted that the accounting is “the language of business”. They are using the accounting to communicate the existence and the evolution of the financial situation and also of the performance for the economical entities. Financial information is a form of a language. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the various elements of financial reporting frameworks and practice in the context of the Internet. The Internet has emerged as a recent medium of presentation of corporate information in the United States, Germany, Great Britain, but also in the Central and Eastern European Countries. Actual disclosure by companies from CEE was investigated in order to compare de jure and the facto financial reporting disclosure.financial reporting, Internet, disclosure, CEE countries

Empirical investigations into corporate reporting in Europe: A financial market perspective on determinants and consequences of sustainability and digital reporting

This paper-based dissertation comprises five essays dealing with corporate sustainability and digital reporting and is structured in six chapters. The first chapter is the introduction and provides an overview of the structure and aims of the dissertation, lays out the contribution of the work, and introduces the five manuscripts. The second chapter, respectively the first manuscript, deals with the consequences of mandatory sustainability reporting in Europe. Specifically, the study deals with the question whether Directive 2014/95/EU has achieved its objectives of increasing reporting quantity and quality. In the third chapter, the sustainability reports of the largest European firms are analyzed using computer-aided text analysis. This study investigates whether and how external assurance of sustainability reports is beneficial from the viewpoint of report transparency, which is proxied by reporting scope, optimism, and readability. In the fourth chapter, the role of corporate sustainability in the context of M&A transactions is examined, precisely whether sustainability influences the premia paid in M&A transactions. The fifth and the sixth chapters center around the voluntary usage of online financial reporting (OFR) in Europe. While the fifth chapter is concerned with the usage and empirical determinants of OFR, the analysis in the sixth chapter examines the impact of OFR on the financial market, specifically on analyst following and stock liquidity

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

XBRL and Disclosure Management System implementation and their effect in group reporting process. CASE: Company XXXX

The purpose of this study is to research how the single electronic reporting format in accordance with the European Single Electronic Format mandate affect the external reporting practices in publicly listed companies in the European region and what kind of changes the ESEF mandate causes in the Company XXXX. In addition to this, another significant goal of this research is to describe how the implementation of the Disclosure Management System affects Company XXXX’s external reporting process and what changes, risks and opportunities it creates for the reporting process. The study is highly topical, as according to the ESEF mandate all European publicly listed companies must report their financial statements and annual reports in a single electronic format from the 2020 financial statements onwards. The financial statements shall be prepared in XHTML format and the IFRS consolidated financial statements included in the XHTML document must be marked with XBRL tags based on ESEF taxonomy. Theoretical background of this research is based on previous research material focusing on fi-nancial reporting, XBRL as well as what type of different approaches can be used within the implementation of XBRL. Theoretical sections also include previous literature on what type of changes, challenges as well as the opportunities XBRL reporting has caused in group reporting processes. Besides academical research material, the governmental sources as well as different accounting organizations such as IFRS foundation has been used as an information sources in this research. On the other hand, empirical material of this research is based on the participatory observation, internal documentation, project documentation and formal and informal discus-sion with the other project staff and key finance personnel in Company XXXX. The analysis and the results arising from the research material reflect to a significant extent the perceptions of Company XXXX’s project personnel as well as the researchers own observations. As a result of the research, the European Single Electronic Format was seen to harmonize the financial reporting of publicly listed companies operating in Europe, thus improving the compa-rability between the companies. The most significant changes in the companies' reporting pro-cesses were related to the XBRL tagging of IFRS consolidated financial statements and delivery of annual financial statements in the XHTML format. The XBRL tagging was executed in Company XXXX as an in-house process by tagging the IFRS consolidated financial statements by using the implemented Disclosure Management System. Overall, the implementation Disclosure Manage-ment System and XBRL tagging caused significant changes in the group reporting process as it went through an extensive amount of changes. The most significant changes were related to the successful partial automation of the external reporting process as well as by shifting the work more in to in-house process. The research results were able to increase the theory of XBRL in Europe and emphasize the importance of automation in financial reporting.Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on tutkia, kuinka yhtenäinen sähköinen raportointimuoto (European Single Electronic Format) vaikuttaa ulkoiseen raportointiprosessiin julkisesti noteera-tuissa yrityksissä Euroopan alueella ja millaisia muutoksia ESEF:n käyttöönotto aiheuttaa Yritys XXXX:ssä. Tämän lisäksi tutkimuksen toinen merkittävä tavoite on kuvata, kuinka Disclosure Ma-nagement -järjestelmän käyttöönotto vaikuttaa Yritys XXXX: n ulkoiseen raportointiprosessiin ja mitä muutoksia, riskejä sekä mahdollisuuksia käyttöönotosta syntyy. Tutkimus on hyvin ajan-kohtainen, koska ESEF:n toimeksiannon mukaan kaikkien Eurooppalaisten pörssiyhtiöiden on raportoitava tilinpäätöksensä ja vuosikertomuksensa yhtenäisessä sähköisessä muodossa vuo-den 2020 tilinpäätöksestä lähtien. Tilinpäätös on laadittava XHTML-muodossa ja XHTML-asiakir-jaan sisältyvä IFRS-konsernitilinpäätös on merkittävä XBRL-tunnisteilla ESEF-taksonomian mu-kaisesti. Tämän tutkimuksen teoreettinen tausta perustuu aikaisempaan tutkimusmateriaaliin, joka on keskittynyt taloudelliseen raportointiin, XBRL:ään sekä XBRL:n erilaisiin implementaatiotapoi-hin. Teoriaosuus sisältää myös aikaisempaa kirjallisuutta siitä, minkä tyyppisiä muutoksia, haas-teita ja mahdollisuuksia XBRL-raportointi on aiheuttanut konserniraportoinnissa. Akateemisen tutkimusmateriaalin lisäksi tutkimuksen tietolähteinä on käytetty viranomaislähteitä sekä las-kentatoimeen keskittyneitä säätiöiden materiaalia, kuten IFRS-säätiön. Tämän tutkimuksen em-piirinen aineisto perustuu osallistuvaan havaintoon, sisäiseen dokumentaatioon, projektidoku-mentaatioon sekä muodolliseen ja epäviralliseen keskusteluun yrityksen muiden projektihenki-löstön ja avainhenkilöiden kanssa. Tutkimusmateriaalin analyysi ja tulokset heijastavat merkit-tävissä määrin Company XXXX:n projektissa mukana olevan henkilöstön sekä tutkijan havaintoja. Tutkimuksen tuloksina Eurooppalaisen sähköisen raportointimuodon nähtiin yhtenäistävän Eu-roopassa toimivien pörssiyhtiöiden taloudellista raportointia ja parantavan siten yritysten ver-tailtavuutta. Merkittävimmät muutokset yritysten raportointiprosesseissa liittyivät IFRS-konser-nitilinpäätösten XBRL-merkintään ja vuositilinpäätösten toimittamiseen XHTML-muodossa. XBRL tunnisteiden merkintä suoritettiin Yritys XXXX:n sisäisenä prosessina merkitsemällä IFRS-konsernitilinpäätöksen päälaskelmat käyttöönotetun Disclosure Management System -järjestel-män avulla. Disclosure Management -järjestelmä ja XBRL-merkinnät toivat mukanaan merkittä-viä muutoksia konsernin raportointiprosessiin. Merkittävimmät muutokset liittyivät ulkoisen ra-portointiprosessin onnistuneeseen osittaiseen automatisointiin sekä työvaiheiden keskittämi-seen yrityksen sisäiseksi prosessiksi. Tutkimustulokset pystyivät lisäämään XBRL-teoriaa Euroo-passa ja korostamaan automaation merkitystä taloudellisessa raportoinnissa