ixbrl-reporter

Summary

This is a command-line utility which creates iXBRL-tagged financial reports from configuration templates and account data. It currently supports account information from GnuCash files, and also a CSV file of transactions.

Discuss

There's a #ixbrl-reporter channel on our Discord server if you want to discuss... https://discord.gg/3cAvPASS6p

Note

The configuration files used by ixbrl-reporter are complex. See ixbrl-reporter-jsonnet for an easier way to manage the configuration files.

There seem to be more users of ixbrl-reporter-jsonnet, so expect to have an easier time tracking the latest submissions for HMRC.

Summary

This code is intended for use with ixbrl-reporter.

Using ixbrl-reporter requires a complex configuration file, or set of configuration files. An internal import/reference mechanism was introduced to allow the configuration files to be modulariesd, but the mechanism is still not ideal.

This repo implements JSONNET templates for construction of configuration files for ixbrl-reporter which makes the matter more manageable.

Jsonnet (see jsonnet.org) is a programming language (invented by Google) which extends JSON with programming constructs. Jsonnet is specifically designed to make it easy to build configuration files; it supports object templating and extension.

iXBRL

The iXBRL format is commonly used to describe regulatory account information which companies must publish. Different schemas are in use in different places in the world. The example account and report data included in this project uses schemas which are used in the UK reporting regime, and there is also a minimalistic ESEF example, but it is possible to define other taxonomies.

iXBRL stands for "Inline XBRL". It was built on the XBRL standard (eXtensible Business Reporting Language). iXBRL is HTML with embedded XBRL tags so that the document can be viewed in an HTML browser and read by a human, but the tags are also machine-readable. This allows the same accounts to be usable by a human, and also by automated data extraction tools.

Examples

Included in this repo are example accounts and configuration files exist which output:

• Company accounts for UK Companies House filing using the FRS-102 taxonomy.
• UK HMRC corporation tax filing using the CT600 schema and Detailed Profit and Loss schema in a single document.
• ESEF filing configuration for an English-language filing as well as French.

Configuration files can be written for other taxonomies.

Other outputs

Plain-text report output is supported (semi-useful), as is plain-text HTML output created by stripping the iXBRL tags.

Motivation

iXBRL report generation is presently convoluted. Generally people generate financial reports, or use an accountant to create the reports, and then send the report files away for a human to semi-automatically tag using an iXBRL tagging tool, which takes some number of days and costs at least €150.

This tool demonstrates auto-generating reports with the right tags in the first place.

The overheads in configuring reports and iXBRL output with ixbrl-reporter is not small, but that's an up-front cost, once set-up, up-to-date reports can be generated.

Warranty

This code comes with no warranty whatsoever. See the LICENSE file for details. Further, I am not an accountant. Even if I were, I would not be YOUR accountant. It is possible that this code could be useful to you in meeting regulatory reporting requirements for your business. It is also possible that the software could report misleading information which could land you in a lot of trouble if used for regulatory purposes. Really, you should check with a qualified accountant.

Configuration overview

ixbrl-reporter configuration is complex: If the configuration files supplied work for your business you could get accounts with little work.

However, it is very likely that you'll need to tailor the reports to work with your business. The information flows are described in Information flows.

Installing

There is a dependency on one of the gnucash, piecash or csv Python modules:

• The gnucash Python support is built from the GnuCash source code tree itself. It is currently only distributed with Linux packages. You cannot use this on Windows or MacOS. See https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Python_Bindings for installation, but on Linux it is generally installed when you install the gnucash package. It is not possible to install the gnucash module using PyPI.
• The piecash Python support can be download using pip or your favourite Python package manager. It works on Linux, MacOS and Windows. However, it only supports the Sqlite or Postgres GnuCash formats, and not the XML format which is the default.
• The csv Python module is bundled with Python.

It is possible to convert a GnuCash file to Sqlite format by using GnuCash, select Save As... and selecting Sqlite.

pip3 install git+https://github.com/cybermaggedon/ixbrl-reporter

Usage

ixbrl-reporter <config> <report> <format>

Where:

• config specifies a configuration file. See Configuration File.
• report specifies a report tag.
• format specifies output format. text outputs plain text, ixbrl outputs iXBRL (XHTML tagged with XBRL tags) and html outputs HTML, which is iXBRL with the XBRL tags removed.

The examples use files in the git repo. Clone the git repo to run this stuff:

git clone https://github.com/cybermaggedon/ixbrl-reporter

Example, Companies House accounts. You should be able to view the resultant HTML in a browser:

ixbrl-reporter config.yaml report ixbrl > accts.html

Corporation tax filing:

ixbrl-reporter config-corptax.yaml report ixbrl > ct.html

ESMA ESEF filing:

ixbrl-reporter config-esef.yaml report ixbrl > esef.html

Check out the awesome Graffiti tool for viewing iXBRL tags in a document. The basic version is free. It's just a bookmark in your browser! Once your iXBRL document is loaded in the browser, invoke the bookmark and iXBRL tag navigation is seamlessly added to the document you are looking at. https://stechanalytics.com/#Graffiti

Configuration

All the configuration is in YAML, and there are various configuration files which are linked together. If the templates work for you, you should only have to change config.yaml and metadata.yaml.

• config.yaml is the top-level configuration file which imports the other configuration files. Of interest, is the accounts section which specifies which GnuCash file to use. There is also a report setting which describes which report definition to import. Also a pretty-print setting which causes HTML to be output with indented spacing to make it easier to read if you have to debug something.
• metadata.yaml contains information specific to the business the report is about, such as name of business, address, company identifiers and so on. You would edit this to describe your business.
• Taxonomy definitions under the taxonomy directory specify the mapping between identifiers and the iXBRL tagging. If the report templates do what you need, you won't need to change this.
• Report configuration files under the report directory. Think of these as report templates. They define the structure of information going into the report. There is a ch sub-directory containing various kinds of Companies House filing templates. Also an hmrc sub-directory containing the HMRC corporation tax filing template. If these report configurations do what you want, you don't need to change them.
• directors-report.yaml, accountants-report.yaml, auditors-report.yaml, notes.yaml are used to provide specific sections of the company accounts. These are only needed for more complex reports, for a micro-entity account filing, these are not used.

All configuration files are YAML.

See Configuration File.

Screenshots of output

Screenshots

Other things to try

Having created iXBRL, you can try loading into Arelle which is an iXBRL development tool. In Arelle, you can invoke a validation and check the output matches the schema.

Once Arelle is installed, you can install the Workiva ixbrl-viewer. When an iXBRL document is loaded into Arelle, the document is automatically loaded into a browser with markup so that you can navigate the tags and discover tagged information. With the iXBRL viewer when you hover over tagged information, it is highlighted, clicking opens up the metadata viewer.

Test suite - unit, contract, integration

This is a comprehensive test suite. It is run automatically on pull requests in Github Actions.

You need to install: pytest pytest-cov lxml pyyaml piecash ixbrl-parse

Run: pytest tests/

Test suite - examples

These are basically invoke by the regression test suite above.

This test suite generates example output from example configuration, and verifies nothing has changed in output values. It's a regression test. You need to install: piecash.

See the test directory.

sh test/run_all

Output in output.

License

Copyright (c) Accounts Machine Limited, 2020-2022 Licenced under the GPL version 3 licence, see the LICENSE file