A year ago, Trintech issued a document discussing looming changes in financial reporting, including eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) and International Financial Reporting Standards, (IFRS). XBRL is now well underway, and most companies are outsourcing the tagging to printers while also looking at embedded technologies to streamline processes and cut costs. IFRS preparations, however, continue [...]

The recent iXBRL mandate by Her Majesty Revenue & Customs (HMRC) requires that all statutory business tax returns be filed electronically using a technology called iXBRL or inline XBRL. After 31 March, 2010, paper filings will not be sufficient, and companies filing after this date must submit their tax returns online through the Government Gateway. [...]

Trintech recently became one of the first companies to file a fully XBRL-compliant Form 20-F with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (read the press release about this groundbreaking XBRL filing here). The Form 20-F filing included detailed Level 1-4 XBRL tagging, and was completed by a cross-functional team of professionals working under the direction [...]

There are simply some entries that don’t fit the mold and need to be managed outside of the normal routines of accounting general ledger systems. Most often these entries are considered “manual” because they require human intervention in some form to move forward. These journal entries can be categorized as follows: Recurring/Standard Entries: Manual entries [...]

This post was originally published on the Hitachi XBRL blog For many businesses filing their financial statements using XBRL to comply with the SEC mandate, the phrase “extension taxonomy” is a largely misunderstood term.  There is a narrow view that it is only about adding brand-new company-specific elements which do not exist in the base [...]

Many SEC reporting managers may not look to the SEC as an obvious place to seek quick answers to the details of new rules. I would expect an inquiry call to go unreturned, or the answer to be riddled with caveats. But the reality is that the SEC wants XBRL to succeed, and has devoted [...]

An ACH transfer is a means of sending money electronically from one bank to another. ACH stands for Automatic Clearing House. Used effectively, ACH transfers can help businesses concentrate idle balances into interest-bearing accounts overnight – where your money earns more than in depository accounts. For large, dispersed organizations (like retailers), operating multiple locations that [...]

Account reconciliation is an underappreciated control, one which has become increasingly important with the advent of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX). In the past, when inconsistencies were discovered, a Staff Member could simply create an adjusting entry to ensure that the company financials were accurate. But section 404 of SOX requires a whole new level of diligence. In [...]

Financial Reporting has been overlooked in finance reengineering initiatives – mostly because it’s not a huge source of financial risk, and is not generally a significant cost center. In most companies the financial reporting process remains largely manual: document roll-forward, gathering input from around the globe, assembling packets of redlines, data input – all are [...]

If you’ve tried to consolidate your merchant banking relationships recently, you’ll understand the importance of PCI-DSS, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard which regulates how businesses must handle customer credit card data to ensure the privacy of cardholders. Most banks are now charging higher rates to customers who don’t comply with PCI-DSS, and some [...]