Understanding XBRL Financial Statements

These topics provide an overview of using XBRL to produce balance sheets and income statements and discuss how to:

  • Set up supporting trees and ChartField value sets.

  • Specify the XBRL context.

  • Specify a NameSpace Alias for the NameSpace URL.

  • Define the XBRL elements.

  • Set up the XBRL Instance template.

  • Define the report elements for the instance template.

  • Run XBRL reports.

XBRL is a royalty-free, open specification software application that uses XML data tags to prepare and publish information. PeopleSoft supports XBRL 2.1 specifications.

XBRL is particularly appropriate to the presentation of financial reports on the internet and across software products. XBRL reports also reduce the risk of data-entry error by eliminating the need to manually enter information for different venues and formats.

The PeopleSoft system enables you to create balance sheets and income statements in XBRL that conform to the XBRL schema and taxonomies for US GAAP.

An XBRL schema is the core low-level component of XBRL and consists of the physical XSD and DTD (Document Type Definition) files that express how instance documents (your financial statements and their taxonomies) are to be built.

An XBRL taxonomy is a vocabulary or dictionary of elements that are created by a regulatory group or governing body using XBRL specifications that enable the particular group to ensure the exchange of business information in a predefined consistent manner. Taxonomies are derived from accounting rules governing how financial data is disclosed in different countries or jurisdictions. The taxonomies that are discussed in this topic refer to the US GAAP taxonomies and the approximately 600 monetary elements that are used for the production of balance sheets and income statements. The documentation also assumes that you have a thorough working knowledge of XBRL.

The following are the general activities that are necessary to produce and distribute your reports using PeopleSoft functionality:

  • Store the parts of taxonomies representing numeric facts in the database.

  • Generate reports conforming to the taxonomies.

  • Distribute the reports to the appropriate users.

You store taxonomies and their elements in PeopleSoft tables. After creating the elements, you populate the elements using ChartField Value Sets. You then create ChartField Value Sets to define the accounts that determine taxonomy element. PeopleSoft creates balance sheets and income statements with only the numeric facts of taxonomies.

Balance sheets and income statements are created as an XBRL instance (in the form of a message) for a business unit ledger group using PeopleSoft Application Engine (GL_XBRL) and PeopleSoft XMLDOC.

When you run your balance sheet and income statement reports, you distribute them using PeopleSoft Integration Broker.