What is Taxonomy?
Taxonomy is the dictionary which the XBRL language uses, and it helps to define specific tags for individual items of data (such as “Revenue”). National jurisdictions have different accounting regulations, so each may have its own taxonomy for financial reporting needs.
ACRA Taxonomy
The ACRA taxonomy is based on the premise that no company should tag any data or extend any taxonomy and important industry specific data should be in the single taxonomy. The self-extending ACRA taxonomy allows:
- core data that is common to most entities and of interest to most users to be captured specifically, and
- other data to be captured under a flexible classification that will allow for efficient manual extraction.
The self-extending taxonomy concept utilises a simple user-described tuple structure to capture in a single element the exact description used by the company in its financial statements as well as that specific value associated with it. This concept eliminates taxonomy extensions and the need for companies to acquire taxonomy building software or to even understand the meaning of taxonomy. Through this, it also eliminates the need for the company to tag data or understand XBRL instance documents.
A company inputs data into FS Manager that is tagged to the ACRA taxonomy. If a specific item is not present in the ACRA taxonomy, a company then describes that specific item based on its classification using the various user-described fields in the ACRA taxonomy.
Whenever possible, a company should use the prescribed fields in the FS Manager. The user-described fields should not be used for items of the same or similar concept as that of the prescribed fields.
Please refer to the user guides for more information.