Public Consultation on proposed revisions to XBRL filing requirements & data elements

Detailed description

1. The Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) invites comments and feedback on the proposed revisions to XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) filing requirements and data elements. ACRA plans to implement the proposed revisions in early 2020. 

Background

2. Since 2007, Singapore incorporated companies (unless exempted) are required to file financial statements in XBRL format. XBRL enables individual financial statement line items such as revenue, profit and net assets to be “tagged” and made machine readable. This allows financial information to be more easily analysed, thus enhanced transparency and comparability of financial performance and position across companies and industries.

3. The proposed revisions are part of ACRA’s continual efforts to streamline the filing of financial statements in XBRL format. A key proposal is to reduce the number of data elements to be filed. ACRA has also proposed to align the data elements with information that can be easily retrieved from the accounting software used by smaller companies. Both proposals will reduce the time required to prepare and file financial statements in XBRL format. Another key proposal is to focus on those data elements most commonly used by companies. This will enable public to conduct more meaningful peer and industry comparisons using financial information filed with ACRA. 

Period of consultation

4. The public consultation exercise runs from 30 Nov 2018 to 31 Jan 2019.

Feedback channel

5. Please submit your comments via e-mail to “acra_xbrl_general@acra.gov.sg” and (Attention: Feedback to XBRL Public Consultation 2018). 

Consultation documents

6. The following documents are available for download:

   • Consultation paper [PDF, 216 KB]

   • Annex A: List of data elements [XLSX, 48 KB]

7. The public can also access the paper on the REACH website from 30 Nov 2018 to 31 Jan 2019.