ACFR XBRL/iXBRL Reporting

ACFRs are a best practice in US local government reporting, but their formats are not easily extractable. XBRL has been recommended to improve data transparency and analysis, and the Financial Data Transparency Act (FDTA) now mandates adoption of an open data standard to digitize ACFRs.

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In line with the Financial Data Transparency Act

Machine-readable + Human-readable

Improves Fund Flows to Municipal Bonds

Digital ACFR Reporting - A Closer Look

An Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) is a financial statement that government entities issue in accordance with the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) requirements. It outlines an entity’s annual spending, assets, and liabilities. ACFRs are issued by states, municipalities, and other government entities and summarize the annual reports of all the entity’s agencies.

ACFRs are a detailed presentation of a state’s financial condition, with introductory, financial, and statistical sections. However, the information in these reports is currently locked up in PDF format, which makes it difficult to aggregate and analyze financial performance across government entities.

ACFRs need to be standardized in a machine-readable format, such as eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) to facilitate better decision-making. XBRL has a proven track record of revolutionizing corporate compliance reporting globally and is the ideal open data standard for this purpose.

State and federal government agencies are required to produce their ACFR under GASB requirements as part of their obligation to provide financial information and insight into the financial performance of the agency.

XBRL US and the University of Michigan have recently released a local government taxonomy that comprises over 2,800 digital concepts based on government reporting.

A few benefits of publishing ACFRs in XBRL are greater information transparency, easier analysis of local government financial information, and lower reporting costs.

Local governments can use software solutions provided by various vendors to prepare their ACFRs, however, only a few of them have the capability to generate an XBRL/iXBRL output of the ACFRs.