From July 1st 2018, the CIPC mandated the filing of Annual Financial Statements (AFS) in iXBRL format for all qualifying entities. The iXBRL format can be read easily by machines and humans – weeding out the instance of generating two separate documents (one for machine and another for human readability) as in the case of XBRL.
The inline XBRL viewer helps you see the embedded structured data beneath the HTML presentation and confirm if what has been tagged has been done so, correctly. Occasionally, you may not be able to tag all the necessary information on the document itself. For instance, ZAF is the country code that a company operating in South Africa has to state as per the CIPC Taxonomy rule and this needs to be tagged with the XBRL element cipc-ca-Business Address Country. In most annual reports companies do not report ZAF on the document; therefore there is a need to handle tagging such information differently.
Likewise, there may be times when data required by the regulator may not be available in the AFS prepared by you and there are chances where one could miss tagging such information. Missing or incorrect details can derail your AFS filing efforts, but it is imperative you tag every disclosure appropriately. Here we take a closer look on how to handle disclosures that is not reported on the document.
The way out – Tag in the Hidden Section
Information that is not present on the document requires tagging in plain text in the Hidden Section.
The Hidden Section must be used judiciously for only that data that is required by the regulator, but is not present in the AFS. If such data is available on the HTML viewer, it should NOT be tagged in the hidden section.
When to use the Hidden Section?
Below are some guidelines to use the Hidden Section
- Items not directly associated with facts on the face of the document
The CIPC requires the companys Public Interest (PI) Score and Customer Code also to be reported. Since the AFS does not allow tagging these elements, it is tagged in the Hidden section. - Boolean items not directly associated with statements on the face of the document
The CIPC Taxonomy has some elements where the regulator expects certain specific values. Eg: If the Postal Address of the Company is the same as Business Address, the Company is required to tag value true for the XBRL tag cipc-ca: Postal Address Same As Business Address
What information should not be recorded in the Hidden Section?
In order to ensure that the Hidden Section is used for genuine cases only, the CIPC has provided a list of tags that should NOT be tagged in the Hidden Section as these values are readily available on the face of the document. It is probable that the CIPC may expand this list from time to time based on its analysis of live submissions.
Elements that should not be recorded in the Hidden Section are as follows*:-
- Date of End of Reporting Period 2013
- Revenue
- Disclosure of Directors Responsibility Explanatory
- Disclosure of Directors Report Explanatory
- Description of Presentation Currency
- Description of Nature of Financial Statements
- Business Address City
- Business Address Postal Code
- Business Address Street Name
- Full Registered Name of Company
- Registration Number of Company
*This list is an extract from Page 7 of the Filing Guidelines: Technical Aspects document.
Since the move to iXBRL is unfamiliar territory for all South African filers, it is advised to sign up with a reliable and trusted Software Service Provider (SSP) to ensure a full understanding of the taxonomy and validation rules before you submit your iXBRL file to the CIPC portal.
With the experience of having worked in over 22 countries with over 300+ XBRL professionals, IRIS is committed to high quality data and has solutions and services around XBRL as a standard.
