Customer Profile
Louis PLC is one of the leading Tourism organizations in the southeastern Mediterranean region. Louis PLC mainly focuses on the hotel sector, through its subsidiary Louis Hotels Public Company Ltd and Louis S.A. (with a range of 5 & 4-star hotels in Cyprus and the Greek Islands) and in the cruise sector, through its associate Celestyal Cruises Ltd. The whole range of Louis PLCʼs services includes inbound and outbound tourism, ownership and management of hotel and catering units and cruise tourism, as well as ground handling services at the International Airports of Larnaca and Paphos.
Business Challenges
The European Single Electronic Format (“ESEF”) mandate had newly rolled in and the following were challenges encountered by the team of Louis PLC when complying with the ESEF mandate
Complying with Filing Deadlines Using a New Format
Louis PLC needed a reliable ESEF compliance software solution or service to help them achieve regulatory compliance requirements as the filing deadline was approaching. IRIS CARBON® delivered an unparalleled experience. The XBRL experts on team IRIS CARBON® have an average of more than ten years of expertise and are conversant with both IFRS Standards and the recently adopted ESEF taxonomy.
Last-minute Iterations in The iXBRL Files
To comply with the ESEF mandate, the team of Louis PLC had to create an iXBRL conversion that resembled their annual report in PDF format to the exact detail. Preparing an annual report requires a lot of effort and engagement in intertwining crucial data in the prescribed format. To publish a high-quality annual report stating all the data correctly, Louis PLC wanted a software vendor that offered them the power to control any last-minute adjustments to their iXBRL, even a few hours before the final submission deadline.
Why Louis PLC Chose IRIS CARBON®
Hereby are the two paramount reasons for Louis PLC trusting IRIS CARBON® for their ESEF filing process
Project Objectives
With the above-mentioned challenges in view, IRIS CARBON® and Louis PLC defined the following project objectives for ESEF reporting
- Adhering to the ESEF mandate within the specified timeframe
- Support for iXBRL creation and outputs
The IRIS CARBON® Approach
IRIS CARBON® handled Louis PLCʼs ESEF reporting by aligning with the above-identified objectives.
Creation of The ESEF 2020 iXBRL Annual Report
The XBRL specialists at IRIS CARBON® started by conducting a dry run for Louis PLC. For this, they used the most recent version of the company’s annual report, which was the 2020 annual report. The dry run process involved onboarding Louis PLCʼs 2020 annual report by uploading the 2020 annual report onto the IRIS CARBON® platform.
The IRIS CARBON® platform came embedded with the latest version of the ESEF taxonomy. This aided in accurately tagging Louis PLCʼs 2020 annual report per the tags defined in the ESEF taxonomy. IRIS CARBON®ʼs automated tagging capability used artificial intelligence and machine learning to appropriately assign tags to the ESEF document. The line items were labelled instinctively when there was a match between the labels and the ESEF taxonomy line items.
Team IRIS CARBON® ensured that the tagging was applied meticulously and without any errors. Also, wherever the appropriate tags were missing IRIS CARBON®ʼs XBRL experts created extensions and tied them to the corresponding anchoring relationships.
The creation of the 2020 iXBRL annual report led to successfully setting a base file for future filings. Louis PLCʼs ESEF 2020 files were even validated by the IRIS CARBON® team.
Training Sessions on Reviewing the Tagging & Running Validation
Having the 2020 iXBRL annual report been set up, this was then shared with the team of Louis PLC for reviewing. IRIS CARBON® conducted training sessions to provide team of Louis PLC with an overview of the dashboard so they could easily track the process of reviewing the prepared 2020 iXBRL annual report. Through a series of numerous video recordings and instructive videos, IRIS CARBON® led these workshops demonstrating how to review tags utilising the platform’s review module.
Training sessions even included discussions around running annual reports through the validator. Leading to this, team of Louis PLC was able to undertake real-time validations and rapidly discover errors in the 2020 iXBRL annual report using the IRIS CARBON® platform, which came with an integrated XII-certified Bushchat validator.
All the recordings for these sessions were shared with team Louis PLC for any future references.
Review and Approval By Auditors
The approved and signed-off 2020 iXBRL annual report by Louis PLC was then further sent to the audit team who went over the annual report in iXBRL format and approved it. This indicated that the auditor had given their stamp of approval to the tags that were added to the iXBRL annual report for the year 2020 and that these tags could be reused when preparing the iXBRL annual report for the subsequent financial years.
Preparation Of The 2021 iXBRL Annual Report For Live Filing
The iXBRL annual report for 2020 which had been created well in advance served as the base document and the foundation for the 2021 ESEF file. A procedure very similar to the creation of the iXBRL annual report for the year 2020 was used to prepare the iXBRL annual report for the year 2021. The IRIS CARBON® team ensured that all the crucial elements of the newly rolled ESEF mandate were covered. In the year 2021, the ESEF filing process for Louis PLC became much more simplified and less time-consuming. This reduced significantly the turnaround time for creating.
Even though there were some iterations that came in right before the final submission, both the teams Louis PLC and IRIS CARBON® were conveniently able to meet the stringent deadline with a high-quality 2021 iXBRL ESEF annual report.
“Congratulating IRIS CARBON® and CMS for their professional approach towards ESEF preparation. Thank you for your commitment, and skillfully handling various iterations, working extra hours with us. You made the entire ESEF process look easy. Despite the last-minute changes, you delivered our ESEF filing on time.”
Christiana Tomazou
Head Accountant (Team 1), Financial Management
Hellenic Bank
Key Results Achieved
To fulfill the requirements of the ESEF mandate, Louis PLC opted IRIS CARBON® as their iXBRL reporting software solution. When it came to assisting Louis PLC during the entirety of the ESEF reporting process, team of IRIS CARBON® was alert to support every step of the process.
