South Africa’s Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) mandated that all qualifying entities are required to submit their Annual Financial Statements (AFSs) in the iXBRL format from July 1st, 2018. Prior to this mandate, the CIPC received AFSs from companies in PDF Format. The operational efficiency and regulatory effectiveness of the CIPC were constrained due to the unstructured format of AFSs provided in PDFs- hence the move.
The CIPC has around 1.8 million active registered entities filing with it. A sub-set of these entities- approximately 0.1 million companies qualify to file their AFSs in iXBRL format. These are:-
• All public companies
• Qualifying Private companies
• State-owned companies
• Non-profit entities
• Qualifying Closed Corporations
All Public, State-Owned and Non-Profit companies need to mandatorily file in iXBRL with the CIPC. Every domestic subsidiary needs to submit its own individual AFSs, while foreign subsidiaries not registered with the CIPC don’t have to. The CIPC also announced that companies that are not part of the filing criteria can also file their AFS on a voluntary basis. When a parent and subsidiaries have different dates of incorporation, the parent entity must submit consolidated data for its subsidiaries up to its own date of incorporation.
Filing Criteria
If your company falls under the below criteria, you will need to comply with the mandate:
• If your company has a Memorandum of Incorporation (MOI) that prescribes the filing of audited financial statements
• Any personal liability or private company with an aggregate value of asset holding of R5 million or more
• Any private or personal liability company that has a Public Interest Score (PIS) of 100 or more
• Any private or personal liability company that has its AFSs compiled by a third party and has a Public Interest Score (PIS) of 350 or more
What is a P.I Score?
The Public Interest Score of a company determines if the company’s financial statements should be audited or independently reviewed. This is computed based on certain financial and non-financial parameters.
IRIS’s role in the South African iXBRL Mandate
IRIS Business Services (IRIS) has implemented the iXBRL portal for the CIPC in South Africa. The CIPC portal uses IRIS Validator; this is also available on IRIS CARBON® and therefore you are guaranteed 100% error-free filing on the very first attempt.
IRIS CARBON® was actively involved in the CIPC’s pilot program in South Africa and emerged as the most preferred software to generate filings for companies in the iXBRL pilot program of CIPC in South Africa. 50% of the companies that participated in the pilot picked IRIS CARBON® for their filings with CIPC.
