Web Instance Creation and Collection Interface - WICCI

During Phase II of the project, different possible solutions for XBRL data collection were discussed. Besides the currently used Excel Spreadsheet solution, Interactive PDF files and web-based solutions were found as applicable in theory. In reality, available solutions were not yet mature enough or would take too long to implement to really improve the workflow as-is, developed by ECCBSO 3rd Working Group and IASC Foundation XBRL Team.

For Phase III of the project ECCBSO 3rd Working Group and IASCF XBRL Team decided to investigate and test the usability and functionality of a web-based solution. An exemplary version of the WICCI (Web Instance Creation and Collection Interface) was implemented by the IASC Foundation XBRL Team.

Please review WICCI documentation and investigate the examplary solution:

WICCI Documentation (.doc)

Test transition table between CBSO database and the reduced format

For Phase III of this project the French CBSO tested populating a real case automatically from its database, so as to test a possible integration in the ERICA database.

Observations

• Not all the information was available, so only the income statement, the balance-sheet and the cash flow statement could be completed.

 

• For the worksheet 'General Characteristics', it could be possible to fill in more information, manually.

 

• Not having information in the statement of changes in equity and in the notes meant that some validations rules are not met. Currently, this information is not the most important in the analysis performed but it is information that the ECCBSO WG III decided to have in the reduced format. The General Characteristics worksheet provides some useful qualitative information (activity, options) that are useful in the analysis. However, it seems that next year the group is considering producing a super-reduced format so this data capture is likely to improve.

 

• Care is needed with units. As the default value in the spreadsheet, it is stated that data are in thousand € but it's possible that data are in other units or in millions.

 

• In future it is recommend not to use zeros to indicate that there's no value in a cell. That creates an item in the XBRL file and in database, making the files quite large. It is also technically incorrect. It may be necessary to automate the removal of the zeros.

 

• In the income statement, there are negative amounts in other operating income. It is considered more appropriate by the WGIII that to report these as other miscellaneous operating expenses.

 

• The test CBSO-RF spreadsheet created using automatic database export mechanism contains double defined names.

 

• Each cell in the ECCBSO RF Spreadsheet is assigned a unique name which is later used by the mapping mechanism to provide values for XBRL instance document. In the submitted French instance cells' names are doubled which causes errors for reference mechanism. This error appeared possibly during the automatic process of filling the data from the database into the Excel file.

Conclusion

We tested this French instance and due to the bugs in the Excel file the XBRL cannot be created.

The cells' names are duplicated, causing errors. Our best guess at explaining this is that during the automatic mapping process values were assigned to new artificially created cells names (duplicates) instead of to the defined ones.

This was a useful test and with some concentrated improvements could provide the platform for generating real cases automatically from the central banks databases in a future phase of this project.