Preparing your XBRL Financial Statements

This section elaborates on mapping the line items in your financial statements to the relevant concepts within the ACRA Taxonomy and on validating your XBRL financial statements. View the workflow for preparing and uploading XBRL financial statements.

Mapping items in your AGM financial statement to the ACRA Taxonomy

The following table provides a summary of the data required to be provided in XBRL format under the earlier and revised XBRL filing requirements.

In order to generate the XBRL financial statements, preparers will need to map information within the AGM financial statements to the most relevant concept within the ACRA Taxonomy. All tabs generated by default in the template of BizFin^x preparation tool must be completed, and fields should be left blank only if the information requested in the preparation tool template is not disclosed in the AGM financial statements.

Single text block for complete set of financial statements in XBRL format

For the full set of financial statements in XBRL format (Full XBRL), there is a text block element, to submit the entire set of financial statements in a single text block element. You should confirm that the information here is legible, and that it matches the financial statements tabled at annual general meeting and/or circulated to members. The full set of XBRL financial statements (in the text block) will be generated into PDF format and attached to your Annual Return extracts. This will be made available to the public.

Detailed information elements in XBRL format

An example of mapping is where the “amount of fixed assets” in financial statements is being mapped to “Property, Plant and Equipment” in the taxonomy.

You may wish to assign an officer in your company who are most familiar with the financial statements to be involved in mapping the information to XBRL taxonomy concepts. To ensure the accuracy of the financial statements in XBRL format, your company should review the mapping before submitting it to ACRA.

There are several general ways that information in financial statements can be mapped to concepts in the ACRA taxonomy:

• One-to-one mapping: This is when a single item is mapped to a concept in the taxonomy. For example, “turnover” can be directly mapped to “revenue” in the taxonomy.
• Many-to-one mapping: This is when multiple line items from the AGM financial statements are aggregated and mapped to a single concept in the taxonomy. For example, if you have “stocks” and “inventories and work in progress” as separate line items, they would both be aggregated and mapped to “inventories” in the taxonomy. When doing this, you must create a footnote to explain the aggregation. Please use the footnote mechanism to attach the explanation in the XBRL format.
• One-to-many mapping: This is when a single line item must be broken down, and mapped to separate concepts in the taxonomy. For example, if you have “intangibles” as a line item in the AGM financial statements, this must be broken down into “intangible assets” and “goodwill”, and mapped to these two separate concepts in the taxonomy. If there is no breakdown of the line item, or no simple equivalent in the taxonomy, the full amount of the line item must be mapped to the closest matching concept in the taxonomy map it using the best-fit principle. For example, the full amount of the line item “equipment” could be mapped to “office equipment” or “communications equipment”, depending on whichever concept is the best fit. Finding the “best-fit” will require some depth of accounting knowledge and judgement.
• Mapping to “others”: If there is absolutely no relation between a line item to any concepts in the taxonomy (not even under best-fit principles), such unique items must be classified under the category marked “others”. You must include a footnote to explain and break down anything classified under “others”. 

Passing the validation checks

There are two types of errors that can occur from the XBRL validation checks by BizFin^x preparation tool and BizFin^x server:

• Genuine errors are mistakes that must be rectified before you can continue with the filing. If you confirm that the XBRL data is correct, please apply for exemption from the specific business rule validations. Upon online validation via the BizFin^x server (via “Validate & Upload” feature in BizFin^x preparation tool), where the error is indicated as granted exemption / not applicable, no further action will be required.
• Possible errors could occur to help flag potential mistakes. Please review the highlighted areas and ensure they are correct. If there are no mistakes, you may ignore the warnings and continue with the filing. After uploading the file to the BizFin^x server (via “Validate & Upload” feature in BizFin^x preparation tool), click on the provided checkboxes to confirm that the XBRL data is accurate.

You may refer to the complete List of validation rules (Excel, 49KB).

Visit Help Resources on preparing financial statements.