XBRL Format of Financial Statements for Regulatory Filing

Preparation of financial statements

Since November 1, 2007, companies required to file financial statements with ACRA, are doing so in XBRL.

With effect from March 3, 2014, companies will file their financial statements in XBRL in accordance with the revised XBRL filing requirements. In tandem with the revision, ACRA has implemented the BizFinx filing system, which includes a preparation tool.

The preparation tool is an offline software application provided by ACRA free of charge, for companies to prepare XBRL financial statements in accordance with the revised XBRL filing requirements.

All Singapore incorporated companies (unlimited or limited by shares) that need to provide their financial statements to ACRA will file a full set of financial statements in XBRL format, according to a minimum requirement list within the ACRA Taxonomy.

Learn how you can file your financial statements in the right format with our accounting and bookkeeping services.

A note about XBRL: (according to ACRA)

XBRL stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language. It is a language for the electronic communication of business and financial data worldwide. As one of the families of “XML” languages, it is becoming a standard means of communicating information between businesses and on the Internet.

XBRL is being developed by an international non-profit consortium of over 600 companies, organisations, and government agencies. It is an open standard, free of license fees. It is already being put to practical use in a number of countries and implementations of XBRL are growing rapidly around the world.

XBRL format of financial reporting is implemented in many other countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and closer to home, Japan, China, and India. It is also gaining much traction amongst the stock exchanges and regulators globally in a move to harness greater value from submitted business and financial information.