1.The lesson will be to examine a real world 10K line-item account of that a company filed with the SEC. The line-item will be compared from the standard HTML file with the XBRL file. The learning objective is to show the XBRL format and to demonstrate the size/complexity of the XBRL instance document. The example company will be Heinz.
The home page of the SEC website
2.The next several screen shots walk through the process of accessing SEC 10K reports starting with launching an internet browser and going to the SEC web site www.sec.gov
Filings and Forms Screen shot
3.Select “Search for Company Filings” in the “Filings & Forms” section which will show
Type in "Heinz" Press Button
4.Choose “Company or fund name, ticker symbol ….” And then enter the company name “Heinz” and press the “Find Companies” button.
The Complete Heinz listings
5.The result will be a list of filings with the search name “heinz”
Select "Documents" next to the 10-K filing
6.You want the first one in the list and so press the CIK number which will result in a list of Heinz filings like the one below. Your web browser list is NOT going to look exactly like the list below because new filings are added to the list from the top. You should choose a recent 10K annual filing by selecting “Documents” next to the 10-K filing.
The result list is seperated by text or data views
7.The resulting file list will include something like:
Check the Goodwill line item
8.From this list, you can view the regular text file in the top group of Document Format Files and the XBRL instance document in the bottom Data Files group. We are going to check the correspondence of text and XBRL information for the “Goodwill” line item. Let’s open the text HTML file and go to the balance sheet for “Goodwill”. The 10K reports have a prescribed order of management information (e.g., MD&A) followed by financial statements. We will scroll down to the balance sheet assets for “Goodwill”. The balance sheet below has Goodwill for April 27, 2011 at 3,298,441 in thousands.
Now check as a XBRL instance document
9.Next, close the HTML file and open the XBRL instance document. The first thing to show students is that the file is in XML format which makes the file long and somewhat complex. You should know what you are looking for in an XBRL file because it does not look or feel user friendly. In this situation, we will search for the Goodwill balance sheet number of 3298441 (don’t put in the commas). Use the “Find” button in the Firefox tab or equivalent in any other browser.
10.You can now discuss the features of an XBRL line item in an XBRL instance document.
i.The XML format has the XBRL designation at the beginning of the data observation and at the end. The designation has the XBRL taxonomy source us-gaap followed by the XBRL tag label Goodwill. Next, there is a time-frame identification in “contextRef.” You can remind in your discussion that the data is the same as the text file. The unitRef USD refers to United States Dollars. The decimals -3 designates thousands. The number 3298441 is the Goodwill line-item amount. The last field which closes the data observation is the same as the first.
ii.From this example, you can see how the XML information is organized to facilitate the electronic transfer into any computer program. This feature is a major feature about XBRL. Also, it can be noted that the XBRL tag Goodwill can be referenced through www.askaref.com to GAAP code which would be applicable to audit working papers, etc.
