FRC and the Charity Commission consult on conventions for electronic tagging of charity accounts
News types: Statements
Published: 8 October 2015
56/15
The FRC and the Charity Commission (CC) have today announced a public consultation on conventions for the electronic tagging of charity accounts to support the CC’s objectives of enhancing the quality and accessibility of financial reporting for Charities in the UK and Ireland.
The iXBRL accounts tagging convention (Charity “taxonomy”) has been updated in line with the Charity SORP (FRS 102) and the FRC’s financial reporting standard FRS 102. The taxonomy will be used when tagging charity accounts for electronic filing and for other analytical purposes. Electronic tagging helps users of financial information to extract relevant information from corporate reports and analyse it more efficiently.
The consultation will close on 08 December 2015 after which the taxonomy will be finalised.
Notes to editors:
The FRC is responsible for promoting high quality corporate governance and reporting to foster investment. We set the UK Corporate Governance and Stewardship Codes as well as UK standards for accounting, auditing and actuarial work. We represent UK interests in international standard-setting. We also monitor and take action to promote the quality of corporate reporting and auditing. We operate independent disciplinary arrangements for accountants and actuaries; and oversee the regulatory activities of the accountancy and actuarial professional bodies.
This taxonomy results from a joint project by the FRC and the Charity Commission initiated in September 2014 to improve the quality of electronic tagging of charity accounts and reflect UK reporting using FRS 102 for the UK and Ireland. A draft version of the Charities taxonomy may be viewed on the internet through the ‘Yeti’ viewer at https://uk-taxonomies-tdp.corefiling.com/yeti Please navigate to view the Charities taxonomy. No log-in is required to see the taxonomy. The Yeti viewer is intuitive to use. Alternatively the taxonomy can be viewed on the FRC website https://xbrl.frc.org.uk
Once the Taxonomy has been finalised, the Charity Commission encourages all charities to report using the taxonomy, which will be incorporated into software products. HMRC and Companies House are expected to adopt the taxonomy in due course for filings of accounts under the relevant standards.
Financial information in corporate reports is now often electronically “tagged” so that users of the data can more easily pull out the information they want and analyse it more efficiently. iXBRL is a technology that enables this to be done in a standardised way. Following transfer of responsibility to the FRC, the iXBRL tagging conventions – taxonomies – have been updated to reflect the new Financial Reporting Standards (FRS 101 and 102) for the UK and Ireland introduced by the FRC in March 2013.
UK companies already have to submit their accounts to HMRC in iXBRL format and many also voluntarily do so when they submit them to Companies House and the Charity Commission. The iXBRL tagging conventions will enable companies and charities to continue to do so after they have adopted the new accounting standards.
All Charity Commission press enquiries should be directed to: [email protected]