XBRL 2.0

Digital financial reporting that actually works

THE XBRL FILES: SYSTEM FAILURE

iMedia Brands, Inc. filed its 10K on 4/30/20. Compare the HTML version with the XBRL version. The errors literally jump off the page – six incorrect or missing values.


How is it possible for four professional organizations to allow this to happen? Here’s how:

 

THE FILER. The filer relies entirely on the software vendor to produce the XBRL files. It does not systematically review even the facing XBRL statements prior to filing.

 

THE SOFTWARE VENDOR. Workiva’s compliance software does not validate the reported values against the taxonomy. It does not check for the omission of facts. It does not reconcile the HTML version against the XBRL version. Or if it does these things, corrections are optional.

 

THE SEC. The SEC’s validation software is woefully insufficient, or it isn’t applied to every filing, or the errors were flagged but no action taken. What’s troubling is that the SEC recently explained their relaxed attitude toward incomplete XBRL metadata by stating:

 

“In the past few years, we have focused in our staff FAQs / data quality letters on errors that inhibit the use of data, such as missing XBRL data or footnotes that are not tagged.”

 

It’s hard to imagine a more blatant example of missing XBRL data.

 

THE DATA RESELLER. Calcbench appears to simply render the XBRL-based statements as filed, including errors. There’s no apparent data validation and dimensional data is often ignored. It was in this case as the correct value for operating earnings was provided as segment data. Other companies that repackage XBRL data likely reported the same errors.

 

Errors happen and if this was limited to one stage of the process, it could be forgiven. But there were opportunities at every stage to identify and correct these errors before they reached the investor. XBRL has no fail-safe mechanism. This is one of many examples of the systemic failure of the XBRL to deliver consistently high-quality financial data.