Improving the comparability of Financial Statements in a changeable context: a Semantic Web-based approach

Abstract

Accounting at the international level has become more changeable than never before due to several reasons, but one stands above the others: the convergence process carried out by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the Federal Accounting Standards Board (FASB). This process started in order to enhance the comparability of the financial statements worldwide, among other purposes, but also brought complexity and uncertainty about the temporal horizon and the degree of convergence that will be finally achieved. The only certainty that can be said about this process is that it will elongate throughout the following years and, due to its own complexity, the impairment of the comparability of the financial statements becomes a reality, as a non-desired effect. In the mean time, the advances achieved in the implementation of the electronic standard eXtensible Business Report Language (XBRL) bring to this context new possibilities, not yet foreseen to manage the financial information more efficiently, improving the decision-making process. Taking advantage from the fact that the financial statements are now written in this standard (XBRL), and applying technologies recently developed in the context of the Semantic Web, the present work proposes a new semantic-web-based approach that tries to overcome the limitations imposed by the changeable accounting regulation framework and its derived comparability impairments. Starting from XBRL statements (XML documents), the information is translated into RDF, so ontologies can be defined upon that information, taking advantage from the characteristics of Semantic Web technologies and over passing the limitations due to XBRL¿s underlying ones, more specifically those due to the fact it is based on XML.