XBRL for Digital Business Reporting

Increasing advances in technology have revolutionised the financial markets world in many ways. The old paper-based business reports have been shown the door and digital reports have replaced them. Over the years many digital formats have popped up, but XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) remains one of the most preferred formats by the world’s leading financial institutions because it is more useful, effective, and accurate.

XBRL benefits

The transparency of XBRL ensures trouble-free accessibility of corporate information. Moreover, the data need not be gathered manually since the process of data collection can be automated with the XBRL framework. Rapid, accurate, and digital, exchange of information is one of the USPs of XBRL. Using technologies such as XLink, XPath, XML Schema, and Namespace, XBRL authoritatively defines reporting terms. Contents of financial performance, compliance, and business reports can be uniquely represented using those terms. Perhaps those are the reasons it is being used for financial services in more than 50 countries.

XBRL and SSM

Recognizing the potential of an XBRL based submission platform, the Malaysian Regulator, Suruhanjaya Syarikat Malaysia (SSM) launched the Malaysian Business Reporting System (MBRS). From November 2018, SSM made it compulsory to submit annual financial statements and reports (FS), annual returns (AR), and annual exemption applications (EA), which are related to the FS and AR applications, through MBRS. This move helped SSM in instantly analysing the reported information.

Generating and submitting the XBRL reports in MBRS:

The following components are essential for filing XBRL reports:

• It lets the stakeholders prepare the XBRL reports. The preparers can only use the tool when they know about the financial reporting standards and the taxonomies available in XBRL that relate to each financial reporting standard. The MBRS tool is an Excel-based software used to generate annual returns, financial statements, and exemption applications in XBRL with the use of the latest SSM taxonomy.
•  After a report is generated, it needs to be submitted on the MBRS Portal. This is a submission platform that allows the filing of XBRL generated reports online. By using the portal, users can track the submission status, use digital signatures, utilise payment facilities, download required templates, and perform similar activities.
•  These are based on International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) Taxonomy, 2017. They have been customised to meet the information requirements of the Companies Act 2016, Malaysian Financial Reporting Standards (MFRS) and Malaysian Private Entities Reporting Standard (MPERS).

XBRL/MBRS reporting cannot be done without undergoing training. Therefore, to help filers and companies get acquainted with XBRL report creation and the MBRS submission platform, SSM has launched classroom training initiatives as well as introductory video tutorials. However, those who do not want to go through the time-consuming training programs can hire an MBRS expert in Malaysia. One of the advantages of hiring an expert is that besides filing financial reports, the experts can prepare business documents in compliance with Malaysia’s Companies Act 2016 and save your productive time and effort.