Check and Validate digital reports

This section introduces the "Check & Validate" stage of the XBRL Journey and explains why it matters.

The corporate reporting process is a challenging one – deadlines are tight and processes have been developed over many years to deliver high-quality reporting and communication. Just as it is important to ensure that a paper annual report is accurate, it is also important to ensure that the digital annual report is of high quality.

Your digital annual report is consumed by machines, and the quality of your tagging directly affects how your company’s results are interpreted, compared, and relied on by investors, regulators, analysts, and data aggregators. A report can look correct on screen but still contain tagging issues that distort meaning, reduce comparability, or trigger avoidable questions during review and filing.

For digital reporting quality it is not sufficient (although still important) to ensure that what can be seen and read is correct, consideration also needs to be given to what a machine sees.

To make sure that the file you produce is quality, you need to check your report (ie the review you can do as a human) and validations (checks that the software do).

Checking your report

This page gives you some insight into how to check your annual report.

Validating your report

This page gives you some insight into validating your annual report and what it means.