Versioning Solution and Migration Between XBRL Taxonomies – IFRS Taxonomy and Extension Use Case

Presenter: Haiko Philipp

The International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) Foundation has issued the Versioning Report for the IFRS Taxonomy 2009. The IFRS Taxonomy is the translation of the annual Bound Volume of IFRSs, as published by the International Accounting Standards Board, in XBRL format. Amendments to the IFRS Taxonomy are required following changes in IFRSs, or changes in technology. XBRL International has published a Public Working Drafts (PWD) Versioning Specification which aims to provide a framework for documenting differences between taxonomy versions, known as taxonomy versioning reports, which can be read by both people and machines.

The aim of a versioning report is to help users migrate to a new taxonomy version with minimal effort and associated costs as possible. For the IFRS Taxonomy 2009 both light and comprehensive versioning reports have been provided, and both document the changes between the final versions of the IFRS Taxonomy 2008 and the IFRS Taxonomy 2009.

This presentation aims to illustrate the challenges and benefits of using the XBRL taxonomy versioning, and also to provide general and technical considerations on how to create and use the versioning report in order to reduce migration effort.