Augmenting XBRL Using UML: Improving Financial Analysis

Abstract

eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), a financial accounting application of XML, provides a taxonomy for facilitating the analysis of financial statement information.  This taxonomy promises to enhance the financial analyst’s ability to process financial information both cross-sectionally and temporally. However, limitations exist in the taxonomy that inhibit the analyst, intelligent agent or application to process information in the most effective way. In particular, financial statement element analysis can only be properly conducted when the additional semantics provided by additional disclosures are incorporated into the process. UML provides a conceptual framework to capture more meaningful semantics, particularly among related, collaborating objects. The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework that will couple the strengths of both technologies in order to develop better systems for financial statement analysis.