ESEF text block tagging
In the last two years, all companies with ESEF obligations only had to tag their „primary financial statements“. Yet following the current changes, the reporting entities will have to comply with new requirements for fiscal years starting January 1, 2022.
Recently ESMA published the new guidance on ESEF with a lot of important changes. This year ESMA has worked closely with the community and made some much-requested improvements and clarifications to the manual. The big topic of the upcoming reporting period is of course text block tagging. New sections in the manual clarify the scope and intent, as well as the technical challenges involved in this requirement.
As always it is paramount to start early in the season and prepare the first tagging well in advance. With our new version of XBRL Tagger you can start tagging already now and be prepared for the next ESEF season. Completing the text block tagging early, will allow you to have a dry run to analyse the effects on your financial close.
Our tip: We recommend that you involve your auditor in this exercise at a very early stage to prevent any surprises later. It may also be important to get all the other stakeholders involved, too: Accounting, Investors Relations, Design Agency and Service Provider.
ESEF text block tagging with the AMANA XBRL Tagger
Be prepared to tackle the new challenges of text block tagging with our certified XBRL Tagger:
- Nested tagging and multi-tagging of text block tags
- Persisting text block tags through different iterations of a PDF document
- Editing already tagged text block areas
- Using the mapping clipboard to transfer and restore tags
- Auto-detection of tables in PDF
- Auto-tagging of text blocks that have been prepared in Word documents
Keep in mind, when you create a new PDF version of your report you want to make sure that you do not have to start all over with the tagging. If you create a new PDF, the comments that you may have made to the old PDF are not automatically rolled forward. We recommend that you tagging an early version of your PDF document, and add changes to it as you share the iterations of your text block tagging with auditors and other stakeholders. The AMANA XBRL Tagger will enable you to retain the text block tags through multiple iterations of the same PDF document as needed.
Download our text block tagging whitepaper
Webinars about text block tagging
How to audit the upcoming ESEF text block taggings
The ESEF regulation mandates listed companies to publish their annual financial reports in iXBRL digital format. In many EU countries, the ESEF reports also have to be audited or reviewed. The main challenge of auditing iXBRL reports is the technical validation, checking of tags selected by the report creator and the comparison of the traditional format (PDF) with the new iXBRL format. Auditing iXBRL reports requires new knowledge for auditors and can only be done with a proper certified XBRL software.
Starting from 2022, the full notes to the financial statements have to be tagged with text block taggings, additionally to the main financial statements, which is a new challenge for preparers and audit firms. Various technical and business details have to be considered as part of the assurance.
In the webinar we explain the new rule, and show how the XBRL Auditor can used to face the challenge, and which new features have been implemented in the version 1.2 to facilitate the textblock tagging assurance.
The AMANA XBRL Auditor was developed on the basis of our many years of experience from hundreds of XBRL projects with a clear focus on the review and audit of iXBRL reports according to the ESEF regulation. Moreover, our software is already successfully used by numerous audit firms including Big Four firms .In our webinar, we will show you the features and benefits of the XBRL Auditor when auditing ESEF reports, as well as our experiences from the first year of ESEF.
Referents: Richard Bössen and Nina Schüller
ESEF text block tagging - Lessons Learned
According to the new ESEF Regulation, the tagging scope for the preparation of ESEF annual reports ending after 01.01.2022 has been significantly increased. The full notes to the financial statements have to be tagged with text block taggings, additionally to the main financial statements, which is a new challenge for preparers and audit firms.
In our webinar, the experiences from the first year of ESEF implementation will be presented, especially regarding text block tagging. In addition to the technical requirements, we will also discuss practical examples of our intelligent software solution SmartNotes.
Referents: Paul Beckmann and Catalina Ibanez
ESEF Whitepaper
With our easy-to-use AMANA XBRL Tagger, you can create ESEF-compliant reporting in no time. Learn more about ESEF and the AMANA XBRL Tagger in our whitepaper.
Blog: Text block tagging
In our last blog post you will find important information about the benefits, challenges and solutions of text block tagging in Word and PDF documents.
ESEF reporting manual
Learn more about the changes in the ESEF Reporting Manual and its consequences in our blogpost.