The Australian Government's Standard Business Reporting (SBR) initiative has licensed CoreFiling's SpiderMonkey Enterprise Taxonomy Development Platform. These tools provide a rigorous integrated multi-user environment for the design, construction and testing of large XBRL taxonomies.
The Australian SBR Program will reduce the reporting burden by making it faster, cheaper and easier for business to report financial information to government. It will achieve this, in part, by harmonising the information in use amongst different government organisations. It is a Program aimed at reducing business red tape directly, rather than an initiative focussed on government outcomes. Working closely with business, accounting and reporting software vendors that provide business applications to companies of all sizes - but particularly small and medium sized enterprises - the new, harmonised definitions will be used to greatly simplify the process of reporting to government. Like similar international initiatives, the Australian SBR program relies on the open standard XBRL for the definition and exchange of business data.
CoreFiling CEO, John Turner, commented "The SBR program is a terrific example of government using 21st century technology to help improve a 19th century problem. The process of manually filling in lots of different forms for lots of different parts of government is a huge time sink for businesses. We are delighted to be able to help the SBR agencies work together to lighten the load for business".
Paul Madden, the SBR Program Director said "The CoreFiling software fits the SBR requirements very well. The support and assistance that we have been receiving from the CoreFiling team shows that they combine deep expertise with customer focus."
Mr Turner added "The Enterprise SpiderMonkey taxonomy development environment is best of breed. It provides a central, straightforward set of user interfaces that accountants and business analysts can quickly master. It supports a number of other demanding projects, notably the construction of the Dutch Government's SBR taxonomies and the US GAAP taxonomies that underpin the US Securities and Exchange Commission's goal to have every listed company in the United States file their financial statements in XBRL. The SpiderMonkey platform allows the subject matter experts, rather than just systems engineers, to construct these definitions."
"The environment includes a powerful continuous integration framework that allows real-time testing of the work of these subject matter experts, incorporating a range of tests including, for example, the output of other vendors' validation engines, so as to demonstrate the interoperability of the results. We've also packaged our TRAX and Yeti collaboration systems that allow a broad range of stakeholders to study and comment on drafts of the taxonomies, creating a broad ecosystem of expertise." Prototype versions of the SBR taxonomies can be found at http://bigfoot.corefiling.com
The construction of taxonomies, or data definitions, lie at the heart of the SBR projects undertaken by the Australian and Dutch governments. They are soon to be followed by New Zealand, with a number of other countries examining the potential of SBR to markedly reduce the overall burden imposed on businesses.
The contract with the SBR program is a three year framework agreement for the enterprise platform, with options for Commonwealth and State government agencies to extend the system, depending on their needs.
About CoreFiling
CoreFiling is a privately held company which specialises in XBRL products and consultancy, known for its high quality modelling, data validation and development services. It serves filers, regulators, exchanges and the financial community. CoreFiling's major shareholders include Business Wire, the global leader in financial news distribution, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, and DecisionSoft, the world's premier XBRL components vendor. Visit www.corefiling.com for more information.
About SBR
Standard Business Reporting (SBR) is a multi-agency program that will reduce the business-to-government reporting burden by:
- removing unnecessary and duplicated information from government forms;
- utilising business software to automatically pre-fill government forms;
- adopting a common reporting language, based on international standards and best practice;
- making financial reporting to government a by-product of natural business processes;
- providing an electronic interface to enable business to report to government agencies directly from their accounting software, which will provide validation and confirm receipt of reports; and
- providing business with a single secure online sign-on to the agencies involved.
SBR is being co-designed by Australian, State and Territory Government agencies in partnership with business, software developers, accountants, bookkeepers and other business intermediaries from across Australia.
Led by the Australian Treasury, the agencies participating in SBR are the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and all State and Territory Government revenue offices (SROs).
Australian business will save around $800 million per year when SBR is fully implemented.
SBR is focussing on financial reporting first, since this affects most businesses. Examples of the 95 forms within the scope of the SBR program include the Business Activity Statement (ATO), Quarterly Business Indicators Survey (ABS), Financial Statement (ASIC), and Payroll Tax (SROs).
Further details about the SBR program are available on SBR's website at www.sbr.gov.au.