The Italian Roadmap to XBRL electronic filing Paola Fumiani XBRL technical advisor at InfoCamere member of " Associazione XBRL Italia"

11/01/20082 The filing of annual financial statements Is a mandatory provision for limited liability companies Managed by the Italian Business Register  The Register is held by the Chamber of Commerce network, on a territorial basis: about of Businesses are registered as per today processes financial Statements from about companies per year It relies on: UnionCamere, the Union of the 103 Italian Chambers of Commerce, Industry and Handicraft; InfoCamere, the technology provider –Hosting of the Italian Business Register; –Storing data on the relevant company’s events: establishment, variations, winding-up, cancellation.

11/01/20083 Who is involved ? The accountants, actually drawing up annual accounts for almost all companies in Italy The Italian accounting software development association The Italian Company Registration System

11/01/20084 The key role of Assosoftware On-going collaboration with the public authority: Tax Agency, Ministry of Technology & Innovations, Business Register System  Creating and managing an updated tools set  Supporting the accountants action on operational duties 85% IT firms represented 80% of the SME sector accountants notaries  Creating the real effective e-filing background

11/01/20085 E-filing to the Italian Business Registrer It’s the fundamental XBRL background mandatory … since year 2003

11/01/20086 Steps to the XBRL e-filing The law requirements  The Italian government pushes for the adoption of a standard by approving the law decree (n. 223 of July 2006) providing for the "mandatory deposit of annual financial statements related to the year 2007 via electronic support and with a processable format". The jurisdiction  September 2006: foundation of “Associazione XBRL Italia”

11/01/20087 The “Associazione XBRL Italia” The association outreaches a community made up of:  registered professional accountants;  103 Chambers of Commerce  Financial analysts  250 Industrial enterprises association  193 Insurance companies  799 banks and 454 financial institutions  300 listed companies

11/01/20088 The members The highest Italian institutions in the field of financial information  Associazione Bancaria Italiana (Italian Banking Association)  Associazione Italiana Analisti Finanziari (Association of Financial Analysts)  Consiglio Nazionaledei Dottori Commercialisti e degli Esperti Contabili  (Doctors in commerce and Accountants and commercial estimators)  Confederazione Generale dell’Industria Italiana (Association of Industries)  Associazione Nazionale fra Imprese Assicuratrici (Association of Insurance companies)  Associazione fra le società italiane per azioni (Association of Italian Limited by shares companies);  Organismo Italiano di contabilità (Italian Standard Setter)  Unione Camere di Commercio Italiane (Union of Italian Chamber of Commerce)  Banca D’Italia (Central Bank of Italy)  Borsa Italiana (Italian stock exchange)  Istituto Italiano Vigilanza Assicurazioni) (National institute of insurance oversight)

11/01/20089 The Roadmap 2007: pilot project set-up The commitment: No extra investments !! by the Business Entities while supplying their XBRL Annual Accounts the environment (web sites, tutorial, training, tools) filing limited to PFS (Primary Financial Statements) figures of the pilot 2007 (voluntary filing)  running from May 2007 ("Annual Accounts" filing campaign )  All 103 Chambers of Commerce involved  80 volunteer users : software providers and professional accountants  905 instance documents filed

11/01/ The Roadmap 2007: Environment set up Publishing on the free access web site of:  the GAAP Italy Taxonomy  an introduction to XBRL Technical Specifications  the XBRL filing guidelines and tools’ tutorials Running training sessions on the XBRL standard Activating a rendering and validation tool for XBRL instances on the InfoCamere public website…

11/01/ The Roadmap 2007: instance generation support.. for the user’s work station a downloadable package based on MS Office/Open Office, generating XBRL instances by:  Data entry on a specific application form  Automatic import in the application form of the financial facts directly from the accounting management software using customized mapping tables

11/01/ The outcomes for XBRL instance documents 12 % of incorrect XBRL instance documents: XBRL related errors  Calculation errors: missing data in the sub total fields  invalid mappings between taxonomy elements and the accounting process  "abstract" items filled with values XML related errors  incorrect usage of data types (numeric/alphanumeric)  Special characters used in the company name element ( typically '&' )  usage of delimiters in numeric items ( i.e. 1,000 )  usage of decimal digits (i.e. 2459,00 – while the Italian Code provisions states that values must always be integers )  XML validation errors : not well-formed files

11/01/ The Roadmap 2007: the feedback Taxonomy design :  Concepts definition is governed and verified against the ‘civil code’ provisions.  Elements of the taxonomy have to describe the financial concepts consisting of elements and an un-limited number of nested sub-elements.... common practice is  Most companies are able to draw up their financial reports using the Italian GAAP taxonomy while exceptions are  some companies want to deeply detail their financial facts; no limits on detailing are imposed by the civil code How can a financial report with un-limited details be translated in an XBRL document, referring a mandatory taxonomy schema?

11/01/ The Roadmap 2007: towards the legal provision Technical strategies/alternatives analized by the Italian XBRL Jurisdidtion : allowing companies to define their own taxonomy extensions the consequence is a loss of standardization and interoperability. Adopting a maintenance program to update the existing taxonomy on demand and managed by the Xbrl jurisdiction increased work for the taxonomy management (definition of acceptance criteria, editing, testing etc) Organizational solution proposed to the Ministry of Reforms and Innovation in the Public Administration  Companies needing extra facts definitions are allowed to add the PDF Annual account to the XBRL instance document

11/01/ The Roadmap : the law decree enforcement The gradual adoption of XBRL 2008  Mandatory for companies closing their fiscal year after March 2008 About companies starting filing after August 2008  Limited to PFS (Primary Financial Statements) 2009  Mandatory for all companies  Based on approved and recognized taxonomies by the Italian jurisdiction

11/01/ Revision of existing filing procedure 2008: the filing process changes slightly according to the pilot 2007 steps: 1.Download the e-filing software from the central server 2.Make the Dossier : PDF + XBRL mandatory 3.eSign the Dossier components 4.eFile the Dossier into the central server

11/01/ Financial reports: different formats for the same information XBRL PDF financial information to be consumed directly by software applications Deeply detailed PDF financial report Business Register (Registro Imprese Italiane)

11/01/ Benefits coming from XBRL are well known  selection of key figures using a query language  Multi-language features on viewing and reporting  merging data from different Data Bases Information handling through XBRL

11/01/ The link to XBRL exploitation: Brite case XBRL is becoming a strategic data format XBRL has been adopted by some research projects: Brite – Business Registers Interoperability across Europe –BriteCBD: turnover figuresBriteCBD: turnover figures

11/01/ The technical support for the development of the GAAP Italy taxonomy by the Trento University:  Professor Luca Erzegovesi – head of (Department of Computer and Management Sciences ).  Doctor Davide Panizzolo – researcher of (Department of Computer and Management Sciences ). The taxonomy building team