BizFinx – XBRL implementation by Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA), Singapore
The Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) is the regulator of business registration, financial reporting, public accountants and corporate service providers;
ACRA was formed as a statutory board on 1 April 2004, following the merger of the then Registry of Companies and Businesses (RCB), and the Public Accountants’ Board (PAB).
ACRA is responsible for the following functions:
- To administer the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority Act (Cap 2A), the Accountants Act (Cap 2), the Business Names Registration Act (Cap 32), the Companies Act (Cap 50), the Limited Liability Partnerships Act (Cap 163A) and the Limited Partnerships Act 2008 (Act 37 of 2008);
- To report and make recommendations to, and advise the Government on matters relating to the registration and regulation of business entities, public accountants and corporate service providers;
- To establish and administer a repository of documents and information relating to business entities, public accountants and corporate service providers and to provide access to the public to such documents and information;
- To represent the Government internationally in matters relating to the registration and regulation of business entities, public accountants and corporate service providers; and
- To promote public awareness about new business structures, compliance requirements, corporate governance practice and any matter under the purview of the Authority.
Background
ACRA was one of the early adopters of XBRL in ASEAN region. They started collecting Financial Statements in XBRL from 2007. In 2014 they did a tech refresh and implemented the new BizFinx system to handle the XBRL portion.
Subsequently, ACRA continued to introduce initiatives that make compliance easy for businesses. These include reducing a significant number of data elements in the AR, pre-filling data based on previous filing, and simplifying the filing of financial statements in eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) format.
In partnership with software providers, ACRA and the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) have enabled seamless filing for smaller companies. Companies can use source data in their accounting systems to automatically generate and send financial and tax returns to ACRA and IRAS via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). 200 companies were in the pilot group. About 200,000 companies can potentially benefit from this initiative, not just to ease compliance but also speed up their digital transformation.
The Solution
ACRA BizFinx system consists of the Taxonomy, Preparation Tool/Multi Upload Tool and Portal.
- Taxonomy
The ACRA Taxonomy is a closed taxonomy that does not allow preparers to add or define their own company specific concepts or create their own relationships between concepts. This is to enhance the comparability of the data collected. However, certain customisations are allowed, to give preparers flexibility in their presentation (e.g. company specific labels and re-ordering of the concepts). Latest taxonomy released by ACRA has approximately 1800 elements distributed across different entry points. - Client-side software
Every reporting entity will be required to have XBRL-capable software in place for creating FS data in XBRL format, according to the ACRA’s published taxonomy. To assist reporting entities in their efforts ACRA has provided an MS Excel based desktop application (BizFinx Preparation Tool) for preparing XBRL instance as well as Multi Upload Tool to allow for upload of multiple XBRL instance documents in one go. Both prep tool and multi upload tool are equipped with REST based API modules as well as oAuth authentication to ACRA API Mall to allow for direct upload of the XBRL instance to BizFinx server. - Filing Platform (Public access)
BizFinx Portal was a web-based platform which was integrated with the Singapore Government’s single sign-on system SingPass/CorpPass for authentication as well as BizFile+ which is the core registry system for validation of uploaded data. The portal also had role-based access for users to login and perform necessary functions. As part of latest tech refresh the portal functionality has been removed and replaced completely by API functionality for all features. - API
BizFinx API access has been developed to allow for a seamless filing experience to users using accounting software. RESTful APIs allow for Upload, Validation and Acknowledgement of XBRL instances. Authentication has been implemented using oAuth.
E. Regulatory usage (Intranet)
ACRA users have access to a rich set of functionalities like View Filings (Data uploaded as well as filed), Content Management System (To allow for publishing of announcements, files etc.,), Exemption module, Investigation module and Reports. - Investigation module
This module is used to investigate companies that have filed their financial statements with erroneous data or those who have failed to meet the Regulatory/compliance requirements with the Regulator. Regulator’s officers will use internal reports to analyze and identify erroneous data filed by companies as well those who have failed to comply with Regulations. Once identified the officer will use the investigation module to upload a consolidated list of companies to be investigated along with the error/compliance for which they are being investigated. - Exemption module
Exemption module is used by the Regulator’s officers to override the business rules preventing a company from validating their XBRL instance successfully. This module is required to address those genuine cases whereby the user cannot fix the errors that is present in their financial statements or in their submissions. - Technology stack
e-Filing platform: Microsoft stack (IIS, ASP.NET MVC), SQL Server
API: Microsoft WebAPI, REST (For internet applications), SOAP (Internal integration with CORE system)
Validator: Bushchat (XII certified)
BizFinx Preparation Tool: C#, VSTO
