On 1 July this year, South Africa moved to the XBRL digital reporting standard, as mandated by the Companies and Intellectual Properties Commission (CIPC).
CaseWare Africa, a division of Adapt IT, has announced the release of XBRL Lite, designed to help companies to be compliant by assisting them to submit financial statements to the CIPC in the iXBRL format, regardless of whether or not they are a CaseWare Working Papers user.
Not only has CaseWare been part of the XBRL SA working group for over 10 years, it has been highly involved in the CIPC's XBRL project since its inception. Most importantly, XBRL has been embedded in CaseWare's working papers for over a decade already.
CaseWare Africa sales manager, Celeste Herbert, says XBRL Lite is a simple and easy-to-use input sheet that allows companies to submit the relevant information, in the required layout, in a pre-tagged format, without having to spend time and incur costs on redrafting financial statements.
"CaseWare developed XBRL Lite with the express purpose of ease of use while assisting businesses to remain compliant throughout the process of preparing their iXBRL submission," says Herbert.
She says the product facilitates customisation and companies can easily add their own information or edit tags in statements on either new or existing information. "Pre-tagged sheets enable data capture, while review tags show what has, and what has not, been tagged; this secures a successful iXBRL submission. Reporting on tags for review purposes is an added benefit and the validation and export facility guarantees upload to the CIPC Web site."
Herbert notes simplicity is only one aspect of the benefits of this product. "The most significant aspect is that it has been specifically designed for entities that are not currently drafting financial statements in CaseWare Working Papers. Now that is a fantastic value add proposition to the SA market," concludes Herbert.