gnucash-ixbrl 1.7.0

Production of iXBRL reports from GnuCash accounts

gnucash-ixbrl

Introduction

This is a utility which allows accounts managed by the excellent GnuCash accounting software to be presented as iXBRL report output. iXBRL is commonly used to describe regulatory account information which companies must publish annually. Different schemas are in use in different places in the world. The example account and report data included in this project uses schemas which are used in the UK reporting regime, but it is possible to define other taxonomies.

iXBRL stands for "Inline XBRL". It was inspired by the XBRL standard (Extensible Business Reporting Language). iXBRL is HTML with embedded XBRL tags so that the document can be viewed in an HTML browser and read by a human, but the tags are also machine-readable. This allows the same accounts to be usable by a human, and also by automated data extraction tools.

Included in this repo are example accounts and configuration files exist which output:

• Company accounts for UK Companies House filing using the FRS-102 taxonomy.
• UK HMRC corporation tax filing using the CT600 schema and Detailed Profit and Loss schema in a single document.

With the right configuration files, other taxonomies would work, the configuration files are complex to write. This is a command-line utility.

Incidentally, plain-text report output is also supported as a byproduct of creating the reports. This is useful in the workflow of constructing report configuration.

Motivation

The overheads in configuring reports and iXBRL output with gnucash-ixbrl is not small, but that's an up-front cost.

The motivation is that once set up, it is trivial to generate reports, with the latest, accurate information without constantly copying boiler-plate text into reports. It isn't difficult to generate reports dynamically. Automating business report for low on-going costs, and real-time delivery of information.

Warranty

This code comes with no warranty whatsoever. See the LICENSE file for details. Further, I am not an accountant. Even if I were, I would not be YOUR accountant. It is possible that this code could be useful to you in meeting regulatory reporting requirements for your business. It is also possible that the software could report misleading information which could land you in a lot of trouble if used for regulatory purposes. Really, you should check with a qualified accountant.

Configuration overview

gnucash-ixbrl is not simple to configure. If the configuration files supplied work for your business you could get accounts with little work.

However, it is very likely that you'll need to tailor the reports to work with your business. The configuration is described in Configuration Workflow.

Installing

There is a dependency on either the gnucash or piecash Python modules:

• The gnucash Python support is built from the GnuCash source code tree itself. It is currently only distributed with Linux packages. You cannot use this on Windows or MacOS. See https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Python_Bindings for installation, but on Linux it is generally installed when you install the gnucash package. It is not possible to install the gnucash module using PyPI.
• The piecash Python support can be download using pip or your favourite Python package manager. It works on Linux, MacOS and Windows. However, it only supports the Sqlite or Postgres GnuCash formats, and not the XML format which is the default.

It is possible to convert a GnuCash file to Sqlite format by using GnuCash, select Save As... and selecting Sqlite.

pip3 install git+https://github.com/cybermaggedon/gnucash-ixbrl

Usage

gnucash-ixbrl <config> <report> <format>

Where:

• config specifies a configuration file. See Configuration File.
• report specifies a report tag.
• format specifies output format. text outputs plain text, ixbrl outputs iXBRL (XHTML tagged with XBRL tags) and html outputs HTML, which is iXBRL with the XBRL tags removed.

The examples use files in the git repo. Clone the git repo to run this stuff:

git clone https://github.com/cybermaggedon/gnucash-ixbrl

Example, Companies House accounts. You should be able to view the resultant HTML in a browser:

gnucash-ixbrl config.yaml report ixbrl > accts.html

Corporation tax filing:

gnucash-ixbrl config-corptax.yaml report ixbrl > ct.html

Configuration

All the configuration is in YAML, and there are various configuration files which are linked together. If the templates work for you, you should only have to change config.yaml and metadata.yaml.

• config.yaml is the top-level configuration file which imports the other configuration files. Of interest, is the accounts section which specifies which GnuCash file to use. There is also a report setting which describes which report definition to import. Also a pretty-print setting which causes HTML to be output with indented spacing to make it easier to read if you have to debug something.
• metadata.yaml contains information specific to the business the report is about, such as name of business, address, company identifiers and so on. You would edit this to describe your business.
• Taxonomy definitions under the taxonomy directory specify the mapping between identifiers and the iXBRL tagging. If the report templates do what you need, you won't need to change this.
• Report configuration files under the report directory. Think of these as report templates. They define the structure of information going into the report. There is a ch sub-directory containing various kinds of Companies House filing templates. Also an hmrc sub-directory containing the HMRC corporation tax filing template. If these report configurations do what you want, you don't need to change them.
• directors-report.yaml, accountants-report.yaml, auditors-report.yaml, notes.yaml are used to provide specific sections of the company accounts. These are only needed for more complex reports, for a micro-entity account filing, these are not used.

All configuration files are YAML.

See Configuration File.

Screenshots of output

Screenshots

Other things to try

Having created iXBRL, you can try loading into Arelle which is an iXBRL development tool. In Arelle, you can invoke a validation and check the output matches the schema.

Once Arelle is installed, you can install the Workiva ixbrl-viewer. When an iXBRL document is loaded into Arelle, the document is automatically loaded into a browser with markup so that you can navigate the tags and discover tagged information. With the iXBRL viewer when you hover over tagged information, it is highlighted, clicking opens up the metadata viewer.