Quality Assurance for Inline XBRL Accounts

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SureFile Accounts is a secure, independent and reliable online Quality Assurance testing service designed to help preparers of FRC-tagged iXBRL accounts.

SureFile Accounts uses the same orce software as HMRC and Companies House to validate Inline XBRL accounts. However, on top of this, SureFile provides a range of tests to check the quality of tagging and the integrity of the accounts themselves.

It provides clear and informative diagnostics to guide users in fixing problems. These highlight the locations in accounts where tagging and/or content needs checking or amending. SureFile Accounts also uses clear language, avoiding the technical jargon and baffling obscurity of messages from government systems.

It's an easy and very cost-effective means of strengthening assurance on the quality of tagging and data integrity.
Helps preparers to avoid tagging gaps and errors that are likely to result in enquiries from HMRC or the Irish Revenue.
Gives clear and informative diagnostics (patent pending) and provides guidance on fixing any problems in the form of an Assurance Report.
Saves valuable time and effort in creating valid, self-consistent and high quality iXBRL accounts.
Helps avoid costly last-minute problems revealed only when accounts are submitted to Companies House or put into a Corporation Tax Return and filed to HMRC or the Irish Revenue.
A proven track-record processing more than 150,000 sets of accounts over the last 12 years.

SureFile Accounts' Capabilities

SureFile Accounts is a secure, online web-based service that runs a wide range of quality assurance tests on FRC-tagged iXBRL accounts to check the quality of tagging.

Support for all the taxonomies used in the UK & Ireland for online filing of company statutory accounts. We generally incorporate new taxonomies or new versions of taxonomies before they are required to be used by HMRC, Companies House or the Irish Revenue Commissioners so that you can prepare your QA processes and hit the ground running!

Supported Taxonomies

Allows preparers to test their accounts quickly and easily during and after tagging. Preparers can upload and test their accounts through a few mouse clicks. Results are available in a matter of seconds, recorded in a comprehensive and fully interactive Assurance Report.

How to use SureFile

Runs basic tests on iXBRL and filing rule validity to ensure that the accounts will be accepted by HMRC and Companies House or by the Irish Revenue. SureFile provides clear and efficient error and warning messages to help users fix any problems – saving considerable time and trouble if unexpected problems do occur.

iXBRL errors

Offers the option of using the HMRC CT Online Test-in-Live service for extra reassurance. Accounts that pass HMRC's filing rules can be submitted to HMRC's Test-in-Live service, wrapped in a "dummy" CT Return, to double-check that they will pass HMRC's filing gateway rules.

Test-in-Live

Runs a range of tests on the monetary and numeric information in accounts to identify incorrect tagging and anomalous values. It is very hard for manual checks to spot errors in tagging settings on monetary and numeric data – and those errors are easy to make. For example, are all scale and accuracy settings correct? Are there inconsistencies in values? SureFile highlights possible errors and anomalies to enable easy review and correction.

Checks the consistency of all tagged dates in accounts. It's easy, when rolling over tagging from one year to the next to overlook tagged dates, or to make errors when tagging the dates of events in relation to the period covered by the accounts. SureFile flags apparent inconsistencies in tagged dates, including alignment of opening and closing items with the period of the accounts, and the chronological ordering of events (e.g. the date of signing of the Balance Sheet can only be on or after the period end).

Runs extensive accounting rule checks to detect tagging errors and even possible errors in the accounts themselves. The accounting rules include "existence" checks to ensure consistency between different accounting entries, whether text or numeric, and "aggregation" checks to highlight calculation inconsistencies within sections of the accounts, which may indicate tagging or accounting errors. The tests include checks on 'dimension tagging' which can be difficult to review manually.

Quality checks

Provides subscriber management facilities for primary subscribers and their secondary users. Subscribers have their own Account Page which allows them to upload accounts for testing and to review results from the latest or previous attempts.

Subscriber management

Calculates a Tagging Quality score for each set of accounts using a unique algorithm. Preparers get an objective rating of up to 5 stars (in half-star increments), blending several measure of quality to provide an overall score. Once you can objectively measure quality, you can gauge the effectiveness of your quality process improvement measures in the scores, or simply see the real and beneficial effects of applying the guidance resulting from SureFile Accounts diagnostics to your tagging.

Tagging Quality

SureFile Accounts' Benefits

Saves time and effort in reviewing iXBRL accounts and fits easily into XBRL review and assurance processes. SureFile quality checks will save taggers and reviewers substantial time by pointing to possible errors and avoiding the need manually to check various aspects of accounts. It can be used easily at any stage of the tagging and review process. Its reports can form part of the assurance process – providing evidence of the testing done. By purchasing 'per entity' testing, subscribers can run repeated checks on a single set of accounts as they improve tagging – all for one single, low payment. The improvement in iXBRL accounts quality and the saving of time and effort provided by SureFile will repay the low cost of subscription many times over.

Provides objective, measurable and reliable testing, which is independent of the software or organisations creating accounts in iXBRL. It also runs on secure, UK-based servers which ensure the confidentiality of your data and assurance reports.

Has a proven track record in helping preparers identify tagging and other errors in accounts. Over the last twelve years SureFile has been in constant use by preparers in accountancy firms large and small, responsible for the production and quality assurance of more than 150,000 sets of iXBRL accounts. SureFile's unique Tagging Quality score means that preparers have an objective measure of quality to continually rate their performance against and quantify their tagging process improvements.

Who Can Benefit?

All those involved in the preparation of accounts and corporation tax filings in iXBRL can benefit from the SureFile Accounts service. To recap, Surefile Accounts:

Allows easy checking of iXBRL accounts prior to putting them in a Corporation Tax filing.
Provides a range of tests to help preparers identify tagging gaps and errors and achieve high-quality XBRL tagging, reducing the risk of enquiry.
Provides a low-cost and efficient means of increasing assurance on iXBRL accounts.
Provides impartial, objective and reliable testing.
Has been developed by the UK's leading XBRL experts.

Those who can benefit include:

Accounting firms and agents – accounts production
Firms handling accounts production for clients can check the quality of their iXBRL accounts during and after the production process. By using SureFile Accounts, they have an independent check on quality and an easy and cost-effective means to help identify errors or weaknesses in tagging. SureFile can dramatically cut the time and effort involved in review and significantly improve assurance on quality. Its reports provide evidence of tests run and the quality of iXBRL accounts produced. SureFile will help reduce the chance of triggering tax risk rules and attracting unwanted tax authority attention.
iXBRL outsourcing companies
Organisations providing third party tagging services can use SureFile as a cost-effective, independent and impartial check on the quality of their work. SureFile will help them identify and correct gaps or weaknesses in tagging. Its reports will provide evidence for clients of checks applied and work done. Not only will this reassure clients, but it will help avoid or resolve costly disputes if CT submissions using outsourced accounts are rejected.
Companies producing or checking their own accounts in iXBRL
Large and small organisations which are producing their own accounts in iXBRL can use SureFile to check the quality of their tagged accounts during and after the production process. SureFile Accounts will help them achieve quality assurance, greatly reducing the cost and effort of review and lessening the chance of tagging errors attracting tax authority attention.
Companies performing due diligence on their outsourced tagging
It is ultimately a company’s responsibility to ensure its accounts are tagged correctly and SureFile will help achieve this. Companies that are relying on accounting firms or outsourcing companies to create their iXBRL accounts can check the result independently and cost-effectively using SureFile.
Accounting firms and agents – tax filing
Firms handling corporation tax filings who have not been responsible for accounts production can check that iXBRL accounts are valid before including them in a Corporation Tax (CT) submission. This gives confidence in the successful outcome of the filing and helps to narrow down the cause of any problem if a CT submission is rejected – saving time and effort in investigation.

SureFile Accounts is a secure, low cost, online service. You can sign up online for a single test attempt (just £10!) or save money by subscribing for a batch of tests. There are two charging options - per attempt, and per entity. With the former you pay for exactly what you use, no matter the entity or the period. With the latter you pay a fixed price per entity, per period, entitling you to upload as many attempts for that entity and period as you need to complete your QA and issue rectification cycles.

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Are you a preparer? Do you want to improve your tagging quality?

Then download and read our illustrated report on FRC accounts tagging quality. It highlights the most common mistakes and errors that we see preparers making, drawn from over 12 years experience of operating SureFile Accounts for our subscribers.

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