Extensible Enumerations

On July 22, 2020, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issued an Extensible Enumerations guide to educate preparers on the Extensible Enumerations (EE) 2.0 design features. This issuance followed the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) International Standards Board’s recommendation of implementing EE 2.0, beginning with the 2021 US GAAP Financial Reporting and SEC Reporting taxonomies. FASB believes that the use of Extensible Enumerations elements in an XBRL filing will improve the data’s usefulness, timeliness, and quality. This blog will give a high-level overview of what Extensible Enumerations are, why they were introduced, and a brief example in how to use them. Additional information regarding Extensible Enumerations (EE) 2.0 specification, schema, and software requirements can be found on the XBRL International Standards Board’s website.

What are Extensible Enumerations? 

First introduced in 2017, Extensible Enumerations are an XBRL design feature for communicating information using base or extension taxonomy elements. Essentially, Extensible Enumerations are an alternative approach to reporting non-disaggregated facts. In practice, when reporting facts utilizing Extensible Enumeration elements, facts will have full capabilities of using the same axis and member elements in the US GAAP and SEC Reporting taxonomies as all Taxonomy elements will be converted to the EE 2.0 data type, enumerationSetItemType. One of FASB’s primary goals for introducing this feature is to limit the use of axis elements for tagging non-disaggregated information.

Extensible Enumeration elements act as both a Concept and an Axis. Depending on whether or not reported values are disaggregated by component parts, Extensible Enumeration elements can be applied with or without axis elements. Moreover, facts that utilize Extensible Enumerations elements can also be assigned a member element if those facts are non-disaggregated. We will provide examples of these two instances later in this blog.  

Extensible Enumeration elements convey information about two types of facts: location and characteristic facts. Location facts communicate the financial statement line where an accounting concept discloses non-disaggregating information, whereas characteristic facts reveal particular components of an accounting concept (i.e., type of product, geographic location, etc.) when disclosing disaggregated information.

Extensible Enumeration Value Creation

XBRL data users have informed FASB that they cannot easily determine which axis elements provide disaggregating and non-disaggregating information, deterring data users from accurately interpreting the information which creates delays. It is especially difficult when multiple axis elements are applied to the same fact. Furthermore, XBRL data users have described the value of being able to identify report-wide values easily. In an effort to solve these issues, Extensible Enumerations were then introduced. This design feature encourages the use of axis elements for disaggregated information and provides a practical and straightforward method to communicate non-disaggregating information without applying axis and member elements.

It is FASB’s belief that data users can easily identify report-wide values by decreasing the use of axis and member elements in XBRL filings. In addition, FASB hopes that XBRL preparers will appreciate the structure Extensible Enumerations offer when tagging qualitative information.

How to apply Extensible Enumeration Elements

As discussed earlier, Extensible Enumeration elements can be applied with or without axis elements. These elements can also be assigned a member element if those facts are non-disaggregated.

Use of an Extensible Enumeration Element without Axis and Member

The following example illustrates the use of an Extensible Enumeration element without an axis or member elements. Suppose that a disclosure in a HyperText Markup Language (HTML) filing provides the following information:

The accounting concept used for this disclosure is investment in debt securities available-for-sale commonly referred to as (“Debt Securities”). The following table shows how it should be tagged and how the data is interpreted.

The Extensible Enumeration element that should be used to tag this disclosure is Debt Securities, Available-for-Sale, Type [Extensible Enumeration]. It is tagged this way because the filer in this particular example disclosed that the Company’s investment in debt securities represents corporate debt securities and therefore discloses non-disaggregated information and that the value represents a report-wide value. Tagging the disclosure in this fashion communicates to the data user that Debt Securities totaling $1,000, with a term to maturity of 10 years, is for Corporate Debt Securities.

Use of Extensible Enumeration Elements with Axis and Member

Alternatively, suppose the company disclosed that Debt Securities of $1,000 represent Corporate and US Government Securities. Debt Securities of $500 represent US Government Securities. Then it would be tagged in the following fashion with an axis and member elements:

The information above suggests that Debt Securities are disaggregated by type, therefore this disclosure is tagged by assigning a Debt Securities, Available-for-sale, Type [Extensible Enumeration] element to the total value of $1,000 and term of 10 years then applying CorporateDebtSecuritiesMember and USTreasuryAndGovernmentMember since the values are partially disaggregated by type of Debt Security. Furthermore, a Financial Instrument [Axis] and USTreasurySecuritiesMember is applied to the value of $500 to communicate that it represents US Treasury Securities and that it’s a portion of the total. As depicted in the example, Extensible Enumeration elements were only used to tag the non-disaggregating information. Other examples of different types of disclosures and how they should be reported can be found in Section five of the guide.

In summary, Extensible Enumeration elements were introduced to promote consistency and comparability of the XBRL data. By reducing the use of axis elements, XBRL data users will be able to determine which facts represent totals or report-wide values, recalculate totals if not clearly disclosed, and if the information is partly disaggregated, recognize the amounts reported for the same accounting concept relative to the total value.

Your SEC reporting partner must be ahead of the curve. Our Transform^TM SEC filing software suite incorporates a user-friendly tool to add Extensible Enumeration elements. In addition, it integrates with the latest taxonomies and FASB accounting standards to ensure your XBRL tagging is timely and accurate. Contact us to learn more about how we can help your company meet its compliance requirements.