Co-development is being carried out in the Real-Time Economy project through trials and workshops in collaboration with companies, public sector organizations, and stakeholders. In January, an open co-development workshop was held on “Utilizing accounting data at the account level.” Participants found co-development useful because it resulted in a wide range of comments from various stakeholders and a better overall understanding of the usability of solutions.
The workshop is part of the experiment: Simplified reporting by means of a long profit and loss statement and balance sheet. In the project, we are developing proposals for a common target state for official reporting, in which companies do not need to submit the same information to multiple authorities. According to the principle of one-time reporting, information would be provided to those who need it at the same time. Development is being carried out through experiments aimed at verifying the functionality of different implementation methods in practice from the perspective of different actors in the economy.
The goal of the “Simplified reporting by means of a long profit and loss statement and balance sheet” experiment is to verify how the so-called long profit and loss statement and balance sheet, presented at the level of general ledger accounts, would serve the needs of different authorities and other data users. The focus of the experiment is on the examination of the information needed for tax reporting and statistics. The standardization of content is based on the content of Kirjurituote Oy’s “Liikekirjuri” account chart. Another approach in the experiment is a standardized way of presenting information that would enable its automated use in various systems. The XBRL GL specification was tested as a file format in this experiment.
The goals of the co-development workshop were:
- To understand the various use cases and benefits of accounting data at the account level (other than reporting to authorities).
- Validation of the observations made in the experiment.
- Further usability of account-level data for the company’s own use and by third parties.
- Checking the direction for future experiments, e.g., regarding the level and content of information used.
The participants of the workshop were from various industries, including companies, financial management, system suppliers, the financial sector, and authorities. There was a total of 30 participants, 18 of whom were representatives from different industries, and 12 were from the project team.
The content of the workshop consisted of three parts. The first part aimed to identify new use cases for the data content of the long profit and loss statement and balance sheet. Different use cases were identified in the following areas:
- In the operation of companies and stakeholders, e.g., in data analysis.
- In the operation of authorities, e.g., in public financial activities.
- In other operations, e.g., in auditing.
In the second part of the workshop, possibilities for standardizing the content of accounting data were discussed, where proposed solutions varied between a standardized chart of accounts and a reference data map and tracking targets. As observations, it was noted that companies should be able to use their own chart of accounts. In order for information to be usable between different chart of accounts, data mapping is needed to connect the content between your own chart of accounts and the standardized (reference) chart of accounts. In addition, additional tracking targets or dimensions are needed for tax and statistical breakdowns.
At the end of the workshop, guidelines for the following experiments were also mapped out. Among the favored options were transaction and document-level information as well as standard interfaces.
Based on the results obtained, the next experiment is planned in the project. Check out the Upoming Experiments page on the RTE project website. You can also suggest new experiments using this form.