ESEF XBRL add-in for Excel

Build ESEF XBRL reports directly in Excel

As of January 1, 2020, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has mandated that companies with securities within the EU and UK submit their financial reports in ESEF, which is an iXBRL format.

ESEF (European Single Electronic Format) defines a digital financial report with guidelines defined by ESMA. By standardizing on ESEF, companies and regulatory agencies can benefit from the advantages of XBRL. These include support for data validation, improved consistency and compatibility for software processing, and simplified comparison of reported data within an organization and among multiple companies.

For filing companies, however, the challenge lies in getting backend data into a valid XBRL format according to the ESEF Taxonomy, especially since the employees recording the data are generally financial professionals.

What if you could generate valid ESEF XBRL reports directly from Excel? The Altova ESEF XBRL Add-in for Excel does exactly that, offering financial professionals an easy-to-use template using software they're already familiar with.

Building ESEF XBRL in Excel has numerous benefits:

Validate ESEF Data

At any time during report creation, and especially before exporting the report to iXBRL, you can validate data entered in the Excel template and filing pane. Validation ensures that the XBRL data being filed conforms to the XBRL specification.

If a validation error is detected, the Validation Report window displays a message about the error and a hyperlink to the cell where the error occurred for easy troubleshooting.

ESEF reports are based on company-specific extensions to a base ESEF XBRL taxonomy. Prior to tagging ESEF reports for submission, companies must create an extension taxonomy. The Altova ESEF XBRL add-in for Excel includes a Taxonomy Editor for visually editing your organization's extension taxonomy or creating a new extension from scratch.

After clicking the Taxonomy Editor button in the ESEF tab of the Excel ribbon, you can either open an existing extension taxonomy or create a new one. The extension taxonomy is defined in a visual way that shields the user from the underlying XBRL syntax.

Core details are easily specified, and presentation and calculation linkbase tabs let the user drag and drop to add tables.

The ESEF add-in will save the extension taxonomy as a taxonomy package, and you can proceed with creating ESEF XBRL reports directly in Excel.

This easy extension taxonomy editor makes the Altova ESEF add-in for Excel the only tool companies need to create valid ESEF XBRL reports in an easy, user-friendly way.