ESMA has issued a new ESEF Reporting Manual. To keep you informed, we have thoroughly analysed the changes and compiled a summary of the most significant updates for your convenience ⬇️⬇️⬇️

1. The change in naming of the ESEF report packages (consolidated and standalone) has been proposed:

a. {base}-{date}-{version}-{lang}.xbr for consolidated reports

b. {base}-{date}-{version}-{lang}.html for standalone reports

The “version” refers to the version of the submitted report:

“0” for the first submission

“1”, “2”, etc. for subsequent resubmissions

Please consult with your local regulator, as this is just a recommendation, and each regulator sets the final requirements separately. From our experience, the naming conventions for ESEF reports vary from country to country. (Guidance 2.6.3 and Guidance 4.1.5)

2. ESMA recommends not to skip tagging “0”, “-”, or ” ” when the information means “0” for comparative periods, except for the Statement of Changes in Equity, where different periods are presented as separate tables. (Guidance 2.2.5).

This means that if the data is disclosed for one period, you cannot leave an empty gap in the XBRL markup for zero amounts in other periods. The entire line must be marked up, and to create a qualitative XBRL report, the initial human-readable document must contain “0” or “-” instead of gaps to link XBRL tags to this information. It is a common issue that in the initial report, preparers leave the “0” values as empty cells in the tables, which can lead to problems with markup.

3. ESMA has again emphasised the need to present data in a machine-readable report in a legible way, including spaces between words and proper table layout. (Guidance 2.2.6)

4. Enhance validation checks: improved checks of formula calculations and updated arcrole from the 2003 to the 2023 year specification. (Guidance 3.4.1)

Please check with your regulator when they plan to update validator checks, as not updating the local regulator’s validator in a timely manner can lead to conflicts. As a result, a report that is fully valid from ESMA’s perspective can fail validation for submission.

5. ESMA reminds users to employ different datatypes for ESEF Taxonomies 2022 and 2024. (Guidance 3.2.2)

6. Update to calculation 1.1, which requires using a wide range of labels to provide more data for calculations. It is now also allowed to use instant and duration tags in the same formula, which means that the entire Cash Flow and Changes in Equity statements can be calculated in XBRL (Guidance 3.4.8).

7. Additional clarifications regarding anchor selection are added to the manual. The anchors must be the same data type as the extended taxonomy tag they link to (Guidance 1.4.1)

8. More clarification has been given regarding the datatype for the @escape attribute “true”/”false”

9. Clarification regarding data formatting: the data shall be in the format XXXX-XX-XX without extended information such as hours, minutes, or seconds (Guidance 2.1.2).

The full manual can be viewed here: ESEF Reporting Manual Preparation of Annual Financial Reports in ESEF format

Soon, we’ll be launching a free tool, Fanda Analytics, to help you monitor the requirements of Guidance 2.2.6. Stay tuned!

Decoding the latest ESEF Reporting Manual by ESMA: insights and Fanda’s new compliance monitoring tool