The most common reason for this issue is that you have a subtotal in your Comprehensive Income Statement (CI) which isn’t found in your Statement of Changes in Equity (SOCIE), and this causes your calculation to fail.
Your calculations can be perfectly correct, but when it comes to XBRL everything is interconnected, so when you have a subtotal leading up to your comprehensive income in CI, you need that same subtotal to be represented in your SOCIE. Otherwise the calculation will fail.
In this article you will find a description of why the issue is occurring along with a detailed guide on how to identify and solve the issue.
A Quick Example of the Issue You Are Experiencing
For instance, you may have stated in your “Comprehensive Income Statement” that you calculate your “comprehensive income” as a sum of “net profit” and “other comprehensive income”.
Net profit + other comprehensive income = comprehensive income
At the same time, in your Statement of Changes in Equity (SOCIE) you may have stated, that you calculate your “comprehensive income” as a sum of “net profit”, “exchange differences” and “cashflow hedges”.
Net profit + exchange differences + cashflow hedges = comprehensive income
Both can be perfectly correct, and iXBRL is equipped to comprehend that “comprehensive income” can be calculated in different ways in different sections.
The reason you are experiencing a calculation error, is that while you have stated in one section that “comprehensive income” is a total of “net profit” and “other comprehensive income”, in the other section, you haven’t listed “other comprehensive income” as a subtotal.
This means, that your calculation is missing a subtotal, and because of this, it fails.
Two Possible Solutions
When you experience this type of error, you have two options; 1) you can disregard the calculation inconsistency. The calculation error is not a blocking error, so you are allowed to have it in your report when you file it, or 2) you can add “Other Comprehensive Income” as a subtotal in your Statement of Changes in Equity thereby solving the issue.
How to Solve the Calculation Error
To solve this issue, you first need to figure out exactly which items are causing the error, so first you need to upload the zip-file containing your ESEF report to the ParsePort XBRL Inspector and follow these instructions:
- After uploading the file, you will be taken to the validation report, where you can scroll down to the Linkbase Check. Here you need to click the eye-icon next to the calculation error. This will take you to the relevant label in presentation section of the viewer
- Once everything has finished loading, you need to click the label which is causing the issue. It is highlighted in blue. In case there are multiple labels highlighted, you need to match the error message in the validation check to the error message that appears when you hover above the label
- After clicking the label, you need to look at the Fact Properties pane, which is directly to the right of the presentation window, and scroll to the bottom
- Under the subheader in the Fact Properties pane which is labelled “Calculations” you can see the calculations for the element, and in this case a calculation for both your Comprehensive Income and Statement of Changes in Equity will appear (note that the two calculations aren’t similar). When you are experiencing this issue a number of subtotals will be missing from one of the calculations, and these need to be added for the calculation to be correct
- After you have identified the missing subtotals you can add them to the relevant sheets in your Excel template. In the example above it would be as simple as adding “other comprehensive income” as a subtotal to the Statement of Changes in Equity
- After you have added the subtotal in your Excel template, you need to update the calculations in the related cells, otherwise you may end up counting the same amounts twice. For the example above it would mean that the calculations in your Excel template would need to be updated to reflect that exchange differences + cashflow hedges = other comprehensive income, while net profit + other comprehensive income = comprehensive income;
- Before you add the subtotal to your PDF file, it's a good idea to run a test conversion using only your Excel sheet, as this will let you check if the issue has been solved.
- When you have made sure that the issue has been corrected, you need to add the subtotal in the relevant places in your PDF as well.
If you experience any issues during this procedure, feel free to write our support team at support@parseport.com and they will help you sort the issue out.