Last reviewed: 20/9-2024
When Block tagging a note that contains a table, our engine will extract the information within the table and it will be part of the fact and the concept that we have selected before ('Mandatory element' of the Annex II RTS). Unfortunately, the layout of the table will not be transported to the fact value but its information will. As long as the information can be interpreted and resembles the original document, everything will be correct, even if the style is not necessarily maintained.
Although the limitations in these transformation mechanics in extracting the formatting of tables is well-known by ESMA - see Guidance 2.2.6 ‘Readability of the information extracted from a block tag’ of ESMA’s Reporting Manual, it is still mandatory to ensure that the rendering of the tagged information in a table is extracted in a legible and human-readable manner. The difficulty in the technical reproduction of the same formatting and ergonomy of the original document does not exempt the issuer from representing numbers in the same order, readable according to tables rendering, readable by the human eye.
How to extract tables in XBRL readers:
PDF format:
Whether you use hypertags or Text Search as a tagging method, you can make the tables of your notes extractable by simply inserting a link in the corresponding areas with tables. In the same way that you will insert hypertags or area://text links with our Text Search method (check TextSearch Tagging Method Tutorial- chapter 6), you would perform the insertion of area://table links in AdobePro and frame them as close as possible to the tables on top of the existing links whether it is a hypertag or a area://text link.
Epub format or FastTrack :
After the release of our latest ParsePort Platform, our product is now able to accommodate more visual digital inputs to comply with ESMA readability obligations. Visual digital formats such as Epub or HTML can now be converted along with the technical Excel file.
Native HTML or Epub from Indesign is focused on content and then applies rendering standards so that it can work across all the XBRL technical readers in a human readable way. Using a Epub format allows to deliver highly structured content from original files in such a way that tables, headers, sub-headers, text paragraphs, etc. will be easily recognizable.
FastTrack tutorial (our digital transition name allowed with epub format in our new platform) can be found here.
We highly recommend forwarding the tutorial to your designer so the exercise is performed only once from Indesign source file, allowing multiple exports of epub containing the tagging set-up.