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On-line filing of accounts and XBRL

HMRC
Corporation tax returns and the accompanying accounts can be submitted on paper or via the internet. When submitted via the internet a pdf file of the accounts is required (see Printing the accounts to a pdf file).

From October 2009 the accounts can also be submitted over the internet as an iXBRL file (see below for explanation).

From April 2011 HMRC will no longer accept corporation tax returns and the accompanying accounts on paper. All returns must be filed over the internet and the accounts must be in iXBRL format. HMRC will no longer accept pdf's of the accounts. VT Software are working hard on building an iXBRL facility into VT Final Accounts in time for this deadline.

Companies House
Most accounts are submitted on paper. However Companies House do have an optional facility to file the abbreviated accounts of a small audit exempt company via the internet as an XBRL file. VT Software has not yet taken advantage of this facility, but will do at some point in the future. Companies House do not accept accounts as a pdf file.

From the summer of 2010 Companies House will also accept the full accounts of unaudited companies as an iXBRL file, and this will be extended to all main account types by summer 2011. They have not indicated that this will be mandatory. VT Software's presumption is that it will not be.

XBRL
An XBRL file is a text file. A line in an XBRL file might look like this:

<CurrentAssets>1000</CurrentAssets>

Please note that in real life, XBRL is somewhat more complicated than this.

CurrentAssets illustrated above can be referred to as a tag. The list of possible tags is known as a taxonomy.

An XBRL file contains no information about the format of the accounts. Hence the accounts cannot be reproduced exactly in their original format. XBRL works well for the abbreviated accounts required by Companies House as the numbers can be put back into a standard template to produce a printable version. For a full set of accounts it is impossible to recreate the accounts in anything like their original format.

iXBRL (Inline XBRL)
iXBRL was recently invented on HMRC's behalf. An iXBRL file consist of two parts merged together:

• The accounts in HTML format (the text based language that web pages are written in)
• XBRL tags around the numbers and other facts in the accounts

An iXBRL file can be opened in a web browser. The browser will display the accounts in human readable format and ignore the XBRL tags. Special software can be written to strip out the the XBRL tags and produce pure XBRL.

VT Software's plans
An iXBRL enabled version of VT Final Accounts will be released in December 2010.