Understanding Facts

1. Understanding Facts
Financial Report Semantics and
Dynamics Theory

2. Overview
• Facts
– Value
– Additional traits of numeric fact values
– Characteristics
– Parenthetical explanations

3. Fact
Fact Value
2000
1000
A fact is a piece of information. Financial reports communicate facts. Facts
reported by a financial report can be numeric, text, or even prose.
For example, the two facts above with the values of “2000” and “1000”.

4. Values
Prose:
Textual:
Sed elementum feugiat augue. Nam
non tortor non leo porta bibendum...
Numeric:
1147
A value is the piece of information being reported. The screen shot of a financial
statement note above which discloses information about commitments and
contingencies shows three types of values: numeric, textual, prose.
Numeric and textual are rather straight forward. Prose can be thought of as
information which has sophisticated formatting: paragraphs, tables, lists, etc.
Generally prose should be read in a specific ordering or sequence.

5. Additional traits of numeric fact values
Value
2000
1000
Numeric facts have two additional and important traits: units and rounding. Units
help computers understand if the numeric value is expressed in say US Dollars,
Euros, shares, per share, etc. Rounding helps to understand what can be thought
of as the significant decimal places of the number; it the number expressed to the
nearest thousands, to the dollar, or to the penny.
Computers need this information to work with the numbers correctly; both for
processing computations and in generating renderings of the numeric information.

6. Characteristic
Concept Value
Revenues 2000
Net income 1000
A characteristic describes a fact. Characteristics help
you understand a fact.
For example, a characteristic of the number “2000”
above is that it relates to revenues as opposed to
the number “1000” which relates to net income .

7. Characteristics
Reporting entity Legal entity Period Concept Value
ABC Company Consolidated entity Jan 1, 2011 to Dec 31, 2011 Revenues 2000
ABC Company Consolidated entity Jan 1, 2011 to Dec 31, 2011 Net income 1000
Financial facts can have a number of characteristics.
For example, some common characteristics include
the reporting entity, legal entity, period, and
concept which describe a reported financial fact.

8. Fact
Reporting Legal entity Period Concept Value Units Rounding
entity
ABC Consolidated entity Jan 1, 2011 to Dec 31, Revenues 2000 US Dollars Thousands
Company 2011 of dollars
ABC Consolidated entity Jan 1, 2011 to Dec 31, Net income 1000 US Dollars Thousands
Company 2011 of dollars
So the fact is the value (including the traits which further describe numeric values) and all of the
characteristics which describe the value.
So above we know that the value “2000” is for the concept “Revenues”, for the period “Jan 1, 2011 to Dec
31, 2011”, relates to the legal entity “Consolidated entity”, of the reporting entity “ABC Company”. We also
know that the numeric value is expressed in the units US Dollars and are rounded to the nearest thousands
of dollars.
Further, the example above contains two facts.

9. Parenthetical Explanations
Parenthetical
explanation
Parenthetical
explanation
Facts may have parenthetical explanations which provide additional descriptive
information about a fact.
For example, information contained within a line item of a financial statement or as a
footnote on the bottom of the page of one of the financial statements are examples of
parenthetical explanations.

10. Summary
• Facts
– Value
– Characteristics
– Additional traits of numeric fact values
– Parenthetical explanations