FRC: e-tagging of charities’ accounts supported by consultation
The charity convention will be used when tagging charity accounts for electronic filing and for other analytical purposes
PROPOSALS to enable the electronic tagging of charities’ accounts have been welcomed by respondents to a consultation carried out by the FRC and the Charity Commission.
Under the plans, the finalised tagging charity convention, or taxonomy, is to be in line with the recently-issued Charity Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP) FRS 102.
The taxonomy will be used when tagging charity accounts for electronic filing and for other analytical purposes. Electronic tagging helps users of financial information to extract relevant information from corporate reports and analyse it more efficiently.
The charity taxonomy follows a similar approach in content, design and style to the existing UK GAAP and IFRS taxonomies that are currently used by UK organisations in submitting their accounts in iXBRL format.
The FRC’s executive director for codes and standards Melanie McClaren said: “On the whole, responses to the consultation have been positive. The digital taxonomy will help make data more accessible and transparent. Some smaller charities expressed concern that implementing digital tagging will be costly and cause more work for them. However the Charity Commission has said that it will not be obligatory to carry out digital filing.”