The department of trade and industry has issued a notice instructing South African businesses to change the formatting of their annual financial results.

Published on Friday (2 March), the notice states that all qualifying entities required to submit annual financial results under section 30 of the Companies Act will now be required to do so through eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL).

XBRL is a freely available and global standard for exchanging business information.

Within the last ten years, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the United States, the United Kingdom’s HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), and Companies House, Singapore had begun to require companies to use it, and other regulators are following suit.

According to the notice, as of 1 July 2018 this will be the only accepted mechanism of submission in South Africa, effectively replacing the current mechanism of PDF documents.

More information on the mandating of XBRL can be found on the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) website.

Click here to view notice