Getting Started

This page provides a step-by-step description of the basic functionalities of the Convergence Assistant. Note that the activities described should be performed in the order in which they are presented: in other words, you should first upload your trial balance, then do the mapping, then generate the financial reports, and finally use the Drill screen to browse and reconcile those reports. If this does not happen the results that you will get will be based on the pre-loaded sample data.

Note: Click once to open and twice to close any item on the following list

UPLOAD

Here you provide the data that you want to use, typically a trial balance. The data that you see in the Trial Balance section of the screen are pre-loaded sample data. You can add more lines using the Insert Data Manually fields, modify or delete the existing lines with the Edit and Delete buttons on each line. When you are happy with the results, just click Generate XBRL GL Trial Balance, and you can move on to Mapping.

If you want to use a different set of data, you can either load a pre-defined CSV file, or insert your data manually.

Load CSV file

Click Browse to select the CSV file with the data that you want to use, and then click Upload to visualize them in the Trial Balance table to the right.

The CSV file must be named "tb.csv" and must have the following fields:

Account (Mandatory, Alphanumeric)

Description (Alphanumeric)

Amount (Mandatory, Monetary. )

DC (Mandatory, Text, valid values "D" or "C")

Date (Mandatory, date/time, format "mm/dd/yyyy")

Segment (Alphanumeric)

Scenario (Alphanumeric)

The first line must contain the field names. This is a sample of a valid CSV file:

Account,Description,Amount,DC,Date,Segment,Scenario

1000,Cash,2342,,03/19/2008,,,

1200,Bank,23000,,03/19/2008,,,

Insert Data Manually

Just type the data in the fields provided. Account, Amount, Deb./Cred. and Date are mandatory fields. Click Insert to create a new Trial Balance line with the data you typed.

Trial Balance

The Trial Balance table shows the inserted or uploaded lines in a multi-page format. Click the page number at the bottom to change the view to that page. Each line has an Edit and a Delete button to modify the data.

Generate XBRL GL Trial Balance

Click the Generate XBRL GL Trial Balance button to generate the trial balance in XBRL GL format. You can open the document or save it on your disk for further use. You can now move on to the next step, Map.

MAP

Here you map your trial balance to a standard chart of accounts. The pre-defined standard chart of accounts is the GIFI - General Index of Financial Information, used in Canada. Many other choices of standard chart of accounts are available, check WikiAccounts or contact us for more information.

The tree list to the left shows the account names and descriptions from the XBRL GL trial balance generated in the previous step. The tree list to the right shows the standard chart of accounts, also provided in XBRL GL format.

Create Link

Select one account in the Map From section by clicking on the check box. Select the corresponding account in the Map To section, and click on the Create link button. Multiple "From" accounts can be selected and linked to one "To" account at the same time.

Delete Link

To undo a link that you created, select a "From" account that appears under a "To" account in the Map To section of the screen, and click the Delete Link button.

Save Mapping

When all the "From" accounts have been linked, click Save mapping to generate the mapping from the original data to the standard chart of accounts in XBRL GL format. You can open the document or save it to your disk for further use. You can now move on to the next step, Generate.

GENERATE

Here you generate multiple financial statements in XBRL format from the trial balance provided and the mapping that you created, each based on a different XBRL taxonomy. You can open the documents or save them to your disk for further use. The pre-defined taxonomies are Canadian GAAP and IFRS, but other taxonomies are available as well. Contact us for more information.

DRILL

Here you can navigate the trial balance and the financial statements created in the Generate screen, and find out where each account rolls up in the different financial statement formats. This is all done through XBRL data: XBRL GL provides an application independent representation of the trial balance and of the mapping of each account to a financial statement line item in multiple end reporting formats, which are represented with specific XBRL taxonomies, CA-GAAP and IFRS in this case. You can use the interface provided here to navigate between and reconcile the end reports, or you can just download the XBRL instances generated in each of the previous steps and process them with other XBRL GL and XBRL aware components, or build your own.

Trial Balance

This table shows the inserted or uploaded lines in a multi-page format. Click the page number at the bottom to change the view to that page. Click the Select button on each line to select an account and see where it rolls up to in each Financial Statement format. The selected line will be highlighted in red.

CA-GAAP Financial Statements

This table shows the Canadian GAAP financial statements generated from the trial balance and the mapping provided. When a line is selected in the Trial Balance table, the financial statement line item (FSLI) where the selected account rolls up to is highlighted in red. A Detail table that shows the list of all the accounts in the trial balance that roll up to that same FSLI is shown under the Financial Statements.

IFRS Financial Statements

This table shows the IFRS financial statements generated from the trial balance and the mapping provided. When a line is selected in the Trial Balance table, the financial statement line item (FSLI) where the selected account rolls up to is highlighted in red. A Detail table that shows the list of all the accounts in the trial balance that roll up to that same FSLI is shown under the Financial Statements.