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eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) Format for Malaysian Business Reporting System
Suruhanjaya Syarikat Malaysia (SSM) has recently announced that “Malaysian Business Reporting System” (MBRS), a submission platform based on the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) format will be used in the annual submission filing that includes
a) Financial statements and reports (FS);
b) Annual return (AR); and
c) Exemption applications (EA) which are related to the FS and AR applications.
eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) Explained
What is eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL)? Just imagine that you happened to hop over to a website and look at the company’s financial statements. We usually see these statements in plain text. That means we will have to either manually type or copy and paste each account and corresponding number into the spreadsheet if we wanted to run analysis on the statements. However, the data in XBRL will save us time as we could simply convert this data from the website into a spreadsheet program (usually instantaneously) that is XBRL compatible.
Precisely speaking, XBRL is a standard that has been developed to improve the way in which financial data is communicated. XBRL is a type of XML (extensible markup language) that uses tags to identify each piece of financial data – it is a specification that is used for organizing and defining data, which then allows it to be used programmatically by an XBRL-compatible program.
What is Malaysian Business Reporting System?
MBRS’s guiding principles are based on the financial and non-financial scopes as follows:
b) Applicable approved accounting standards for financial statements which are:
i. Malaysian Private Entities Reporting Standards (MPERS) for a private company that:
- is not itself required to prepare or lodge any financial statements under any law administered by the Securities Commission Malaysia or Bank Negara Malaysia; and
- is not a subsidiary or associate of, or jointly controlled by, an entity which is required to prepare or lodge any financial statements under any law administered by the Securities Commission Malaysia or Bank Negara Malaysia or
ii. Malaysian Financial Reporting Standards (MFRS) for public company.
The Release and Launch of MBRS
The recent announcement has stated that the MBRS system will be released in two stages.
a) MBRS Release 1
At this stage, the stakeholders will be able to download the mTool for free with the following purposes:
iii. To test the elements captured in the mTool displaying the reporting details of the AR, FS or EA;
iv. To test and familiarized with the functionalities and capabilities of the free mTool provided by SSM; and
v. To have sufficient time to attend the training programmes organized by SSM.
You can download the mTool Installer (based on your computer’s compatibility) using the links provided in SSM’s website for a better view of the mTool:
- mTool Installer 32 bit version; or
- mTool Installer 64 bit version.
You can also refer to the MBRS Preparation Tool Release 1 Installation Guide to get the detailed installation guide while the MBRS Preparation Tool Release 1 User Manual will explain the basic functionalities and capabilities of the system.
b) MBRS Launch
SSM will launch the MBRS Portal in the second quarter of 2018. A company may submit, pre-populate the AR data and manage the company’s dashboard via the portal when the MBRS portal is officially launched.
The Scope of Submission
Users can get a clearer idea of which types of filing are allowed under the MBRS submission platform from the “MBRS Summary – Scope of Submission”. Users can choose to view the AR, FS, or EA respectively in the MBRS Preparation Tool launch window once the MBRS Preparation Tool is successfully installed.
