Abstract
Financial information is reported by public companies to regulators worldwide using a standard rich structured data format, the “Extensible Business Reporting Language”, or XBRL An XBRL report typically comprises two pieces: a file with instance data, made of financial facts contextualised with dates and hypercube dimensions, plus its background ontological information: potentially dozens of files with data element schema and hypercube definitions, hierarchical presentation directives, assertions - a tree graph of XML schema and linkbase resources published on the web.
Pacioli takes all that and converts it into a PROLOG representation, evaluates XBRL formulas, derives new facts, detects higher level patterns, executes diverse types of validation rules, and produces a validation report in multiple formats. It works both as a standalone web application server, and as part of a massive blockchain-coordinated network of validation engines.
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Notes
- 1.
Auditchain, Pacioli Logic and Rules Engine, https://docs.auditchain.finance/auditchain-protocol/pacioli-logic-and-rules-engine.
- 2.
https://ipfs.io, the “InterPlanetary File System”, a decentralized, redundant, robust file storage service.
- 3.
- 4.
Pacioli Technical Analysis report saved to IPFS, https://auditchain.infura-ipfs.io/ipfs/QmSuMTNG1W98U3xTsJRX2cs1LxKQqGKqM9iq2w1HhsaCZB/.
- 5.
“Model” being used here in the broad sense of representation, NOT of Herbrand model. For the above example, https://auditchain.infura-ipfs.io/ipfs/QmSuMTNG1W98U3xTsJRX2cs1LxKQqGKqM9iq2w1HhsaCZB/ReportAndModel.pl.gzip.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
Namely https://pivottable.js.org/examples/ and http://tabulator.info, in addition to SWISH-generated https://graphviz.org graphs.
- 9.
Open sourcing of Pacioli is still under discussion, hence no code URL yet.
- 10.
- 11.
Potentially replacing the XULE expression language by PROLOG: https://pacioli.auditchain.finance/example/XULE.swinb.
- 12.
XBRL reports and rules translate into PROLOG unit clauses: the formula rule facts are meta-interpreted.
- 13.
Pacioli Analysis Summary, https://auditchain.infura-ipfs.io/ipfs/QmNUY15G1dhTXYCpyUyvqYWZ33Nc6mKRUDz7GDgLFonaPs/.
- 14.
“Blocks” emerged from professional practice and are informally explained in Sect. 3.3 of http://accounting.auditchain.finance/framework/LogicalTheoryDescribingFinancialReport.pdf.
- 15.
Full list for this report in https://auditchain.infura-ipfs.io/ipfs/QmNUY15G1dhTXYCpyUyvqYWZ33Nc6mKRUDz7GDgLFonaPs/blocks.html.
- 16.
Rendering of information block, https://auditchain.infura-ipfs.io/ipfs/QmNUY15G1dhTXYCpyUyvqYWZ33Nc6mKRUDz7GDgLFonaPs/01ecbc0ceca6b093c221.html#0fb66fa8527c7cb7ec08.
- 17.
- 18.
Full value assertions list in https://auditchain.infura-ipfs.io/ipfs/QmNUY15G1dhTXYCpyUyvqYWZ33Nc6mKRUDz7GDgLFonaPs/valueAssertions.html.
References
XBRL International, Introduction to XBRL. https://www.xbrl.org/introduction/
XBRL International, XBRL Specifications. https://specifications.xbrl.org/specifications.html
XBRL International, iXBRL, https://www.xbrl.org/the-standard/what/ixbrl/
Charles Hoffman, CPA, Seattle Method. https://xbrlsite.com/seattlemethod/SeattleMethod.pdf
US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. https://www.cfainstitute.org/en/advocacy/issues/gaap#sort=%40pubbrowsedate%20descending
Fundamental Accounting Concepts. https://accounting.auditchain.finance/fac/Index.html
US-GAAP taxonomy. https://accounting.auditchain.finance/reporting-scheme/us-gaap/documentation/Index.html
SWISH: SWI-Prolog for Sharing source repository. https://github.com/SWI-Prolog/swish
Tutorial - Creating Web Applications in SWI-Prolog. https://github.com/Anniepoo/swiplwebtut/blob/master/web.adoc#termerized-html-syntax
Jason Meyers, personal communication, Auditchain’s. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7044740816300351489?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_feedUpdate%3A%28V2%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7044740816300351489%29 LinkedIn page
Acknowledgement
To Jason Meyers and the Auditchain early investors, for betting Auditchain on Pacioli; to Jacinto Dávila for help with Pacioli and for his Auditchain Explorer UI; to Bogdan Fiedur for the blockchain agent and Auditchain smartcontracts; to Christopher Jastrzebski for all the support, and his Auditchain Web3 UI; to Fuad Begic for the complementary Luca report editor under development; to Andrew Noble and Dudley Gould for encouragement and suggestions. To Jan Wielemaker and associates, for a software stack that finally made PROLOG feasible for business applications. And finally, to Bob Kowalski: for his vision half century ago, and all the personal support in recent years.
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Calejo, M., Hoffman, C. (2023). Pacioli: A PROLOG System for Financial Report Processing. In: Warren, D.S., Dahl, V., Eiter, T., Hermenegildo, M.V., Kowalski, R., Rossi, F. (eds) Prolog: The Next 50 Years. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13900. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35254-6_20
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