The difference between these two fields on the Add Presentation, Presentation Wizards and Presentation Properties dialog is subtle but important.
Before discussing the fields, it is important to remember that on an XBRL report, a financial figure or fact has two different aspects: the raw data of the fact and the displayed data of the fact. An XBRL editor or viewer can set facts to display based on the facts’ precision. This means that the data you commonly see and work with on an XBRL report may not be the same as the raw data of the fact.
Most financial tables have figures on them that are not the same as the actual information that is being reported. A financial table may be said to be “In Thousands” or “In Millions” or in any precision. For HTML or ASCII reports, this component is set in a human readable format as part of the title of the table. For XBRL reports, which are primarily meant to be analyzed by a computer but are also human readable, this component is broken out to ensure that whatever method is being used to analyze the report can recognize the accuracy of each financial figure.
GoFiler Complete and GoXBRL enable you to work with the data in the same way that you would on an HTML or ASCII table. You don’t have to worry about trailing zeroes for a table that is reported “in millions”. That’s where these two important fields on the Presentation Properties dialog come in.
View/Edit Monetary Facts in
This setting is the field that will let you work with the financial figures exactly as they appear in the original version of your financials. This setting pertains to working within GoFiler Complete and GoXBRL.
The value set in this field actually does two things:
- It rounds all monetary facts displayed to the listed decimal place when you view data in a field. What does this mean? Well, an example might be the easiest way to illustrate this. If you have this field set to -3 and the raw data of a fact is 111,222,333, you will see 111,222 as the data for that fact if it is used on this presentation. Likewise, you would see 111,223 if the raw data of the fact was 111,222,888.
- It takes all numbers entered for monetary elements and multiplies them by the listed factor when you enter data into a field. For example, if the field was set to Thousands, the number 10,100 entered into a fact on the presentation would have the value 10,100,000 as its raw data.
Because the viewing and editing values are linked, you always see the fact as you entered it. This field should always be set to the value seen in the heading of the financial table to make sure there are no mistakes in translating the data from the HTML/ASCII to XBRL.
Please note that the setting in this field affects only monetary data.
Default Precision
All of the Default Precision fields set the same option but for different types of data. These fields affect monetary, share, earnings per share, and pure values respectively. They set the precision of the fact. The precision of a fact tells viewers or analysis software how accurate a number is. If a balance sheet is in thousands, the numbers on that balance sheet are only accurate to the thousands precision.
Most XBRL viewers use the precision data to determine how to display the numbers on a presentation. If all the facts on the presentation are set to the same precision, many viewers will remove the trailing zeroes from the raw data of the fact and format the numbers just like GoFiler Complete and GoXBRL. You will see “in thousands” in the title of the presentation and the financial figures without the final zeroes.
To draw a final example that illustrates the difference between these two fields, take the following scenario:
The View/Edit Monetary Facts in field is set to “0 (As Entered)”. The Default Precision field is set to “-3 (Thousands)”. For a monetary line item, the user enters “1000”. The raw data of the fact will appear as “1000” and the line item will display “1000” in GoFiler Complete or in GoXBRL. However, in other viewers, which use the Default Precision value to determine how to display facts on a presentation, this line item will appear as “1”. (This example assumes that the viewer selects the precision of this fact to display the entire presentation.)
In nearly every case, these two settings should be set to the same value. Advanced users may find the option to set different values useful when dealing with a presentation that contains monetary data with decimal points.
