What is iXBRL?
Statutory accounts filed electronically to Companies House are in iXBRL format.
This format, which uses XML as the representation, includes structured tagging of financial facts in the file alongside presentation markup. This makes the data both human-readable and machine-readable.
All companies will be required to file accounts electronically (in iXBRL format) from April 2028. See https://changestoukcompanylaw.campaign.gov.uk/changes-to-accounts/.
For accounts filed by paper, there is no iXBRL available from Companies House.
The iXBRL data structure allows automation of extracting information from accounts.
Caveats
- until April 2028, companies can and do file paper accounts which means the iXBRL is not available.
- software bugs in accounts production software mean that even when iXBRL is available, the tagged data may not always be correct.
- companies of different sizes have different filing requirements, so some information like profit and loss or turnover is not available for all companies.
Extracting information from XBRL files
Extracting financial and other information from XBRL files can be technically complex and challenging. The format is quite involved and cannot simply be "converted" to another format like JSON or CSV without understanding the structure. Each XBRL instance (file) references a taxonomy, such as one published by the FRS, which provides more information about the facts reported in the file, such as whether a particular fact is a credit or debit.
Pre-built parsers (open source)