How SBR works
Regulatory requirements are essential to the proper functioning of the economy, but overly complicated regulation wastes both public and private money. Here is how SBR developed a new way of reporting that is simpler and better for business.
Less information required
SBR reduces both the amount of data and the number of reports that governments require. For example, SBR has already reduced the number of unique data elements required across more than 50 financial government reports from 9,648 to 2,838, a reduction of 70 per cent in the pieces of information businesses have to track, analyse and report on. This was achieved by harmonising or standardising the names or terms describing reporting terms.
Standardised reporting terms
Because of the lack of standardisation in terms across government reports, businesses often have to interpret terms for one agency that have a different meaning in another, or use a variety of terms for different agencies that actually mean the same thing. For example, most government agencies require an Australian Business Number (ABN) in their reports. Early SBR analysis revealed that nine different names were used to describe the ABN in reports across participating agencies.
To address these issues, SBR developed a single reporting language (SBR Taxonomy), based on international best practice and standards. The taxonomy is a collection of reportable terms and their association with accounting and related concepts. Harmonising (or standardising) the definitions of these terms enables government to remove unnecessary or duplicated data in the reporting obligations. The taxonomy, when mapped to the financial and payroll data in a business system, simplifies and automates much of the reporting processes.
The taxonomy makes it possible to map government reporting terms directly to the appropriate information in a business’s financial / accounting or payroll system. The mapped taxonomy replacse the current reporting rules embedded in the various software packages, enable a clear audit trail between accounts and reporting and provide separate discernable reports for each agency, by due date.
SBR-enabled software
Software developers are progressively SBR-enabling accounting software packages and some industry or business-specific financial management systems for government forms in scope. Different software providers will choose different government reports to implement with SBR, according to their customers’ requirements. The same report may be implemented differently in different software packages. See the software available on the SBR product register.
SBR works closely with Australian software developers (both proprietary and in house) to provide common components and specifications that all developers can use to modify existing software to be SBR-enabled. Developers will use eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), an open standard mark-up language optimised for business information, including but not limited to financial and accounting information. It is a variant of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and adopts the same syntax and related technologies (XML Schema, XLink). XBRL provides an identifying tag for each individual item of data. This allows computers to recognise, select, store and exchange information quickly and effectively.
SBR has developed infrastructure that allows businesses systems to send electronic reports securely and in real time to any of the agencies in SBR’s scope. This infrastructure acts as an electronic postal system — moving reports from business software securely to the relevant government agency and returning a receipt or acknowledgement. This system also validates that the contents of reports are syntactically correct and the correct taxonomy has been used.
Pre-filled reports
Because of the standardisation of reporting terms (taxonomy) and the use of XBRL, SBR-enabled software will be able to recognise pieces of data needed for different reports and automatically assemble them in a defined format. Data will come either from information held in business software, or information held by the government agency to which a business is reporting. This will make business reporting more of a natural consequence of other business activities.
AUSkey - a single secure sign-on
SBR-enabled software provides access to a AUSkey - single secure sign-on or common authentication system for government online services. For businesses, this will mean a single credential for dealing with all participating agencies online rather than using a handful of user IDs and passwords to interact with government. This will provide an improved experience over existing authentication systems, including faster registration and easier ongoing maintenance.
Last updated 5 July 2010
