Seattle Method

Ask yourself this question:  In your current accounting system, can you follow a financial transaction all the way back to the business event that spawned the transaction and then forward again to the exact financial statement line item where it ultimately appears? And can you also start at any financial statement line item and drill down to the full set of underlying business events and transactions that roll up into that reported amount? If you can’t move effectively and confidently in both directions; from summary to detail and from detail back to summary; what exactly is preventing that? Semantic fragmentation inhibits traceability. Traceability is one of the most important aspects of the universal technology of accountability . Accounting is a designed system. Accounting has built in transparency and traceability mechanisms. That traceability is reversable meaning it works in both directions. In addition, accounting has built in quality control mechanisms such as double entry ...

Semantics is the meaning behind the words we use. A theory defines the semantics of some system we use within an area of knowledge. A theory relates to some specific context and for some specific purpose.  A theory achieves this definition process using the formal language of logic . The elements of logic are used to provide definitions in the form of logical statements that form the theory. A theory provides semantic scaffolding, a common semantic foundation, essential infrastructure. (Universal truths related to the system, contextual validation, categorization) A theory provides a deliberate, carefully vetted, explicit, formal controlled vocabulary of terms which represent the important things (i.e. nature and structure) in a system, the organization (i.e. "is-a", "general-special")   of those things (i.e. primitive things and complex/compound things; concrete things and abstract things) within that specific system which includes the categorization or classific...

The purpose of this blog post is to reconcile the alignment of the Seattle Method , XBRL International's Open Information Model (OIM), and the Object Management Group's Standard Business Report Model (SBRM).  The Seattle Method, OIM, and SBRM are pretty much aligned because the Seattle Method is based on XBRL and OIM and the Seattle Method is also the basis for much of SBRM. The Seattle Method, OIM, and SBRM will then form an aligned formal global industry standards based  conceptualization of  a business report and the foundation upon which model-driven digital business reporting (including financial reporting) ecosystem will be built. First off, the Seattle Method, OIM, and SBRM should be grounded in some sort of upper level or top level ontology . This provides a rock solid foundation. Second, the objective is to create something like an " accounting oracle ", metadata for an ecosystem. That is the bigger picture. The following are a handful of key " thing...