XBRL Facts for Financial AI: Preserve Periods and Units

Preserve what the financial fact measures

An enterprise AI buyer receiving financial disclosure extracts needs to know whether the delivered numbers can answer the intended question. A column labeled date beside a column labeled value leaves open whether the value covers a year, a quarter or a moment. Copying every digit can preserve the amount while losing the basis for using it.

In the XBRL 2.1 Recommendation of December 31, 2003, with errata to February 20, 2013, an item's contextRef points to its context, which carries entity and period information. Periods distinguish instants from intervals; numeric items separately reference units through unitRef. Units can express currency or ratios. A reference is useful to an extract consumer only if its meaning remains resolvable.

For the buyer, the practical question is which comparisons the delivered representation substantiates. Start with the concept being measured, the entity it describes, the period it covers and the unit of its value. Those meanings must survive wherever the proposed AI input is actually received.

References: [XB21]

XBF-01: four rows sharing December 31, 2025

XBF-01 is an original fictional case for one entity, E. RevenueR has the same stipulated reporting scope in all three revenue rows; AssetsA is a different concept. R2's quarter is wholly contained in R1's annual period. All amounts are already normalized absolute currency units.

No dimensional differences, amendments, missing data or currency-conversion rates are supplied. The table contains the entire four-row case. These are conceptual rows with readable period labels, rather than valid XBRL or SEC API payloads or an issuer dataset. No live API retrieval, model run or empirical test was performed.

The quarter is already inside the annual revenue

R1 and R2 match on entity, revenue concept, scope and currency. Their periods differ. R1 covers the whole supplied year; R2 covers the final quarter within that year.

Adding USD 80,000,000 and USD 25,000,000 produces USD 105,000,000 arithmetically. Presenting that sum as annual revenue counts the contained quarter twice: once within R1 and once again through R2. Different start dates explain the overlap even though both rows end on December 31.

Deleting one row simply because the entity, concept and end date match would cause a different loss. R1 answers the annual-amount question; R2 answers the supplied quarter-amount question. Both can be useful observations without being additive annual increments. The extract needs to preserve their distinction so the consumer can choose the period the question actually requests.

A currency change or concept change needs another basis

R3 has the same supplied annual revenue concept, entity and scope as R1, but its unit is CAD. The arithmetic expression 80,000,000 + 110,000,000 does not establish a revenue total in either currency. No exchange rate, conversion date or conversion method is supplied. Equal period labels cannot fill that gap.

Nor would supplying a conversion basis by itself justify adding two currency presentations of the same revenue scope. The buyer would still need to establish why the amounts represent separate contributions to the requested total. XBF-01 supplies no such contributions and no preferred currency presentation.

A1 differs in both concept and period meaning. Its USD 120,000,000 is assets at year-end, a stock amount at an instant. R1's USD 80,000,000 is revenue over the year, a flow over a duration. Sharing a currency and displayed day does not make assets another annual revenue increment. A1 cannot fill a missing revenue observation merely because its value is available.

One supported calculation: the quarter's share of the year

For the narrower question, what share of the supplied annual revenue belongs to the supplied quarter, R2 and R1 provide the stated basis. They concern the same entity, concept, reporting scope and USD unit, and the quarter lies wholly within the year.

The calculation is 25,000,000 / 80,000,000 = 0.3125, or 31.25%. The denominator includes the numerator's quarter. That containment makes this a quarter-to-year share in the fictional case, whereas adding the two amounts as annual increments double-counts it.

The result is not revenue growth: no prior comparable quarter or year is supplied. It is not a margin or return. It also supplies no general method for reconstructing missing quarters, reconciling filings or combining facts across taxonomies. Its usefulness is precise: retaining the periods and units makes this one requested interpretation supportable.

Keep date boundaries and reported accuracy intelligible

XBRL International's August 29, 2024 explanation, Dates in XBRL, shows why human labels can hide whether a balance belongs before or after a stated day. It distinguishes a moment from a duration with start and end boundaries. Preserve the source's boundary meaning when interpreting a date label; do not assume an API's date fields use every convention of raw XBRL syntax.

The XBRL 2.1 decimals attribute describes reported numeric accuracy in decimal places. It is not a multiplier for an already normalized value. XBF-01's already normalized amounts need no further scaling from decimals.

References: [XBDATE][XB21]

SEC API selections add their own scope and period limits

The SEC's EDGAR API guidance, dated June 6, 2024 and last reviewed or updated April 8, 2025, describes XBRL aggregation limited to non-custom-taxonomy facts applying to the entire filing entity. Its companyconcept output separates facts into arrays by unit. These selections do not promise every original filing fact, custom extension or segment.

The frames API selects one fact for each reporting entity that is last filed and most closely fits the requested calendar period. The SEC warns that underlying reporting start and end dates can differ. A common frame label therefore does not establish identical fiscal intervals.

For a buyer comparing extracted annual or quarterly observations, the underlying dates and the selection basis remain relevant after a row receives a convenient calendar label. The API category alone does not resolve the period comparison illustrated by XBF-01.

References: [SECAPI]

Judge the delivered comparison, then the wider coverage

Use the same four-row case to examine a proposed extract at its delivery boundary. Can its supplied representation distinguish R1 from R2, keep R3's CAD unit visible and explain why A1 answers an assets question? Can it support the limited 31.25% interpretation while leaving the unsupported totals unresolved? Those explanations show more about this requirement than a claim that all numeric characters were extracted.

If the output retains only entity, revenue label, end date and amount, the buyer cannot recover R1's and R2's intervals from those fields alone. If it drops currency, it also loses the basis for distinguishing R1 from R3. The original filing may contain the missing information, but it must be recoverable through the delivered representation or a supplied, usable reference before the proposed comparison is substantiated.

Once those meanings survive, assess the wider applicability. The actual taxonomy and concept definitions, dimensional scope, source filing, amendment or selection basis, and intended use still matter. Matching labels do not establish matching definitions, and a tidy fact key does not establish complete coverage, accounting correctness, compliance or AI model quality.

Financial input questions also have separate owners. The linked FIX guide explains why an execution report is not automatically an individual fill. The historical feature guide examines which retained version could have been available for a past prediction. Preserving a financial reporting period answers neither the event-purpose question nor the historical-availability question.

Discuss a separate customer-selected equipment installation

If the wider project also requires a separate physical equipment installation, Leviathan's Complete Physical Deployment service and project inquiry below provide a route to discuss agreed receiving, rack integration, installation, IT cabling and physical handoff. Share a nonconfidential outline of the customer-selected equipment, destination and physical requirements to discuss scope and availability.

That inquiry concerns physical installation. Financial data supply, EDGAR integration, AI engineering and accounting or compliance advice remain with the separately appointed providers.

References: [L1]