Accounting and Audit Reference Data Model

The project will develop a high-level semantic Reference Data Model in the area of Accounting and Audit under the principle of semantic hub of our Prospective Directions document of 2016: “UN/CEFACT shall be the semantic hub for all of our internal deliverables and will also aim to coordinate and bring together the needs of other organizations.”

Work in this area has been developed within UN/CEFACT since the 1990s with a number of UN/EDIFACT messages and more recently UN/CEFACT BRS each with its XML schema. Work has also been undertaken in the XBRL Global Ledger Taxonomy Framework (XBRL GL) and the OECD (SAF-T and SAF-P). The project will look at the completed work in all of these areas and map it into an initial Reference Data Model with common specifications considered by tax administrations, financial and tax auditors and enterprises for audit data representation purposes.

The project will consider existing standards that are openly accessible and free of charge in the area of audit data representation and accounting in general with the aim to create an initial Reference Data Model on the subject. The three standards mentioned above will be considered in a first round, but others are welcome to actively join the work to propose others as well.

There are no known efforts to harmonize the accounting and audit data specifications provided by UN/CEFACT, XBRL and the OECD. There are, however, a number of disparate efforts to explore innovation in the area of audit data to enable financial, internal and government auditors in improving audit data quality through increased innovation, such as advanced audit data analytics and using Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies to create a new, public, transparent, cryptographically-supported, immutable audit trail, enabled by standardized syntax and semantics.

Deliverable 1: A high-level BRS for an Accounting and Audit Reference Data Model
Deliverable 2: An Accounting & Audit Reference Data Model
Deliverable 3: An implementation guide providing mappings at the structural and semantic level with XBRL GL
Deliverable 4: An implementation guide providing mappings at the structural and semantic level with OECD SAF-T and SAF-P

Exit Criteria for Deliv. 1:	Clean draft after Public Review with Comment Log showing how all comments have been addressed
Exit Criteria for Deliv. 2:	Clean draft ready for publication
Exit Criteria for Deliv. 3:	Clean draft ready for publication
Exit Criteria for Deliv. 4:	Clean draft ready for publication

Membership is open to experts with broad knowledge in the area of Public-Private Partnerships, trade facilitation, cash management tied to Supply Chain Finance services or in the legal framework for cross-border trade. Experts are expected to contribute to the work based solely on their expertise and to comply with the UN/CEFACT Code of Conduct and Ethics.

The geographic focus of the project is global.

The following contributions are submitted as part of this proposal. It is understood that these contributions are only for consideration by the Project Team and that other participants may submit additional contributions in order to ensure that as much information as possible is obtained from those with expertise and a  material interest in the project. It is also understood that the Project Team may choose to adopt one or more of these contributions “as is”.

List any initial contributions:
•	UN/EDIFACT Accounting and Audit messages
•	UN/CEFACT Accounting and Audit BRS, RSMs and XML schemas
•	XBRL GHlobal Ledger Taxonomy Framework (XBRL GL)
•	OECD SAF-T and SAF-P

Participants in the project shall provide resources for their own participation. The existence and functioning of the project shall not require any additional resources from the UNECE secretariat.

Milestones

Purchase Order Financing Request (BRS,RSM) 	

2014-12-15

2015-03-01

2015-08-01 

2015-10-01 

2016-03-01 

2016-03-01