Defining Taxonomy Labels? Guidance now available

Defining Taxonomy Labels? Guidance now available

Labels are an essential part of an XBRL taxonomy, providing human-readable descriptions of the tags that it defines. XBRL provides a very flexible and powerful mechanism for defining labels, supporting labels of different types and in different languages.

In order to help taxonomy creators define labels in a clear and consistent manner, the XBRL International Best Practices Board (BPB), following the recommendation from the Taxonomy Architecture Task Force (TAGTF), has published three draft guidance documents on different aspects of label creation.

The standard labels guidance introduces the topic of taxonomy labels and recommends the best practice approach for standard labels (the default label) creation.

The label roles guidance focuses on how best to use the different label types (roles) that are available to taxonomy authors, and provides guidance on how to use each of the standardised label roles, including those in the Link Role Registry.

As demonstrated by the GLEIF annual report featured in this newsletter, provision of labels in multiple languages allows the taxonomy, and XBRL reports that use it, to be understood in different languages. The multilingual labels guidance discusses how to define multilingual labels within a taxonomy.

We need you! Please help us by reviewing and providing your feedback on this guidance documentation to tagtf-feedback@xbrl.org.