US GAAP Disclosure Analysis (Prototype): Property, plant, and equipment

To the left is a list of reporting entities who have provided a specific disclosure in their XBRL-based digital financial report. Click on the name of the entity and the disclosure will show up on the right. For more information please concact CharlesHoffman@olywa.net or go to http://xbrl.squarespace.com/understanding-sec-xbrl-financi/.

Property, plant, and equipment

Property, plant, and equipment is a relatively common disclosure, a fairly easy disclosure to understand, and a disclosure where there are very few duplicate concepts in the US GAAP XBRL Taxonomy so the mapping is straight forward. Generally the following pieces are provided:

Note: This disclosure fits into some note, the SEC requires a 'Level 1 [Text Block]. (not being analyzed)
Property, plant, and equipment components: This entails both a Level 3 [Text Block] and Level 4 Detail disclosure of the exact same information.
Other information: KEEP IN MIND THE FOLLOWING. This analyis is NOT ABOUT analyzing everything that must be disclosed. This analysis is about analyzing the specific pieces which must ALWAYS exist if this disclosure exists.

The following are visual images of the pieces described above using a filing which conforms to 100% of what is expected:

Disclosure Text Block:

Disclosure Detail (key information):

Disclosure Detail (all information, rendered using SEC viewer):

Disclosure Detail (all information, rendered using XBRL Cloud Viewer):

Common reason for nonconformance:

Of the nonconforming filings, 5 of them used the text block us-gaap:PropertyPlantAndEquipmentTextBlock which most filers use to represent the components of PPE to represent the estimated useful lives disclosure instead. Here is an example:

Another relatively common reason for nonconformance is a filer including the fact construction in progress between gross and net PPE as contrast to including construction in progress within gross PPE. This is NOT filer error. This is an error in the algorithm used to read this information, it needs to be adjusted to allow for this alternaive which is allowed by US GAAP. Here is an example:

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