Checklist for ESEF submission

Do you know what to do before submitting your Annual Report for the ESEF?

Here are some tips and best practices to help submit your report progress smoothly. We recommend testing and reviewing early to ensure no surprises as you get close to finalizing your final Annual Report.

If your local regulator has opened a test submission area, use that to test your submission.

Note: Regulators may have slight variances on requirements and methods for submitting your Annual Report. Be sure to review and confirm your local jurisdiction requirements and understand where the submission should be sent well in advance of your expected submission date.

If you are submitting your Annual Report to multiple regulators, make sure that the relevant requirements are made for each regulator.

XBRL review

Note: If you are preparing the standalone XHTML file, the same steps should be followed except for XBRL items. The final report should be saved from Save as > XHTML. Once exported, the file name should be updated to include the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI), report date, and language. For more information, read the ESEF Reporting Manual Guidance 4.1.5.

To make sure the XBRL in your submission document is ready, here are some high-level guidelines and links to articles to help you:

▢ Download Filing Documents from the latest XBRL Generation.

▢ Make sure all necessary calculation relationships are added to your document and review the calculation report for errors.

▢ Make sure the XBRL fact values have appropriate signs (+/-).

▢ Review all extension tags and anchors.

▢ Review LEI and mandatory facts close to submission date when all data is available.

▢ Generate XBRL and review messages in the notification panel, ensuring that all error messages have been cleared, and warning messages have been addressed.

Make sure to set the country you are submitting to in the XBRL Profile.
If you have a Professional Services Manager, please reach out to them for assistance with error/warning resolution.

▢ Preview the document in the iXBRL Viewer.

Report format review

Working with a design agency for your Annual Report? Review our Community post with the Design Reporting Guidelines. It is extremely important that design agencies are following the Design Reporting Guidelines in your process. If these guidelines are not followed, your report format may not look the way you expect it to in XHTML.

If an ESEF document type is selected, images and external hyperlinks should be reviewed. External hyperlinks may be allowed in certain situations and the user should review all instances.

For standalone XHTML, you will have the option to select whether hyperlinks should be exported or not.

Final checklist

Here are some things you can do in the days leading up to your submission and the day of your submission to help you have a successful submission.

Days before submitting

In the days leading up to your submission:
▢ Check any required audit or other assurance is finalized.

▢ Ensure audit reports and appropriate signatures have been obtained.

▢ Review Document Health and fix any issues.

▢ Review image requirements and restrictions so they follow the ESEF guidelines.

Accepted ESEF image types include .svg, .png, .jpg and .gif
Images are the greatest contributor to large file sizes. If your jurisdiction has file size limits, ensure that they are not causing your file to exceed the limit.

▢ Generate XBRL in the submission document and resolve validation errors.

▢ Use the XBRL Profile to combine your submission documents.

▢ Preview the XHTML financial report sections, and make formatting changes.

Make sure all tracked changes have been accepted.

▢ Update submission documents after making changes.

▢ Backup submission documents by downloading the Filing Documents package.

▢ Continue to monitor any changes to XHTML for corresponding changes to XBRL.

▢ Continue to update XBRL as necessary and resolve XBRL validation messages.

▢ After any XBRL update, perform a quick check of iXBRL Viewer.

Day of submission

In the hours leading up to submitting:

▢ Verify the correct XBRL profile is selected if you are filing both an Annual Report for the ESEF and a 20-F for the SEC.

▢ Finish making any changes to submission documents at least 2 hours before the planned submission time.

▢ Verify that you have all required signatures and dates and are meeting local sign off requirements if they exist.

▢ Preview the XHTML files.