The Core Ontology for Financial Reporting Information Systems (COFRIS) is grounded on Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO). In this paper, we build on COFRIS and attempt to detail the concepts of Economic Resources and Claims found in accounting frameworks, and to extract their features which are common to accounting and reporting standards. Economic Resources (Claims) are conceptualized as extensions of Complex Social and Legal Relators of UFO, within the consensual transaction-centric model. The application of this conceptualization and COFRIS in general aims to assist with standard-setting and the development of information systems, to facilitate understandability and reuse. The conceptualization is illustrated by examples presented in an ontology-inspired Event Table and is used to analyze the revised IASB® Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting.
Recently, even the international accounting and financial reporting standard-setters board (IASB®) has acknowledged that massive changes in relation to technology will have an impact on accounting and corporate reporting. The standard-setters in their efforts need to account for the existence of the computational accounting systems and technologies including the shared ledger [e.g., 1] and data analytics [e.g., 2], as well as ontology engineering methods and tools, which have proven to cope with difficult standardization issues [e.g., 3, 4, 5].
Information systems were traditionally held inside an enterprise and represented the company perspective on economic exchanges. Evidence from the environment, e.g. invoices from suppliers, was used by the enterprise’s auditors and considered important, but there was no systematic connection between the invoices sent in company A with the invoices recorded in company B. The shared ledger concept, with immutability and consensus of such transactions and involved resources (claims) with the required addition of party-specific asset (liability) information, may provide a better foundation for Financial Reporting (FR), than independent reporting by each individual participant.
Recent versions of international accounting standards which encompass the whole
life of a contract cannot be implemented by accounting departments alone.
Accordingly, SAP’s is developing software on revenue standards implementation [
At the same time, the conceptualization of present FR per se must be much broader than the recognized five elements (assets, liabilities, equity, income, and expenses) defined by CF required for FR presentation, but as a minimum should include intentional, contractual and other “un-recognized” phases of economic exchanges and involved resources (claims), required for FR disclosure in the Notes of Financial Statements.
The Core Ontology for Financial Reporting Information Systems (COFRIS) [
DOFRIS-xx Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting
COFRIS Theory of Economics and Accounting
UFO-ABC, S, L Section 2 provides a brief overview of the UFO ontologies used and previous works on accounting ontology. In Section 3 we introduce the concepts of Economic resources (claims) and detail their usage in Economic exchanges. Section 4 illustrates their usage through examples and presents an ontology inspired Event Table. Section 5, as a partial validation, compares the introduced consensual and correlative multi-level resources (claims) with the revised IASB Conceptual Framework for FR.
OntoUML [
A particular mixin object pattern, analogous to [
In addition to the object types, OntoUML class elements represent types of existentially dependent individuals that can only exist by inhering in other individuals, called moments. Those moments that inhere in one single individual are categorized as «Mode» or «Quality» types. While (individual) qualities are moments that change in a space of possible values (e.g. a color, a temperature, a weight), modes are complex individual moments that can have their own qualities that take their respective values in multiple independent value dimensions (e.g., a capacity, a complex intention). While inhering in a single individual, some modes and qualities can externally depend on other individuals that are independent from their bearers. Moments that existentially depend on two or more individuals are categorized as «Relator » types.
Instances of «Event» types [
In a social context, UFO [
UFO-S is the core reference ontology on services [
Legal aspects of UFO-S contracts are elaborated in [
In [
The underlying object type is restricted to an “allowed type”, and the context of usage is defined in the scope of a material relation (or in the scope of an event).
The legal and the holder-specific aspect of the resource as “an asset owned or controlled” was also regarded, but given the context, was not revealed to enough level of detail required for FR. For example, the employment contract, mentioned in the article, in the agreement (executory) phase is usually not regarded as an asset in Financial Reporting.
The economic aspect of a resource, that in an exchange, for a resource transfer or use, the right to receive another resource of a certain value is obtained, was outside the scope of that article.
Recently, within the VMBO Workshop (see https://vmbo2018.e3value.com), there was
a growing interest in the conceptual modeling of accounting, financial reporting, and
economic resources, using the UFO Foundational Ontology. The models presented
were largely based on Ijiri’s economic exchange conceptualization [
To some extent summarizing these efforts, which are closely related to ours,
Nicola Guarino in [
REA ontology generally doesn’t regard Economic Resources as rights and views
Claims as derivable, not ontological objects. Valuation related concepts are not
explicitly regarded in the REA ontology. In [
However, the economic resource, in this case is the underlying object, but not the bundle of rights. Considering that assets are economic resources controlled by an enterprise, while liabilities and equity are claims against an enterprise, we introduce the concept of an Economic relator that has Economic Resource and/or Claim phases.
Most accounting frameworks [
A Reporting enterprise that operates in an economic market, plays the role of a market participant. Mixin market participants are enterprises and physical persons, groups of enterprises and physical persons, and society at large, and their high-order types. Market participants hold resources (claims) - economic relationships, regulated by norms, over underlying objects, and are valuated in a certain currency of particular market. Market participants are able to commit and fulfil their commitments to exchange use and ownership of resources (claims) they control (indebt). At a macro level, as for national accounts, we can depict economic exchanges as valued (money mediated) transactions among market participants over a year or other period. More specifically for FR we can observe exchanges in which a particular market participant is involved. Participant’s exchange efforts or other events provide value inflow and outflow of its resources (claims). The smallest exchange disposition inheres in a resource (claim).
The contractual economic exchange process involves two market participants and
fulfils a contract. Those performed events that cannot be ascribed to a contractual or a
scheduled (within an enterprise) exchange, are allocated to participant’s exchange with
society for a period. In [
As in [
Economic relationships in COFRIS are represented by Economic Relators as
extensions of Reciprocal Legal Relators. Generally, economic relationships have legal
form, but also include constructive obligations and rights [
An Economic Relator or Resource (Claim) is a reciprocal legal relator between parties whose purpose is to mediate a potential holder’s transfer or use of rights2 over an underlying object, and a counterparty’s reciprocal obligation valued in money, that is fulfilled and manifests itself through economic exchange events (see Fig. 4).
2 Includes ‘Claims to transfer and use rights’ Next, we define the fulfillment phases of the Economic Relator:
An Economic Resource represents a holder’s [rights over an object that have a potential to be transferred or used to the benefit of a counterparty in exchange for an] economic claim against a counterparty – the right to receive value measured in money.
An Economic Claim represents a holder’s obligation to transfer or use rights over an object to the benefit of a counterparty.
An Economic Resource and Claim represents a holder’s obligation to transfer or use rights over an object to the benefit of a counterparty in exchange for an economic claim against a counterparty.
A Recognized Asset is a present economic resource controlled by the holder (in the role of a creditor) as a result of past exchanges.
A Recognized Liability is a present economic claim against the holder (in the role of a debtor) as a result of past exchanges.
For example, ownership3 of an object is a permission to use and a power to transfer the object rights (the use protected from third parties by claim-rights and the transfer by immunity) in exchange for the right to receive economic benefits, subject to agreement of the counterparty. In a contract there is an economic resource and a claim – ownership and the right to receive value. If ownership rights are transferred, the right to receive value is accrued, if the right to receive value is received first, then the claim to transfer ownership rights is enforced.
Resources (Claims) are offered or consensual exchange future or actual action participants, while Assets (Liabilities) represent holder-specific effects and dispositions of exchange actions.
The Underlying object or simply a Resource is a Physical or Social Object and is characterized by its Functionality, and: • •
Quantity (of collective objects, but the Amount of matter, time, or value) of underlying objects or a feature [of part] of the object, such as kWh for electricity, and is regarded as additive and holds some relation with the price; Place or Container that denotes the [fiat] location at [and in] which the object is or will be available for control.
Usual object classification in EA [
An economic relator itself can be an underlying object thus modeling situations of
power, e.g., when a debt (a right to receive from a converse holder) is transferred from
one holder to a counterparty, or e.g., a note payable in Government bonds (an
underlying object) gives the note holder the right to receive and the holder of the
3 We assume that the relation between ownership and right to receive value from an unknown
counterparty is material, because some exchange value (probably uncertain) of the ownership rights should
exist in society which can be assessed, e.g., as the market value or as regulated price or as entry price or as
accumulated labor [
Government bonds the obligation to transfer Government bonds. The converse holder of the bonds is the Government, but the underlying object is a cash. A chain of rights/obligations to receive, transfer/exchange resources (claims) is itself a resource (claim).
Timing (Condition) denotes a [due] date or period, condition, and order of expected entitlement of rights. E.g., a Financial guarantee is a right of the lender to receive cash from the guarantor, and a corresponding obligation of the guarantor to pay the lender, if the borrower defaults (a condition).
The valuation of Resources (Claims) is based at the carrying amount (for use, or
e.g. cost-plus contracts), transaction price, or market price. The Market Price (Fair
Value [
The Resource (Claim) and its features concepts are consensual and correlative – agreed among the holders and converse holders, contract parties, and counterparties.
Assets (Liabilities and Equity Claims) are holder specializations of controlled (indebted) and recognized Resources (Claims) depicting Intended exchange actions and the roles in these actions (within rights) and object roles, subject to the business model, restrictions and capabilities of the holder, Carrying amount (Cost), Uncertainty (Risk), Recovery (Settlement) pattern and other holder-specific qualities. Cost is used as a base for a measure of the added value of enterprise performance.
Some examples of economic relators with corresponding legal positions: • • • •
A holder is at permission to use or consume the object, having disposition to receive (produce) benefits, valued at the carrying amount.
A holder has the claim-right against another market participant to exclusive control of the object, i.e., other market participants would have an obligation not to use or consume the object in any way. The violation of this right has the disposition to produce an enforceable claim against others, valued at the carrying amount or market price.
A holder has the power to transfer all (or some) of the rights over the object to the counterparty, in exchange for an enforceable right to receive against the counterparty, valued at the transaction or market price.
A holder has the immunity from the involuntary expropriation of rights over the object by other market participants.
Economic Resources that are immediately consumed as transferred, for example,
services, or not capitalized, for example, office supplies, are called momentarily assets
in [
Economic Resources (Claims) play two major roles in economic exchanges, they
are factors and products of some production processes. Production, while in many
cases being trivial (i.e. consisting of property rights transfers plus transfers of transfer
efforts transfers), is regarded here as a contracted or scheduled performance process
where the Economic Resources (Claims) play the role of the factors to produce (or
combine into) another Resource (Claim) – a product. As stated in e.g., Archimate® [
As for other information systems, e.g., [
Legally speaking, an offering transfers power on the offeree, who by accepting it, creates an obligation and a right to exchange – a contract, in the offeror. As depicted by reified exchange events in Fig. 5, we distinguish the following contract (economic exchange) phases: offered, lapsed, agreed, suspended, transferor breached, transferee breached, realized, settled.
The Resources (Claims) and their exchange-affected Assets (Liabilities) in addition to the fulfillment phases, are also characterized by above-listed exchange phases, complementing FR, where only recognized assets (liabilities) are presented while others are disclosed, but not conceptualized in CF.
Performed processes fulfil open or closed contract and performance obligations (POs) by transfer or use actions. A transfer action event conveys the role of the holder the economic relator from a transferor to a transferee and in return accrues a right to receive value – an Income Right against the transferee.
If some PO is wholly fulfilled by the transfers or uses, the Performance (Revenue recognition) event accrues a Revenue Right.
If all POs of one party are fulfilled, a Realization (Receivable recognition) event takes place that, brings the party’s Contract relator to the Consideration Resource phase and counterparty’s Contract relator to Contract Claim phase. The latter implies that all the remaining counterparty’s now enforceable obligations to transfer should be settled by transfers that would conclude the exchange process.
In general, the results of several performance processes of transfer and use actions are combined in economic exchanges, in order to receive rights for results of other performance processes of equal value. Thus, for exchange process (contract fulfilment) we have provider and customer action plans, each comprising of three fulfillment levels: contract obligation realization (consideration settlement) of the whole contract, performance obligation fulfilment, and fulfilment of transfer and use obligations.
A consensual price – a right to receive value is ascribed to each obligation and is specified directly or as dependent on other prices, or counterparty obligation prices, or market prices. Higher level prices are aggregates of lower level prices, including the transfer of a combination effort component and the time value of money. For the contract as a whole provider rights value is normally equal to customer rights value.
Contract breaches can occur for each obligation type. As a general rule we argue for the following:
If contract is in breach for the reasons other than counterparty nonperformance, by the transferee, the transferor has an enforceable right for all income rights; If contract is in breach for the reasons other than counterparty nonperformance, by the transferor, the transferor has an enforceable right for revenue rights of all performance obligations wholly fulfilled.
The rationale for the first case is that transferor has lost value due to the transferee, and for the second that, while having not wholly fulfilled the contract, the transferor has created the contracted performance value for the transferee.
Example 1. As a simple example let us regard a smart vending machine that transparently prepares different sorts of coffee drinks. The potential customer (a Person or an Enterprise that has installed the machine for its employees) is addressed by the vendor through a touchscreen offering. When choosing the options, she comes to an agreement to receive a coffee drink, e.g., cappuccino, in exchange for a money transfer at the listed price. Next, different ingredients (factors) of the product are transferred to the customer – a container (a cup), milk, foaming service and finally the coffee. Notice that some of the ingredients are prepared internally by the vendor such as the freshgrind of the coffee, while others are transferred to the customer and then used for production, the latter being of little separate use for the customer.
The payment could be another “process” consisting of a cash payment and change, or payment by credit card. If the smart vending machine is connected to a shared Vendor’s (and Customer’s) Information System with shared ledgers of the supplier contracts, a VAT reporting system, and a Banking system, by some automatic tagging we can have all the information in consensus and in an immutable state for Financial Reporting. In addition, if the vendor is leasing the vending machine, or using some patent, the transaction can be shared with the lessor (patent holder) for pay per use accrual.
If we imagine a situation, where payment takes place after the delivery (e.g., by initially providing credit card details, but the actual withdrawal occurring later), she may order three cups of coffee, but if the coffee machine is out of some ingredients after the first two and a half cups (a contract breach by the transferor), she would be charged for the two delivered cups, because each of them constitutes a product under standard conditions.
Example 2. To depict the contracts and resource (claim) exchange instances in a more concise way we introduce an Event Table (see Fig.6)
In the header (in dark blue) of an economic event, we have an Event identifier (EID), and a Transferor type – Provider or Customer, that specifies the context. Further header attributes are: • •
The Resource (Claim) Transfer Event type - Offer, Agreement, [Partial]
Date or Period, Transaction Currency Unit, Provider and Customer identification and their Local Currency Units with their spot exchange Rates, conclude the event header.
Event detail lines depict events that fulfil the contract, performance (PO) or transfer/use obligations identified by the referenced event and PO number, by transferring or using a promised resource (claim) in exchange for accruing consideration, revenue or income rights. The Timing, Rights (Control), Object, Quantity (Qty), Price, and Place concepts are described in Section 3. The Provider and Customer have their specific columns (in light blue) that depict the involved Debited/Credited Accounts and Amounts. However, those accounts should be regarded in the context of consensual columns (in dark blue).
Next, we describe the events of the example depicted in Fig. 6. • • • • • •
EID:11 - An enterprise P enters into a contract to build a hospital for a customer C, (to fulfil some offering with EID:10), whereby P obliges to provide construction as a separate performance (project) within 2018, but the equipment procurement and installation project in 2019. The consideration for the whole contract comprises of a prepayment on 01.01.2018 and a final payment at the completion of the contract. These rights/obligations are depicted in the agreement details, but the effect of their fulfillment is specified by the planned accounts and amounts of the provider and customer.
EID:12 C fulfils the obligation to transfer prepayment to P’s bank account and accrues income claim against P for this amount.
EID:13 P fulfils obligation by transferring goods and services for hospital construction promised in the EID:11 and accrues P’s income claim of PO:1, thus completing the PO:1 fulfillment and recognizing revenue claim.
EID:14 P transfers equipment.
EID:15 P, by transferring the installation services, completes the PO:2 of equipment project that leads to overall contract fulfillment and accrual of consideration rights.
EID:16 C completes the settlement and the whole exchange by cash payment to P’s bank account.
In March 2018 IASB finally released the revised version of the Conceptual Framework
(CF) for Financial Reporting [
Firstly, Financial reporting should aggregate transaction-centric plus enterprisespecific, but not enterprise effect-centric information. Thus, economic exchange should be introduced as a unifying concept. Aggregating consensual transactions for FR, instead of accounts, would provide additional opportunities for comparability with other enterprise processes, possibilities of application of process mining methods, and insights into the value co-creation processes.
Secondly, competitive consensuality (meaning that among parties there is an agreed shared ledger of contracts and their fulfillment, including provider and customer resources (claims) and required asset (liability) information) should be a quality aspect, even within the old context of audit reconciliations. Consensuality should be added to comparability, verifiability, timeliness, and understandability as qualitative characteristic that enhances the usefulness of information that both is relevant and provides a faithful representation of what it purports to represent and reduces reporting uncertainty.
Thirdly, correlativity in economic relationships, should be a standard-setting
principle. The important intermediate resources (claims) of contract realization,
performance and transfer should be defined. When correlativeness and consensus are
not regarded as a principle, deficiencies emerge in standards already discussed by us
elsewhere, such as concerning leases [
Fourthly, Assets (Liabilities) are conceptualized only as recognized, while the other phases of exchange (contract), depicted in disclosures, should be conceptualized.
And fifthly, a unifying concept of an Economic relator should be introduced. A partial effort in the framework has been made by defining the concept of a Unit of Account as a group of related rights and/or obligations. The difference is that the economic relator is a more atomic building block that shows the value relationship, from which more complex units of account such as the contract (of three levels and phases of fulfillment, as shown in this paper), investment portfolio, cash-generating unit, and enterprise as complex economic relators can be built.
Financial reporting standard-setting, implementation and the corresponding information
system development is at present a partially informal and long process and, as
exemplified by other domains, may be improved using ontology-driven conceptual
modeling approaches. Existing foundational and core ontologies, as shown by UFO
ontology network usage, provide upper-level patterns from foundational UFO – A, B,
C, and several UFO grounded ontologies, such as services, legal, transaction,
enterprise, exchange, value and even software [
An Economic relationship as a disposition of economic exchange events, is a fundamental and reuse facilitating pattern of capturing economic phenomena for FR. By extending the general exchange pattern it is possible to build patterns for particular standards to facilitate reuse. An ontological analysis allows for the explication of the core contract creation and fulfillment phases, economic relators – resources (claims), assets (liabilities) to capture the full partition of the economic phenomena which can be used for FR. Aligning FR concepts with UFO allows for better understanding of the meaning of FR concepts and their classification in the enterprise domain, for instance, for OMG Standards for EA. Elaboration of correlative associations between the enterprise and the counterparty, based on the legal and economic relator concepts, may lay a foundation for consensus-based accounting in a shared ledger environment, where the conceptualization of assets (liabilities) will reveal holder-specific and potentially sensitive or shareable parts for contracts and FR.
Our first suggestions are described in Section 5, furthermore, a full validation of Resource (Claim) concepts of COFRIS by modeling most IFRS standards is needed.