XBRL & iXBRL Validation
What validation means for XBRL filing, what technical checks catch, and how Doc2iXBRL validates your output at every stage of the conversion pipeline.
The Basics
What Is XBRL Validation?
XBRL validation is the process of checking that an iXBRL or XBRL instance document conforms to the applicable taxonomy, the XBRL specification rules, and the filing profile requirements of the target regulator.
Validation covers structural checks (does every fact reference a valid concept, context, and unit?), calculation checks (do subtotals match their children?), dimensional checks (are dimension members from the correct domain?), and filing profile checks (are all mandatory items present?).
What Validation Catches
Types of Validation Errors
Structural Errors
Missing or malformed concepts, contexts, units, or entity identifiers. These prevent the filing from being parsed by any XBRL processor.
Calculation Inconsistencies
Asserted summation relationships that do not hold — for example, total assets not equaling the sum of current and non-current assets.
Dimensional Errors
Facts reported with dimension members outside the valid domain, or hypercube violations that break the taxonomy's dimensional model.
Filing Profile Violations
Missing mandatory concepts, incorrect entity identifier schemes, or period configurations that the filing authority requires but the base XBRL spec does not enforce.
Important Distinction
Validation Is Not Filing Acceptance
Technical validation confirms that the XBRL data is well-formed and consistent. It does not guarantee that the filing will be accepted by the target authority. KVK, AFM, and ESMA may apply additional business rules, identity checks, and submission-time validations that go beyond what any XBRL validator can check.
A filing that passes Arelle validation is technically correct. Whether it meets every filing authority requirement depends on factors like entity registration status, filing deadlines, and regulatory acceptance criteria.
Doc2iXBRL Validation Pipeline
How Doc2iXBRL Validates Your Filing
Doc2iXBRL uses multiple validation layers, not just one. Each layer runs at a different stage of the conversion pipeline and catches different categories of issues.
Extraction Quality Gates
Checks that AI-extracted financial data matches the source document before any taxonomy mapping begins.
Generation Readiness
Blocks iXBRL generation when mandatory concepts are unmapped, values are missing, or the filing metadata is incomplete.
Pre-Validation
Catches common SBR filing rule failures — contexts, units, decimals, sign rules — before the Arelle engine runs.
Arelle Validation
Full XBRL specification validation against the Dutch GAAP NL Taxonomy 2025 or the IFRS/ESEF Taxonomy 2025, using Arelle — an XBRL International certified processor.
Auto-Fix Pass
Automatically corrects safe, mechanical issues: missing decimals on numeric facts, orphan contexts, and harmless duplicate facts.
Package Validation
Checks report package structure, KVK filing information, and mixed consolidated/company output integrity before the package is available for download.