Digitizing municipal financial reporting: A new open source tool for Excel - XBRL conversion
Webinar in partnership with MOSS and DAC Bond
Registration requiredSpeaker
Justin Hughes, Katrina WheelanDate & time
Location
This is a Virtual Event.
The Financial Data Transparency Act (FDTA) will require many municipal governments to modernize their financial reporting using new digital data standards developed by regulators. However, many smaller municipal governments and debt issuers are worried about the costs and burdens of new regulations. The University of Michigan Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy (CLOSUP) teamed up with DAC Bond to develop a free, open source proof of concept tool that will allow users to convert the data in their Annual Comprehensive Financial Reports from Excel/Word format into XBRL, a leading open source data standard for financial reporting. The MOSS initiative from Innovation Partnerships is supporting the CLOSUP team in its open source community-building efforts by encouraging municipal issuers and market participants to test the tool and provide feedback, and developers to contribute new features and customizations.
This webinar will demonstrate the following steps for using this Excel-XBRL tool: 1) How to download and fill out the Excel template, 2) How to upload and convert the data, and 3) How to access and use the XBRL output (HTML format). All conversions happen on the server, so users do not need any specialized knowledge beyond using simple Excel files (i.e. no macros). The webinar will also provide information for developers who may wish to access the source code to develop more capabilities or customized versions of the tool.
Learn more about the tool at https://closup.umich.edu/acfr-tool and https://github.com/closup/process-xbrl
Speaker bios:
Justin Hughes, Chief Operating Officer, DAC Bond, LLC
At DAC Bond Justin assists issuers and obligors with maintaining compliance with both SEC and IRS regulations. DAC Bond has been assisting municipal bond issuers and borrowers with meeting SEC continuing disclosure requirements since 2000 and post issuance tax compliance since 2010.
Katrina Wheelan, Master of Public Policy Student, Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan
Katrina Wheelan is a 2025 graduate of the Ford School of Policy’s Master of Public Policy program who has worked to apply her background in data science to state and local policy and implementation. While at the Ford School, she worked with the Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy and was a Bohnett Fellow, working in the City of Detroit Budget Office.
