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labelxbrl

What is the difference between a concept and a label in XBRL, and do all listed companies share the same US GAAP labels?

Let me show tesla's company facts data with sec's RESTful api:
https://data.sec.gov/api/xbrl/companyfacts/CIK0001318605.json

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You can see all labels in 'facts ---- us-gaap' such as :

AccountsAndNotesReceivableNet
AccountsPayableCurrent
AccountsReceivableNetCurrent
AccretionAmortizationOfDiscountsAndPremiumsInvestments

Do all listed companies share same us-gaap label names ?
Can every company create its own customerized us-gaap label names?

concept in xbrl is A taxonomy element that provides the meaning for a fact in the official definition.

https://www.xbrl.org/guidance/xbrl-glossary/

What is the difference between concept in xbrl and us-gaap's label ?

Solution

  • The short answer is yes.

    First, a small detail:

    AccountsAndNotesReceivableNet
AccountsPayableCurrent
AccountsReceivableNetCurrent
AccretionAmortizationOfDiscountsAndPremiumsInvestments

    These are not labels, these are local names of concepts. Labels are something different, human readable, for example "Accounts and notes receivable, net" would be a label. Labels are attached with the label linkbase.

    The more complete names (called QNames) of these concepts are:

    us-gaap:AccountsAndNotesReceivableNet
us-gaap:AccountsPayableCurrent
us-gaap:AccountsReceivableNetCurrent
us-gaap:AccretionAmortizationOfDiscountsAndPremiumsInvestments

    where the us-gaap prefix is bound with the US GAAP namespace, which changes every year and is, for 2021:

    http://fasb.org/us-gaap-std/2021-01-31

    This makes explicit that these concepts are not maintained by companies, but by the Financial Accounting Standards Board. Thus, all companies filing their reports into the EDGAR system share these concepts.

    Two important points:

    • Companies are allowed to create their own concepts. These are called extension concepts. You will recognize them because they are in a company namespace, not in the US GAAP namespace. Their prefix will not be us-gaap, but some company-specific prefix. These concepts are unique to each company.

    An example for Tesla is:

    tsla:AccruedAndOtherCurrentLiabilities
    • Concepts in the US GAAP taxonomy are updated every year, i.e., some get added, some get deprecated, some are removed. However, the FASB tries to maintain consistency across years, i.e., a concept will not suddently change its semantics one year to the next.