About XBRL
Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), formerly code-named XFRML, is a freely available electronic languagewhich uses XML-based data tags to describe financial statements for both public and private companies. >
| XBRL was developed by the international XBRL Project Committee made up of companies representing the financial information supply chain and provides the financial community a standards-based method to prepare, publish in a variety of formats, reliably extract and automatically exchange financial statements of both public and private companies and the information contained within. Today it has grown to an international consortium of over 120 organisations globally. |
It benefits all users of the financial information supply chain: public and private companies, the accounting profession, regulators, analysts, the investment community, capital markets and lenders, as well as key third parties such as software developers and data aggregators .Today XBRL meets the needs of investors and other users of financial information by providing accurate and reliable information to help them make informed financial decisions.>
XBRL, at least at first, will be used to digitally publish financial statements and other accounting disclosures of companies of all makes and sizes. An XBRL-based financial statement is a digitally enhanced financial statement, which includes information like the balance sheet, income statement, statement of equity, statement of cash flows, notes to the financial statements as well as the accountant’s report. “XBRL for Financial Statements” enables a dramatic improvement in the processing of financial reports. XBRL documents can be prepared efficiently, exchanged reliably, published more easily, and analyzed quickly.
The following is a brief summary of how XBRL will affect the various participants in the financial supply chain.
Companies who prepare financial statements: More efficient preparation of financial statements because they will be created one time and rendered many times, be it to the printer, on Web sites, as Edgar filings, or as other regulatory filings.
Analysts, Investors and Regulators: Enhanced distribution and usability of existing financial statement information. Automated analysis, significantly less re-keying of financial information, from one form into another, receiving information in the format you prefer for your specific style of analysis.
Financial publishers and data aggregation: More efficient data collection lowers operating costs associated with custom, idiosyncratic data feeds and reducing errors while concentrating on adding value to the data and increasing transaction capacity.
Independent Software Vendors: Virtually any software product that manages financial information could use XBRL for its data export and import formats, thereby increasing its potential for full interoperability with other financial and analytical applications.
What are the differences between HTML, XML and XBRL?
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is a system of marking up a document so it can be published on the World Wide Web. HTML documents contain reference graphics and formatting tags that focuses on describing how content appears on the Internet. It might describe what font, font size and color the text of this paragraph should be when viewed via a Web browser. With HTML, you have lots of content but no real context. This is where XML comes in.
XML (Extensible Markup Language) is the universal format for data on the web that uses tags to give context and structure to content. XML is a standards language that is maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). XML is a complimentary format that is platform independent, allowing XML data to be rendered on any device such as a computer, cell phone, PDA or tablet device. It allows developers describe and deliver rich, structured data from any application in a standard, consistent way. Whereas HTML offers a fixed/pre-defined number of tags, XML neither defines nor limits tags. Instead, XML provides a framework for defining tags (i.e. taxonomy) and the relationship between them (i.e. schema).
XBRL is an XML-based schema that focuses specifically on business reporting. XBRL is a complement to XML, allowing accountants and regulatory bodies to identify items that are unique to the business reporting environment. XBRL's schema defines how to create XBRL documents and XBRL taxonomies (i.e. US GAAP CI, IAS), providing users with a set of business information tags that allows users to identify business information in a consistent format. XBRL is also extensible in that users are able to create their own XBRL taxonomies that define and describe tags unique to a given environment. An example of a custom taxonomy is the Microsoft custom taxonomy listed below. By putting business information in XBRL format, business data can be easily read by other applications.
The Benefits of XBRL
XBRL benefits all members of the financial information supply chain in a number of ways;
It is an XML standards-based method with which users can prepare, publish (in a variety of formats), exchange and analyze financial statements and the information they contain.
Freely licensed, permits the automatic exchange and reliable extraction of financial information across all software formats and technologies, including the Internet.
Does not require a company to disclose any additional information beyond that which they normally disclose under existing accounting standards.
Enhanced distributionof business information without loss of data integrity. Instead of creating multiple report outputs for multiple data requestors, XBRL allows the same financial information to be “reused” for different purposes
Improves access to financial information/speeds up access.
Reduces need to enter financial information more than one time.
Reduces risk of data entry error and eliminating the need to manually key information for various formats, (printed financial statement, an HTML document for a company’s Web site, an EDGAR filing document, a raw XML file or other specialized reporting formats such as credit reports and loan documents) thereby lowering a company's cost to prepare and distribute its financial statements while improving investor or analyst access to information.
Leverages efficiencies of the Internet as today’s primary source of financial information by making Web browser searches more accurate and relevant. (More than 80% of Irish public companies provide some type of financial disclosure on the Internet.)