SEC Delivers Final XBRL Mandate

By Mitchell Feldman: A.E. Feldman Blog

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The SEC has finally delivered its mandate that corporations start filing financial statements using XBRL technology. Read original article.


The final version of its rule mandating eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) for public companies has been posted. The 500 largest public companies must start XBRL compliance this June, followed by other large filers in 2010, and all remaining companies in 2011. The new rule requires public companies to begin filing their financial statements in an interactive data format, allowing investors to download them more easily into spreadsheets and other software. According to the SEC, the technology is “intended not only to make financial information easier for investors to analyze (across companies and industries), but also to assist in automating regulatory filings and business information processing.” The SEC also contends that interactive data has the potential to increase the speed, accuracy and usability of financial disclosure, and eventually reduce costs.

XBRL is a language for the electronic communication of business and financial data which is transforming global business reporting with the promise of greater efficiency and improved accuracy. This technology involves computer “tags” similar to the bar codes used to identify groceries in the supermarket. According to the SEC, the tags uniquely identify individual items in a company’s financial statement so they can be easily searched, downloaded, reorganized, and put to any number of other comparative and analytical uses.

The technology is being developed by an international non-profit consortium of approximately 500 major companies, organizations and government agencies, according to XBRL.org. Right now, implementations of XBRL are growing rapidly around the world. Read more...