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This site is intended to be a resource for business users who wish to make use of XBRL to enable semantic, structured, model-based digital business reporting and in particular financial reporting. This site promotes these ideas, provides information and resources to that end, and helps others who likewise embrace that goal.
CPAs, CAs, and other accountants who are trying to use or using XBRL for model-based digital financial reporting will find this web site useful. Whether you are an internal accountant, internal auditor, external auditor, or are in some other accounting role; this information can help you move into the era of digital financial reporting.
Programmers and others developing software will find this site useful in creating and designing a user experience which works for the business users they serve. It is the software which programmers create which will help business users harness the power of the XBRL technical syntax, the internet, semantic web technologies, and other enables which facilitate better, faster, and cheaper business reporting.
It is hoped that this site is also useful to educators, students, and others who desire to learn to use XBRL for the exchange of financial and non-financial information. Additionally, this site may be useful to technical people who are trying to understand what business users are trying to get from XBRL.
This site will evolve. If you want to provide feedback or have questions or comments, please contact: CharlesHoffman@olywa.net. You can follow me on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/CharlesHoffman.
The blog archive has a lot of information helpful to people trying to understand how to make XBRL work for to meet your needs. If you want a more organized view of this information, get a copy of XBRL for Dummies which builds upon many thoughts started on this blog. Also, the document Modeling Business Information Using XBRL contains the most up to date detailed information from this blog, synthasized into a more useable form.
The following is a summary of some of the most popular information contained on this site:
What's Hot! Links To Most Used Information
The following are several hot blog posts and other information which is currently very relevant, that people are finding interesting or extremely useful:
- Logical Model Viewer: Excel-based prototype application which helps you look at the relations, fact tables, and rendering (prototype) of all the metapatterns, business use cases, comprehensive example, and the SEC Reference/Model implementation.
- Modeling Business Information Using XBRL: This document contains 214 pages jam packed with the best and most current information I have relating to how to model financial reports and other business information using XBRL.
- XBRL for Dummies: Learn about XBRL using this resource which has summarized the best and most relevant information for business people. The book also helps technical people understand what business users are trying to achieve with XBRL. See the books landing page here.
- Mastering XBRL: Believe that XBRL is important for your career? Here is a path to learning what you need about XBRL. See this blog post. For more information see this page.
- XBRL Samples and Examples: This is the possibly the world's best set of XBRL samples, examples, prototypes, and other useful collections of XBRL. You can use this to understand XBRL. Great if you like to reverse engineer things. See this web site.
Understanding XBRL
The following are several different sources for understanding what XBRL is.
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How XBRL Works. This is a 6 minute video which shows you how XBRL works.
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XBRL for Dummies. Chapter 1 of this book (about 25 pages) provides a comprehensive explanation of what XBRL is. The rest of the chapters in the book drill into additional deails.
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Differentiating Important Terminology. If you don't know the difference between syntax and semantics or you don't understand the difference between unstructured and structured information it can be challenging to understand XBRL. This resource helps you understand important terminology.
Learning about XBRL (Self Study)
XBRL will highly likely be in your future. You can get started learning XBRL right now. The following steps will set you on course to learning about XBRL:
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Read XBRL for Dummies. Chapter 1 is a must, it provides in about 20 pages a comprehensive explanation of XBRL. Chapter 4 provides an XBRL Primer. There is a lot there for both business readers and technical readers.
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If you want more detail, read Modeling Business Information Using XBRL. (This document supersedes the book Financial Reporting Using XBRL.) It contains the most current detailed information which will help you use XBRL.
- Follow this blog. This blog is a source for the most current information, ideas, understanding issues, working around problems, etc. It may be a lot of work, but that is what it takes to become expert in anything: hard work. There are no short cuts.
