Digital Financial Reporting

Aberdeen Group published a study, Taking XBRL and Financial Disclosure Management to the Cloud, in which it states (emphasis is mine):

While external drivers such as the compliance mandate drove much of XBRL adoption in the early part of 2011(as cited by 55% of the respondents in the Enabling Compliance and Business Improvements through XBRL, report in April 2011), internal drivers such as executive orders to improve data quality (42%) and demand to improve staff productivity (30%) guided adoption of XBRL and other financial disclosure management tools in the latter part (Q3 and beyond) of 2011 (as per the August study, entitled Effective Disclosure Management: Ensuring Compliance and Improving Organizational Communication). XBRL adoption in 2012 continues to move along this trajectory with one key difference - companies are now looking beyond basic capabilities of financial reporting and towards expedited information delivery, leveraging fewer resources, and reducing operational costs.

Ask yourself the following question.  How are you going to verify that your disclosures are complete, correct, consistent, accurate, have fidelity, and have integrity? Is following the Edgar Filer Manual (EFM) sufficient? While there is some guidance in this area, that guidance leaves a lot to be desired.  Further, software is no where close to where it needs to be to help accountants who create this information, management who have to sign off on this information, and third party accountants who might need to verify this information.

You may be able to get away with submitting less than stellar information to the SEC, but do you really want that same quality standard used internally?