Digital Financial Reporting

I wanted to point out a great resource for information about XBRL Global Ledger (XBRL GL).  The site is maintained by Gianluca Garbellotto, a long time proponent of XBRL GL and someone who is very active in its creation.

The site has a bunch of great examples, samples, and a nice viewer which help you see what XBRL GL is all about.  One of the nicest things on the site is its collection of webcasts about XBRL GL.

There are three good sources for finding XBRL software that I am aware of:

• XBRL Info Wiki
• XBRL US Products and Services Page
• XBRL International List of Products and Services

None of these lists are available in an XML (or XBRL) format for creating your own custom queries, etc.  Over the next month or so I will endeavor to create such as list as it would provide a very good demonstration of why people are using XML/XBRL.

No comments or commentary on what is good software and what is not so hot, you have to figure that out for yourself.

SAP has teamed up with UBmatrix and reports that they have "XBRL Reporting Optimized for SAP Software Environments. You can read about this in their SAP Solution Brief: SAP BusinessObjects XBRL Publishing by UBmatrix.

SAP goes on to say they provide "Support for the 'last mile' of finance - The application streamlines finance corporation, reporting, and publishing processes without sacraficing data quality."

In the past, accounting software vendor support for XBRLwas, well, let's be nice and say optimistically stated. Seems like the SEC's choice to make public companies use XBRL changes the game.

Here is some info directly from the SAP solution brief:

Summary
The SAP® BusinessObjects™ XBRL Publishing application by UBmatrix enables business users to leverage data in SAP Business Suite software and SAP BusinessObjects enterprise performance management solutions and prepare eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) documents. Designed for ease of use, speed, and flexibility, the application gives you greater control over the XBRL generation process for the communication of financial and business data.

Business Challenges
• Pressure to implement an XBRL publishing solution quickly
• Desire for more control and flexibility than XBRL outsourcing offers
• Limited in-house resources who can work with complex XBRL syntax directly

Key Features
• XBRL taxonomy navigation – Quickly search and filter large, complex taxonomies to find tags relevant for your business data
• Mapping – Map taxonomy tags to data using a drag-and-drop mapping environment
• Validation – Use comprehensive validation functionality to confirm accuracy and completeness and identify issues
• Disclosure inclusion – Link to and import management discussions, disclosures, footnotes, and other narratives created in Microsoft Word to XBRL documents
• Taxonomy extension – Easily extend published XBRL taxonomies to include other information
• Compliance – Be confident that your XBRL documents comply with the business rules of third-party taxonomies

Business Benefi ts
• Reduced time and effort to create XBRL documents thanks to integration with Microsoft Excel, taxonomy navigation tools, and drag-and-drop functions that simplify mapping
• Lower audit costs because auditors can “slice and dice” your financial data quickly and easily, enabling them to perform audits faster, more accurately, and at lower cost
• Greater confidence in your financial disclosures because data and mappings are validated as accurate, complete, and in compliance with business rules defined by third-party taxonomies
• Increased flexibility and control and lower costs by eliminating the need for XBRL outsourcing services

I have become aware of two new whitepapers which provide overviews of what XBRL is all about:

• Introducing Interactive Data which is provided by EDGAR Online
• Extensible Business Reporting Language: An overview for technical users provided by Altova

The great news here is that more people are taking the time to invest in creating information which explains XBRL!

In an article written by CFO Magazine Data-Tagging: New Push for a Global Standard, Gargi Ray, manager of technical accounting for global outsourcer Infosys says the following:

"XBRL aligns data with broad concepts, such as revenue, which seems to have helped the conversion to IFRS. Aligning accounting concepts that match up with IFRS concepts makes the migration to the international standards relatively easy compared to migrating spreadsheet-based financial statements"

People have talked, and talked, and talked for years about creating a mapping between IFRS and US GAAP using XBRL.  From what I hear, there is at least one Big 4 CPA firm which is already creating what amounts to a mapping between IFRS and US GAAP.  Whether they will make this mapping available to others is not understood.

I don't understand why the SEC, AICPA, the FASB, or the IASCF has not seen fit (or realized how helpful) such a mapping would be to the process of moving from US GAAP to IFRS enough to actually coordinated the creation of such a mapping which could be made available to everyone.  Seems that it is in their interest if they want people to make this move.

There are people who both understate and overstate the difficulty of creating such a mapping.  And frankly, I personally would not really call this a mapping, but rather a "mapping reconciliation".  Seems to me that the difference between IFRS and US GAAP is quite similar to the difference between tax accounting and US GAAP (i.e. external reporting).

Even better than a mapping/reconciliation would be a Wiki which provides this information.  Combining the characteristics of XBRL, the characteristics of a Wiki, and characteristics and functionality of the Web would create a very powerful tool, seems to me.

You could even take this one step further and create a physical reconcilation template using XBRL which any company could use to articulate their financial information in BOTH IFRS and US GAAP and show every reconciling item between the two sets of numbers.  That would help accountants see the real value of XBRL and also help the transition to IFRS.