Digital Financial Reporting

XBRL-based structured digital financial reporting

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Digital Financial Reporting Using XBRL

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This web site provides information on how to use XBRL to help business professionals exchange business information. Business information incluldes both financial and nonfinancial information. Everything on this site made available to all under a Creative Commons License, Public Domain Dedication. Everything may be reused however one sees fit without attribution. We do ask that you give credit where credit is due. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, suggestions, ideas or other feedback, please contact charles.hoffman@me.com.

The author of this web site assumes all responsibility for this web site and it's content. The views expressed on this web site are the views of the author and may not represent the views of his employer.

BLOG: Digital Financial Reporting

This is a blog for information relating to digital financial reporting. This blog is basically my "lab notebook" for experimenting and learning about XBRL-based digital financial reporting. This is my brain storming platform. This is where I think out loud (i.e. publicly) about digital financial reporting. This information is for innovators and early adopters who are ushering in a new era of accounting, reporting, auditing, and analysis in a digital environment.

Much of the information contained in this blog is synthasized, summarized, condensed, better organized and articulated in my book XBRL for Dummies and in the chapters of Intelligent XBRL-based Digital Financial Reporting. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

Entries from August 17, 2008 - August 23, 2008

IDEA (Interactive Data Electronic Applications)

The SEC announced its successor for the old EDGAR system: IDEA, Interactive Data Electronic Applications). See the SEC web site.

The press release for the announcement can be found here. A web cast of the announcement can currently be found here. (It may be moved here eventually)

IDEA is a new technology/architecture framework. It is being built along side EDGAR. The two systems will operate alongside each other for a period of time, then IDEA will be the system used moving forward. EDGAR information will likely always exist as an archive of company information.

The SEC says IDEA will be global (40 languages as an example), cheaper for smaller companies, the platform for 21st century disclosure, flexible, and easy as possible for investors to use.

The SEC also says that they are not going into the software business, but "e-applications" can be built on top of the interactive data within IDEA. The SEC gave examples of three applications which would make use of IDEA: HUB (enforcement tracking), RADAR (analysis of risk), PHOENIX (helps get money back to investors).

No intermediate step of a data provider will be necessary. Investors will be able to compare companies in a manner similar to how they can compare hotels or airline ticket prices. Investors may even be able to provide "reviews" of companies.