Digital Financial Reporting

If you go to the SAP Investors Relations page (see the third line) you will see that they published their financials for 2009 in XBRL before being required to do so by the SEC.  What is even more interesting is they created their filing using their product, SAP BusinessObjects XBRL Publishing by UBmatrix.

(Recall that a few days ago I had mentioned that Oracle announced two new products for creating XBRL.)

In addition to the XBRL, SAP is also making available HTML versions of their financials on their web site which seem to have been rendered using the SEC open source XBRL rendering software.

Nice!

Oracle issued a press release today stating that is introducing two new applications which are intended to improve the timeliness and confidence in financial reporting.  Both products support XBRL-based financial filings.  The two products are: Oracle Hyperion Financial Close Management and Oracle Hyperion Disclosure Management.

See the press release for mode details, but here is a summary of the news facts provided within the press release:

• To help organizations improve the accuracy and speed of financial close and reporting, Oracle today introduced Oracle® Hyperion Disclosure Management and Oracle Hyperion Financial Close Management.
• The new applications extend the capabilities of the Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) System to address the end-to-end financial close process and the creation of regulatory filings using eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL).
• Oracle Hyperion Disclosure Management and Oracle Hyperion Financial Close Management work in conjunction with other Oracle EPM applications such as Hyperion Financial Management or can be deployed directly with ERP General Ledger systems.
• These new applications are available with Oracle EPM System Release 11.1.2, also announced today (read today's related news release).

Last week I saw a demo of the disclosure management product.  The most striking thing about the product is that it looked like a financial reporting application and not an XBRL application.  Finally, a business user application which can be used to then output XBRL.

While XBRL applications have improved year after year during the 11 years which I have been working with XBRL, the disclosure management product does a lot to make XBRL disappear into the background where it belongs.  Users of the application can leverage the benefits of XBRL without having to struggle with the XBRL technology.  This is as it should be.  The product probably is not perfect, but it certainly is a huge step in the right direction from my perspective.

Anyone know of other financial reporting products taking this type of an approach?  I know of a few, I am always trying to find more.  Please let me know if you come across a good one.

XBRL US has launchedwhat they are calling the "XBRL Consistency Suite".  They say that tool is "a set of online XBRL tools that help public companies identify inconsistencies in XBRL documents related to the use of the US GAAP Taxonomy."

Per a PRNewswire press release, the XBRL Consistency Suite performs over 6000 US GAAP Taxonomy specific tests which help reduce errors.  XBRL US says that of the 1400 SEC XBRL submissions to date "thousands of errors have been identified".

XBRL US also published a document titled Avoiding Common Errors in XBRL Creation.  The final sentence of that document says:

Following a standardized set of guidelines can provide the peace of mind that the best possible practice is being used.

That document explains some of the types of errors the XBRL Consistency Suite checks.  One of these categories from the table of contents is "Value is Required if Another Value is Reported".  Now, this is not an XBRL thing, this is an financial reporting type error which something like a disclosure checklist would catch.  What is up with that you might ask?

Well, now we are getting into the real value of XBRL for filers.  Software able to tell you that you forgot to report something?  Yes sir.  I have been saying that for years.  XBRL can also help you be sure that all your numbers cross cast and foot also.

I see this XBRL US Consistency Suite as a best practice.  What do you think?  There are a lot of other things which the existence of this consistency suite brings up, but I will go into this later.  Stay tuned.