XBRL

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XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is an emerging XML-based standard to define and exchange business and financial performance information. The standard is governed by a not-for-profit international consortium (XBRL International Incorporated) of approximately 450 organisations, including regulators, government agencies, infomediaries and software vendors.

XBRL International is supported by its jurisdictions - independent bodies, generally organised on a country-specific basis, that work to promote the adoption of XBRL and the development of taxonomies that define the information exchange requirements of their particular domains. XBRL is being rapidly adopted to replace both paper-based and legacy electronic financial data collection by a wide range of regulators. It is now starting to be used for the disclosure of financial performance information by companies, notably in voluntary (e.g., "trial basis") SEC filings.

XBRL is a standards-based way to communicate business and financial performance data. These communications are defined by metadata set out in taxonomies. Taxonomies capture the definition of individual reporting elements as well as the relationships between elements within a taxonomy and in other taxonomies. For example, XBRL taxonomies exist for International Financial Reporting Standards ([IFRS]) and United States Generally Accepted Accounting Standards ([US GAAP]). They provide an extremely powerful way to model the semantics of a reporting framework and are highly extensible. While taxonomies can be created by anyone, to date, the largest ones have been created via collaboration amongst accountants seeking to capture generally accepted accounting principles that apply in various jurisdictions. Organisations that seek to communicate data to third parties produce data, or "instance" documents that conform to these taxonomies.

The taxonomies themselves are constrained by a formal Specification published by the XBRL International consortium. The Specification is not limited to financial reporting taxonomies and instances, but can be used for business reports of many kinds, such as tax returns and bank call reports. XBRL GL, the Journal Taxonomy, is a branch of XBRL based on the same Specification, representing business reporting detail and the data found in the operational and accounting databases, bridging between transactional standards (not XBRL) and the end reporting (XBRL and other XML schema based reports).

XBRL is somewhat different to many other XML standards published by consortia. Generally, when two parties wish to exchange information using XML, they need to have prior access to all of the element definitions. But accounting involves the dissemination of information, the vast majority of which conforms to reporting norms, but some of which is unique to the circumstances of a particular company.

The U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), in coordination with the Federal Reserve Board and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, launched a large and very successful XBRL project in October 2005 involving the collection of quarterly bank financial statements (Call Reports) from over 8300 U.S. banks. Use of XBRL is mandatory and the data is posted on the Internet for public use and analysis. This coordinated U.S. project has proven that XBRL can provide real business value by reducing burden and duplication, improving data transparency and enabling more timely analysis. This remains the largest use of XBRL in the U.S.. A white paper was prepared in early 2006 describing the project and business results [link].

Historical US company SEC filings information can be downloaded from [Edgar Online]on a subscription basis. News distribution companies such as [PR Newswire] and [Business Wire] provide services to listed companies to allow them to distribute their financial information in XBRL format for a fee.

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