XBRL News

2010 COMPUTEX TAIPEI News Distributed By Business Wire Clients Available At ...
Business Wire (press release)
Business Wire also handles XBRL tagging, document formatting and regulatory filing into the EDGAR and SEDAR systems. Communications professionals turn to ...

and more »

Breaking News For Tradeshows and Conferences Taking Place June 1, 2010 thru ...
IT Business Net (press release) (subscription)
Business Wire also handles XBRL tagging, document formatting and regulatory filing into the EDGAR and SEDAR systems. Communications professionals turn to ...

and more »

Corporate and Financial Weekly Digest - May 28, 2010
Mondaq News Alerts (registration)
Interactive Data (XBRL). The three-year phase-in of the SEC's interactive data rules, which require the submission of financial statements and notes to the ...

and more »

Breaking News For Tradeshows and Conferences Taking Place June 1, 2010 thru ...
Earthtimes (press release)
Business Wire also handles XBRL tagging, document formatting and regulatory filing into the EDGAR and SEDAR systems. Communications professionals turn to ...

and more »

Breaking News For Tradeshows and Conferences Taking Place June 1, 2010 thru ...
Business Wire (press release)
Business Wire also handles XBRL tagging, document formatting and regulatory filing into the EDGAR and SEDAR systems. Communications professionals turn to ...

and more »

FTC Considers Publishing Public Data Online to Support the Future of Journalism
Huffington Post (blog)
As the FTC's draft discussion includes, the SEC plans to expand these XBRL filing requirements to cover additional entities and data types. ...

and more »

Environmental Leader
Going Green in Annual Reports
Huffington Post (blog)
Second, the concept of Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) was introduced for the filing of financial statements. XBRL is the use of electronic ...
Rivet Software to Speak at Global GRI Conference in AmsterdamPR Web (press release)

all 28 news articles »

EDGAR Online Reschedules Annual Meeting
MarketWatch (press release)
We use our automated processing platform and our expertise in XBRL to produce both datasets and tools and to assist organizations with the creation, ...

and more »

EDGAR Online Reschedules Annual Meeting
PR Newswire (press release)
We use our automated processing platform and our expertise in XBRL to produce both datasets and tools and to assist organizations with the creation, ...

and more »

Written by Bob Schneider     Posted on May 28, 2010

When Walter Hamscher talks, people listen – or at least they should. The presentations by the Manager, Technology and Taxonomies in the SEC’s Office of Interactive Disclosure (OID) are uniformly informative, entertaining, and, not infrequently, eye-opening.

His speech last month at the Rome XII conference was no exception. Standing in for OID Director David Blaszkowsky — who, like many others, was unable to attend because of Europe’s (literally) ashen skies — Walter made the following useful observations. (Let me add his caveat that the opinions he expressed are his own and not those of the SEC or his colleagues at the agency.)    

(1) The vast majority of questions the SEC receives from companies on the interactive data mandate have “absolutely nothing to do with XBRL…it’s not about tags, line items, presentation linkbases, etc…”  Instead, because of the mandate’s complicated phase-in schedule and its nuanced rules on when and what companies must file, managers are mostly asking “How does this affect us?” To reduce the confusion, he recommends that regulators adopting XBRL produce simpler phase-in rules and publish them well in advance of implementation.

(2) About 1,400 XBRL filings have been received, including annual reports (about 500 thus far), quarterly statements, “a few” registration statements, and an “increasing number” by foreign companies using US GAAP.  Altogether, the filings represent about 500,000 data points, a “tremendous explosion” in the amount of data available to SEC analysts.

(3) Walter noted that, while most of the attention has focused on company filings, major parts of the XBRL mandate affecting investment companies (mutual funds) and Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations (NRSROs) have yet to go into effect. So while there is a feeling among some that the SEC’s XBRL implementation efforts have “quieted down,” in reality, they continue in full gear. (Interestingly, XBRL filings done by NRSROs won’t be received by the SEC; they will only be posted on their websites.)

(4) The OID is no longer part of the SEC’s accounting area, but rather a section of the new Division of Risk, Strategy, and Financial Innovation. As such, it is now within the broader scope of the SEC’s data collection activities, providing information to the agency’s economists, analysts, statisticians, etc.  Walter observed that, while during the Bush years the emphasis was on the market, in the new Administration, there’s much greater stress on “what can the agency itself do with the data.” Overall, he thought the OID’s new position in the SEC’s organization chart, with the information customers it now serves, was “a very good idea.”

(5) At several points, Walter indicated that the SEC mandate was proceeding smoothly, and that it’s absolutely possible to have a data repository system that accepts XBRL data with extensions. He said that when people are disdainful of the SEC’s XBRL data, it’s because there’s only three quarters’ worth, which would satisfy no financial analyst.

(6) About 20% of companies are now doing their own tagging, as opposed to using a service provider. This move toward in-house processing has been “faster and earlier than expected.”

(7) In Walter’s view, the first filing of a company of XBRL data is hard. It’s a novel experience and an awful lot of tagging decisions have to be made on a taxonomy that is very large and very granular.

(8) XBRL filing is changing traditional financial statements. Data that may have originally appeared in a few tables in the traditional financials can sometimes be consolidated and better represented in XBRL by using a single table.  In turn, the company may decide to use that single table next time for the traditional financials. Overall, XBRL is helping to reduce text and narrative in the traditional statements.

(9) The quality of thought going into XBRL statements is high. Walter finds it encouraging that, informally, early filers are mentoring later filers. In addition, working groups are expanding the number of tags for certain industries, like oil and gas.

(10) The voluntary filing program (VFP) was of tremendous benefit, allowing the agency to get feedback throughout the information supply chain. Within government, the VFP helped to smooth the path of implementation.

(11)  Walter is “very excited” about Inline XBRL and the promise it holds for improving presentation of financial information. He is “very heartened” by its acceptance by HMRS, the UK taxing authority.

(12) Great strides are being made by the International Taxonomy Architecture Working Group, comprising Japanese (EDINET), American, (US GAAP) and European (IFRS) members, in coming up with a common architecture.

Walter’s speech, along with those of the other keynote speakers, can be found at the XBRL website. At least for me, the files worked erratically, and I had difficulty in moving to specific parts of his presentation (thus the absence of time stamps in the above points, for which I apologize). But try to listen to Walter’s talk (preferably in IE, which seemed to be a better browser option than Firefox). It will be an extremely well spent half hour.

/R E P E A T -- SBR Event - XBRL and Red Tape Reduction Initiatives/
DigitalJournal.com (press release)
TORONTO, May 14 /CNW/ - XBRL Canada is holding a webinar on June 7, 2010 at 4:00PM Eastern on the topic of using XBRL to reduce red tape and cut the cost of ...

Upcoming XBRL Compliance Dates
Mondaq News Alerts (registration)
First Group of XBRL Filers—Detailed XBRL Tagging of Footnotes and Schedules. Domestic and foreign large accelerated filers that employ US GAAP and have ...

EuroMedtech 2010 Presenter Profiles
dBusinessNews Sacramento (press release)
Business Wire also handles XBRL tagging, document formatting and regulatory filing into EDGAR, SEDAR, FSA and other systems. ...
EuroMedtech 2010 Presenter ProfilesBusiness Wire (press release)

all 5 news articles »

EuroMedtech 2010 Presenter Profiles
Business Wire (press release)
Business Wire's patented NX data platform supports XML, XHTML and XBRL code that enhances news release interactivity, social media sharing and search engine ...

and more »

Upcoming XBRL compliance dates
Lexology (registration)
First Group of XBRL Filers—Detailed XBRL Tagging of Footnotes and Schedules. Domestic and foreign large accelerated filers that employ US GAAP and have ...

iPad: Next Generation corporate reporting
The Drum
... to envisage paid for applications that use programmes like XBRL to generate content and provide real time comparative corporate and annual reports. ...

Barry Melancon and Robert Harris
WebCPA
He is a member of the AICPA's delegation to the International Federation of Accountants, chairman of XBRL-US, vice chairman of the Center for Audit Quality, ...

and more »

Breaking International Microwave Symposium 2010 News via Business Wire ...
dBusinessNews Sacramento (press release)
Business Wire also handles XBRL tagging, document formatting and regulatory filing into the EDGAR and SEDAR systems. Communications professionals turn to ...

and more »

Breaking International Microwave Symposium 2010 News via Business Wire ...
Business Wire (press release)
Business Wire also handles XBRL tagging, document formatting and regulatory filing into the EDGAR and SEDAR systems. Communications professionals turn to ...

and more »

Rivet Software to Speak at Global GRI Conference in Amsterdam
PR Web (press release)
The session titled “Sustainability Reporting and XBRL – Learn about the Applications,” takes place on Thursday, May 27 at the Amsterdam Global Conference on ...

and more »