'All aboard' the XBRL train.

• Author: Heffes, Ellen M.
• Position: EXtensible Business Reporting Language - Interview

The eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) train is boarding for financial reporting and, in some cases, it's beginning to leave the station. This powerful new tool promises to aid the usefulness and transparency of financial statements for users and preparers.

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"XBRL benefits the whole financial information supply chain: companies, institutional and individual investors, accountants, capital markets and lenders, regulators and analysts, as well as key third parties such as software developers and data aggregators," says Michelle Horowitz, vice president of content development at PR Newswire and chairperson of the XBRL-US Adoption Committee, writing in IR magazine last November.

Indeed, since its inception in 1999, great strides have been made in adoption and implementation. In its current form, XBRL "will allow companies to gain greater market recognition and media coverage through access to more transparent information, which will enable all stakeholders to make better business decisions," Horowitz says.

As companies re-assess their reporting processes, it's key to deliver better and faster reporting, and XBRL seems to fit the bill. Horowitz explains, "It's an eXtensible Markup Language (XML)-based standard that permits the automatic exchange and reliable extraction of financial information across all software formats and technologies. It reduces the need to enter financial information more than once, and minimizes the risk of data-entry error."

XBRL is gaining momentum internationally. Kurt Ramin, who serves as volunteer Global Chair for XBRL International, spoke recently with Managing Editor Ellen M. Heffes about XBRL in the international arena. Ramin is commercial director for the International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation (IASCF).

Members of XBRL International, based in New York--an outgrowth of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA)--are all interested in the improvement of the business reporting supply chain. Its 250 worldwide members consist of software companies, regulators, the big accounting firms and others. It has a full-time president and several paid staff people. It aims to gain global recognition and visibility of the group and the process (XBRL).

Would you say XBRL is revolutionizing financial reporting?

RAMIN: What it does, for the first time, is integrate the business supply chain of information. It bar-codes financial and business information. Companies...