Got issues ... with the SEC's final rule for interactive reporting using XBRL; Here are responses--from users with experience--to points raised in comment letters.

• Author: Savage, Michelle
• Position: FINANCIAL REPORTING - United States. Securities and Exchange Commission - Extensible business reporting language

For those familiar with the term "eXtensible Business Reporting Language" -- or its acronym, XBRL -- but who have not yet learned about it, it's time to lift your head out of the sand. On May 30, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission took a giant step to bring financial reporting into the 21st century by publishing its mandatory rule proposal for public companies to file financial statements in XBRL format.

Using XBRL will directly affect how financial statements are developed, how companies communicate with their investors and how companies are perceived in the marketplace. Over three years before the rule's release, more than 80 companies had been testing the new and improved electronic data-tagging style of reporting under the SEC's voluntary filer program.

AGL Resources -- an energy-services holding company with $3 billion in market capitalization that generates nearly all of its operating revenues through the sale, distribution transportation and storage of natural gas --- got into the program early to "get ahead of the curve," says James Anderson, manager, Financial Reporting at AGL. Early in 2007. The firm heard about it, he says, recognized the importance of XML-based data to the SEC and to investors, and joined the SEC's program.

"Interactive data is not going away," says Anderson, who advises all to "talk to your investor relations department, your audit committee [and] your disclosure committee."

Company size shouldn't matter, he adds. The time has come "to get your management and key departments involved in the development of a plan for XBRL implementation."

From May through August of last year, AGL Resources' financial reporting team developed its XBRL execution plan. The plan involved determining its software requirements, which filings to submit and what extensions needed to be created.

After about 100 hours of training and preparation, the team submitted its XBRL-formatted second quarter 2007 10-Q -- 44 days after the firm's official filing. Since that time, the work required for each XBRL creation and submission has declined dramatically -- to less than two hours for the most recent interactive data submission; the second quarter 2008 10-Q was made on the same day as the official filing.

At $55 billion in revenue United Technologies Corp. -- a diversified company with branded products in heating and air conditioning, aerospace, elevators and fire and security systems -- John Stantial, assistant controller, Financial Reporting & Analysis, says the first time UTC tagged a Form 8-K of its earnings release, it took about 80 hours to learn the software, establish the process and perform the tagging and filing. That process...