XBRL gets a boost from FAF.

• Author: Heffes, Ellen M.
• Position: Financial reporting - EXtensible Business Reporting Language, Financial Accounting Foundation

For a few years now, there has been much clamor to encourage U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) registrants to file financial information using eXtensible Business Reporting Language, or XBRL. However, despite the continuous efforts of the SEC and volunteer groups, the initiative had difficulty attracting sufficient interest from filers, auditors and investors.

That is likely to change. Rapidly.

SEC Chairman Christopher Cox has made it known that the movement to an interactive data platform like XBRL is a key component of his agenda. In an October speech, Cox told a public audience that financial reporting using XBRL can be expected within "months," not years. Cox and many others believe that XBRL will provide better accessibility to and comparability of financial reports.

To help with the charge, Cox enlisted the help of the Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF), the independent oversight body of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB), to get the ball rolling.

With a long history, through its standard-setting boards in financial accounting and reporting standard-setting, and a deep, broad and active constituency, FAF was well-suited to further the dialogue and identify the roadblocks to XBRL-based financial reporting.

Under this backdrop, the FAF initiated discussion among its preparer, auditor, and investor constituencies--including Financial Executives International (FEI), the CFA Institute, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) and the American Accounting Association (AAA)--to assess the financial community's interest in, and concerns about, XBRL-based financial reporting. This, in turn, generated increased interest and support for the initiative.

The FAF even served as an incubator for XBRL financial reporting taxonomy development, by initially formulating a financial reporting taxonomy model to advance the dialogue and commitment to the initiative and then jump-starting the development effort by soliciting and training accounting and XBRL subject matter experts to begin the development effort.

"We were in a position to help the SEC advance this project," said Robert J. DeSantis, president and chief operating officer of the FAF. "Since the mission of our organization is, in part, to advance financial reporting for the benefit of investors and the capital markets and to do so in an objective and...