QuickStudy: Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL)

XBRL is a version of XML defined to meet the requirements of business and financial information. With XBRL, unique identifying tags are applied to financial data items.

More than simple identifiers, these tags provide a range of information and allow labels in any language, as well as accounting references or other subsidiary information. XBRL can show how items relate to one another, how they are calculated, and whether they fall into particular groups for organizational or presentation purposes. XBRL is extensible, so companies can adapt it to meet special requirements.

XBRL won't change what is reported, only how it is reported. With XML tagging, the information in a business report is computer-readable and can be extracted, searched and analyzed (even if it's from multiple sources and written in different languages).

Definition

XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) is an XML-based language for business and financial data. XBRL provides identifying tags for individual items, allowing computer programs to sort data, analyze relationships and generate output. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has mandated that all public companies must report their earnings using XBRL by 2010.

How XBRL Works

In XBRL, individual data items are called elements, which are combined into taxonomies (dictionaries) defined by schemas and relationships called linkbases. An XBRL instance document is a business report in an electronic format created according to the rules of XBRL.

Elements are represented in this format: 1,000. The word liability inside angle brackets is called a tag. Between the opening and closing tags is a value. A computer could understand from this example that the number 1,000 is tagged as a liability, but the computer must be programmed to understand the term liability and what values it could have.

Taxonomies are categorization schemes, or dictionaries, that define the specific tags for individual data items. Because different countries have different accounting regulations, each may have its own taxonomy for financial reporting.

Potential Problems

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