Monday, May 11, 2009

XBRL Readiness Lags Behind

According to a survey of 500 public companies that the SEC requires to begin filing their financials in XBRL format in June, 340 companies, about 70% have made the conversion. The survey was done by the nonprofit standards group XBRL US.

Advocates of XBRL say that the requirements will result in more accessible SEC reports that are easier to analyze, with enhanced capability to quickly compare companies’ results. Companies will use XML data tags (“taxonomies”) to file their financial information on EDGAR. Companies currently file their financial reports in text or HTML.

XBRL will be phased in over two years, with companies having more than $5 billion in shares held by the public required to file using XBRL starting with their June 2009 quarterly reports. A further 1,800 other large filers will be required to file in XBRL in June 2010, and all other publicly traded companies and foreign private issuers will be required to comply starting in June 2011.

XBRL US released its 2009 US GAAP Taxonomy for XBRL in April this year.

2 comments:

Bob said...

Hi Malcom,

It was interesting that the XBRL US survey generated mostly headlines like "biggest companies ready for XBRL" and "most companies making XBRL conversion" compared with your headline of XBRL Readiness Lags Behind.

Do you think the readiness numbers are weaker than some other observers believe?

Thanks,

Bob Schneider
Editor, Data Interactive (the Hitachi XBRL blog)
hitachidatainteractive.com

Ronak Jain said...

Hi Malcom,

Your article was very interesting.And i liked reading it .

Thanks,
Ronak jain