Introducing a New Era in XBRL Data

We could soon start to see a shift in how investors and other financial statement users access and analyze public company financial statement data. With the use of a technology called inline XBRL (iXBRL), data consumers will have access to view XBRL metadata while reading financial statements within their browsers.

In June, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) issued an order to permit operating companies to use iXBRL in their periodic and current reports through March 2020. iXBRL enables XBRL information to be embedded into the HTML financial statement filing — as opposed to including XBRL data in a separate XBRL Exhibit. For filers that use iXBRL in their financial statements, this metadata will be viewable on the SEC’s Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval (EDGAR) system which now provides an iXBRL viewer. The SEC’s iXBRL viewer also provides enhanced search capabilities within the filings that use iXBRL.

Why is this important? The XBRL tags provide more information than what was previously available in the plain HTML file, such as a definition of the reported fact and a reference to the FASB Codification for each tag used. For example, if an investor searches for a disclosure within a financial report using the FASB reference, iXBRL allows users to easily find all facts in a filing tagged with that reference. This functionality is not new in terms of what XBRL can provide. However previously, in order to perform such functions, XBRL enabled software was required. The SEC is now making this tool available to all users on their website for those filings that use iXBRL.

The use of iXBRL also has the capability to help ease the review of the XBRL tagged document for financial statement preparers because the XBRL information will be viewable within the financial statements themselves. The SEC noted in its announcement that, “the format could decrease filing preparation costs, improve the quality of structured data, and, by improving data quality, increase the use of XBRL data by investors and other market participants.”

One group that is focused on the quality of XBRL data is the XBRL US Data Quality Committee (DQC), of which the AICPA is a member. The DQC develops guidance and validation rules for companies that can prevent or detect inconsistencies or errors in XBRL data filed with the SEC. Recently, the DQC reported a significant improvement in year-over-year filing quality for XBRL submissions to the SEC. The DQC analyzed the results of running its first set of validation rules, which became effective January 2016. With those rules in effect, filers reduced the number of errors in their filings by 64 percent in the first quarter of 2016 as compared with the first quarter of 2015, for the data covered.

This demonstrates that the work of the DQC is making an impact and a sign that data accuracy in XBRL tagging is improving. The DQC’s rules are freely available on the open source Arelle XBRL platform and XBRL US offers a tool on its website to run the filings against the approved rules.

XBRL US recently announced the launch of its second public review and comment period for new proposed guidance, five new validation rules and proposed additions to the DQC’s previously issued rule to detect inappropriate negative values. These proposals will help filers identify errors in the XBRL data due to inappropriate combinations of concepts, concepts that are no longer supported by the US GAAP Taxonomy, and inappropriate positive or negative values.

The 60-day comment period is open through August 31, 2016. The open period provides stakeholders with documentation on how each rule functions and the ability to analyze their own filings to test the rules. Public review and input is an important part of the process to ensure that the final rules appropriately detect errors in the filings. I encourage members to review the tagging guidance and new set of rules, and to embrace the progress of a new era for XBRL data.

Introducing a New Era in XBRL Data

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