PAs have a rare opportunity to help the business world take a giant leap forward. The extensible business reporting language (XBRL) can vastly improve the timeliness, accuracy and flexibility of data in financial statements and other business reports. Many experts think it will boost today’s commerce just as double-entry bookkeeping led to clearer financial statements that attracted investors and stimulated the Industrial Revolution. To help their clients and employers reap the benefits, CPAs need to understand how XBRL can upgrade a variety of business functions, including the representative sample this article briefly describes.

HERE’S HOW
Put XBRL to work in

Fair value accounting. Tagging assumption disclosures in XBRL formats would make management’s choices more transparent to users and easier to compare with those of other companies—and take away some observers’ worries about the reliability of corporate managers’ fair value determinations.

Financial statement preparation. XBRL makes it easier to create and document financial information and reduce manual intervention. It can help CPAs integrate disparate systems and apply and monitor internal controls, reducing the burdensome costs related to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

Mergers and acquisitions. Using XBRL as a universal standard will allow companies to integrate and improve information sharing with regulators, investors and other external entities—and dig out of the morass of useless data that often accompanies corporate consolidations—without moving to uniform hardware or operating systems.

Compliance. New SEC rule amendments enable public companies to voluntarily submit XBRL-tagged information as exhibits to some required filings. Participating companies still must submit these filings in traditional electronic format, but the voluntary program will show how XBRL can help improve report quality and usefulness to investors and other end users.

Standard setting. XBRL complements the objective of a single set of high-quality, understandable and enforceable global accounting standards and makes it easier to accurately compare financial statements across borders. XBRL also could be a defining factor in the principles vs. rules debate, as seeing all the information in the same format simplifies validation of management’s judgments and adjusts company-issued information to suit individual analytical purposes.

Investment and credit analysis. XBRL reduces research costs and makes it easier to create financial models and compare companies’ performance and solvency. While virtually all company information is publicly available, few but professional analysts can locate and understand much of it. Tagging data in XBRL improves transparency without additional disclosures and makes more information available to everyone. Making information more accessible also benefits the capital markets, which depend on timely and reliable business data to allocate investments, and helps public companies meet accelerated filing deadlines.

BOTTOM LINE
XBRL benefits all members of the business information supply chain. It’s time for companies, government agencies and firms to fundamentally improve business reporting by adopting XBRL.

COLLEEN SAYTHER CUNNINGHAM, CPA, is president and CEO of Financial Executives International. Her e-mail address is ccunningham@fei.org.