Today the SEC made available a DRAFT version of the EDGAR Filer Manual that includes changes to Section 6, the Interactive Data (XBRL) section. Draft Version 14 is available for download here, and includes the following changes…

A useful quick summary of What you need to know about XBRL from a UK tax filing perspective can be found on AccountingWeb. A key point is that if you are able to submit a ‘Short Company Tax Return’ via the HMRC’s online portal as a PDF file, then all the necessary conversion to XBRL will be done for you by HMRC’s web application.

With most mandate Group 1 companies coming off their 12/31 10-K XBRL submission and already preparing for the 3/31 XBRL submission, the company’s extension taxonomy comes into focus a bit more than in the previous filing seasons.

XBRL International (XII) is a standards organization currently funded by a membership model, with revenue coming from the jurisdictions and conferences. This was a fine model when the XBRL standard was young and large accounting firms and the AICPA saw the benefits from being generous with their support. Conferences were seen as a moneymaker for XBRL International, and funding was adequate to support a startup standard. XII goals were clearly definable, and “easy” to achieve, which also limited costs.

Since then the model has grown old and revenue growth has been constrained, and with each passing conference, there are quiet conversations about “how do we change the model, because this one isn’t working”.

I offer some background and a number of recommendations.

New Fortune.com managing editor (and ‘95 Medill grad) Daniel Roth (@danroth) gave me a chance the other day to write a guest column on transparency and financial recovery and XBRL. It’s now here.

The Japanese Institute of CPAs has produced a sweet cartoon explaining XBRL for newbies like Mr. Sato. This introduction makes a number of useful points, especially about the differences between HTML (rendering data) and XBRL (contextualizing data) and the potential for XBRL-tagged report data to improve analyst productivity and facilitate the automated auditing of data and translation of data labels between jurisdictions.

Today the SEC announced updates to their XBRL Viewers. The updates to the rendering engine that drives their Viewers include…

This brief lesson in corporate transparency Author’s Choice: Don’t Ignore the Transparency Imperative advocates that transparency is not just about presenting accurate, accessible and comparable information (e.g. using globally adopted standards such as XBRL) it is also about establishing a new level of engagement with the stakeholders of an organization.

For many businesses filing their financial statements using XBRL to comply with the SEC mandate, the phrase “extension taxonomy” is a largely misunderstood term. There is a narrow view that it is only about adding brand-new company-specific elements which do not exist in the base taxonomy (Ex: US GAAP 2009).

The Cloud Report is a validation tool created by a third party to assist with the XBRL filing process. In fact, some printers use this tool as their validation tool for their XBRL clients. Rivet currently uses its own proprietary tool to perform this function and does not rely on a third party for its validation.