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.

Mr. Dejan Gostimir graduated and earned his Master of Science degree at Faculty Of Economics and Business at the University of Zagreb, Croatia with the thesis titled: ”XBRL as possible standard of financial reporting in the Republic of Croatia”. He was member of the board at ORKIS Ltd., project leader and editor in chief of the accounting and financial web portal ORKIS.hr that was the first project of this kind in Croatia. ORKIS.hr is still number one financial and accounting web portal in Croatia. He has more than thirteen years of experiences in accounting, finance and management. He has attended training for the certificate of certified accountant. He is a regular columnist of ORKIS.hr portal on the subject of XBRL, management, finance and accounting. Currently he is working as a CFO in pharma industry and He is a guest lecturer on the Zagreb School Of Economics and Management on the subject of XBRL.

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.

Some time ago I wrote about my concerns that there were not enough XBRL experts. That generated some interesting discussion, and led to one of the questions that I put to David Blaszkowsky, Director of the SECs Office of Interactive Data (OID). In a wide ranging conversation, more of which will be included in other posts, we talked specifically about the issue. As this conversation carried on from the previous, readers should accept that the standard disclaimer is still in place.

Earlier last week I had the pleasure of spending some time (over the phone) with David Blaszkowsky, Director of the SEC’s Office of Interactive Disclosure. We covered a number of issues, too much in fact to put into a single article, so there will be more from David over the coming weeks.

The Office of Interactive Disclosure (OID) carries the heavy responsibility of implementing the SEC’s Interactive Data rules for GAAP for public companies, for mutual funds and for ratings (links and names), and in the minds of many observers of XBRL’s progress around the world, holds the key to demonstrating the real value for XBRL for public financial reporting generally…

I have been warning that Detailed Tagging under the SEC program (also known as “Level 4 tagging”) will be significantly more burdensome for reporting companies. I have gone so far as to ask if this will be the “new SOX” in effort. Now a number of vendors are beginning to echo that concern, although none of them will use the “new SOX” expression. the SEC says they are watching closely, and looking for “best practices”.

Patrick Quinlan is the President of Rivet Software, a Denver, Colorado-based company that is pioneering the future of global financial communications. Patrick comes to Rivet as a business executive with a proven track record of startup development, funding strategies, and capital investment success. He brings experience in the small and emerging business space and is skilled in executing strategic planning, performing market analysis, and guiding new product development. As the CEO of several successful startups and as a consultant, Patrick has helped many companies build and manage effective sales teams, meet revenue goals, and achieve peak performance. He graduated from the University of Kansas and holds an MBA from Regis University.

The advancement of eXtensive Business Reporting Language (“XBRL”) technology along with the three-wave SEC mandate for submitting financial information as interactive data has created a tsunami for external reporting professionals at public companies. The first year interactive data SEC filing requirement has been commonly referred to as block tagging. This means that in addition to tagging the body of the financial statements the individual footnotes are each block tagged with an appropriate element from the company’s chosen XBRL taxonomy. The second year interactive data SEC filing requirement includes all the first year requirements, but then requires the additional three-levels of detail tagging for the financial statement footnotes.

The first round of XBRL-based financial filings has already begun. The largest public companies filed their first financial statements in June of 2009. Many more will follow this June, and by June of 2011 all public companies will be required to tag their financial reports with XBRL meta-data prior to filing with the SEC.

When I first read the post The Economic and Regulatory Shadow by accounting professor David Albrecht, I thought I was reading a treatment for a movie.