Very soon all companies in the United Kingdom are going to be producing iXBRL versions of their financial statements and providing those to HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs – the tax department). This provides UK companies, especially all listed companies, with a fantastic opportunity to increase the quality of reporting they provide to investors.

As the iXBRL will be required, it seems to me that there would be little additional effort required to make those iXBRL versions of financial statements available on company websites.

One of the benefits of XBRL is the ability to directly consume the information into computer systems to avoid manual re-keying. This is particularly important if a company wants the analyst community to either cover the company, or at a minimum to include the company as a comparator to a covered company. Any need to re-key information would impose time and error costs on analysts, and will ‘de-select’ that company from the list of comparators, if it is possible to simply import the information provided by another company in the same industry segment.

Therefore, while there is no requirement for companies to post their iXBRL financials on their website (the SEC requires companies providing XBRL to the SEC to also post the XBRL files on their website), to do so is both simple and provides the investor community with additional information, quickly and at almost no additional cost to the company.

What a great opportunity for UK (LSE and AIM) listed companies to get their message out. Don’t put the iXBRL in the logical desk drawer, post the iXBRL financial statements on the company website.

Daniel Roberts is has over 25 years experience in Innovation, Consulting, Sustainability, XBRL, Internal Audit and Information Systems Audit, Risk Management, Corporate Governance, and Information Technology. Daniel established his own risk, governance and internal audit consultancy in 1995, and was Grant Thornton’s US National Director of Assurance Innovation from February 2001 through the beginning of 2008. He has focused on CSR and Sustainability issues for the past four years, across the range of CSR activities. XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) – two term Chairman of the XBRL US Steering Committee 2005 – 2007. Represented the United States on the XBRL International Steering Committee. He is the Concept creator and project manager of an integrated, Internet based Enterprise Risk Manager, Control Self-Assessment and Legislative Compliance application, founded on the concepts of COSO. The system allowed for the documentation of a system of internal control, linking responsibilities to individuals, and linking each compliance element to full documentation (controls or legislation).
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