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. Whether you are or not, Mr. Sato seems won over by Mr. Suzuki’s compelling pitch and actually quite starry-eyed about the utility of XBRL, as this image shows:

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Stewart McKie is Stewart McKie has 25 years of IT industry experience. His education includes a MSc in Organization Consulting and a MA in Screenwriting. He was the Technology Editor of Business Finance magazine during 1995-2000 and also wrote regular features for Intelligent Enterprise magazine. He is the author of six books on accounting software and over 50 technology white papers.
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