When reporting financials in XBRL, companies need to take responsibility by documenting the reasons items are tagged the way they are and allocating ample time for management review—even if they outsource the data tagging to a third party, according to panelists at the 2009 XBRL US National Conference that took place in New York this week.
Approximately 470 companies have filed their financial reports in XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language)—a standards-based way to communicate business and financial information to investors and other stakeholders. Mandatory filing began for the largest U.S. public companies and foreign private issuers listed with the SEC with fiscal periods ending on or after June 15, 2009, and, as expected during any transition period, some common errors emerged in preliminary submissions.
Representatives from XBRL US at the conference said they plan to release a set of approximately 3,000 “checks” that public company preparers can use to identify common errors that occur in XBRL-formatted financial statements such as incorrect signs and line items that shouldn’t be included together. This set of data consistency checks, which is expected to ultimately help make XBRL data more consistent and better quality for downstream users, will be made available in the first quarter of 2010.
