Public companies preparing to comply with the mandate to tag their financials in XBRL may have their work cut out for them initially, but it gets easier the second time around, according to recent survey of more than 200 public company executives.

News for those of you confused about how to comply with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new mandate to use XBRL technology in financial reporting: A new supply of confusion has just arrived.

A Compliance Week free webcast, and a great opportunity to learn about the opportunities that XBRL’s Global Ledger and standards-based architectures offer to businesses of any size (yes, it is scalable upwards – as in this case – and downwards… works with Quickbooks just as well).

Are US companies ready for XBRL? Are they even thinking about it? Compliance Week polled its readers on the subject a few weeks ago. The results were less than encouraging. Surprisingly, even though large companies will start adopting XBRL probably in a matter of months — they are just as unprepared for the change as small companies.