The SEC issued a mandate to require all registrants to “tag” their SEC filings using XBRL over a 3- year period. The largest companies began tagging their filings for periods ended after 6/15/09. For the first year, registrants are permitted to “block tag” their footnotes. This means each footnote can be one tag. For the second year of reporting, companies will be required to detail “tag” all of the different data points in their footnotes. This is expected to significantly increase both the effort and the time spent tagging information. All along, the regulators, such as the SEC and the FDIC (which has required financial institutions to use XBRL for their call reporting since 2005) have been the largest supporters of moving to XBRL. One of the benefits they tout is the ability of users, such as investors and analysts, to take the XBRL data and more easily analyze and compare companies. These users have, however, been slow to begin using the technology. Presumably, once we have critical mass of SEC registrants tagging their financials using XBRL, more users will utilize it.

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