Why XBRL?
I’m often asked: why do you spend so much time with XBRL, both professionally and as a volunteer? What is it about XBRL that so attracts you? I started my professional life on the business side, in banking. As I became immersed in the various operational challenges bankers face, I became fascinated by how many problems derive from one common issue: the difficulty of having the right information available at the right time. This realization led to an interest in the IT side, and I began to come up with solutions to the problems that faced me....
read moreMove to a Standards-Driven Paradigm with XBRL and XBRL GL
Adopting XBRL for companies’ internal data needs represents nothing less than an epochal shift to a new paradigm for handling data. The current paradigm is built on processes that are manual, resource-intensive, and error-prone. A lot of money and resources is spent on these processes, which typically require software replacement or upgrades at high cost. The large outlays include not only the purchase price, but transition and training costs as well. But again and again, organizations find themselves in the very same situation that prompted...
read moreXBRL FAQ: XBRL is not a transactional standard, and at the same time it is used to represent transactions in domains like HR, auditing, integrated reporting. Why is that?
Q I often hear that XBRL should not be used to record transactions, but I also hear about the benefits of XBRL in domains like human resources, manufacturing, auditing, integrated reporting, where much of the relevant information is transactional in nature. How is this possible? A XBRL is not a transactional standard, meaning that it was not conceived nor optimized to standardize transactional data — such as invoices, orders, time sheets, or sustainability information — for the purpose of easily exchanging them between different parties....
read moreXBRL FAQ: What are the practical benefits of the re-usability of XBRL?
Q I hear a lot about the benefits of XBRL re-usability. What does this mean in practice? A XBRL is a technical specification optimized to represent business and accounting data. This means that the same syntax and the same semantic model can be used to represent very different types of information – such as financial statements, tax returns, invoices, inventory, fixed assets, trial balances, payroll information, Key Performance Indicators (KPI), sustainability data, just to make a few examples. These different types of information are used...
read moreIntroducing DEXT — the Deeply Embedded XBRL Toolkit for data integration, internal and external reporting, data monitoring and auditing
While the benefits of XBRL in terms of data transparency, cost savings and greater efficiencies in handling data are widely recognized by data consumers (regulators, analysts and investors), businesses and not-for-profit organizations are not typically looking at XBRL to achieve the same benefits internally. IPHIX is releasing DEXT, a set of software tools, free knowledge bases and other resources that help organizations do just that – leverage the benefits of “deeply embedded XBRL” internally, whether they are subject to an XBRL mandate or...
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