Performance ● Governance ● Compliance (PGC)

XBRL: Transforming Business Reporting

XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is the XML-based standard for identifying and better communicating the complex financial information in corporate business reports. XBRL makes the analysis and exchange of corporate financial information easier and more reliable. RuleSphere is monitoring the developments in XBRL standards and technology and would like to assist you in integrating this approach into your business plans and deploying the technology to support your regulatory compliance and reporting needs.

XBRL is a royalty-free, open specification for software being developed by a non-profit consortium consisting of over 170 leading companies, associations, and government agencies around the world. Anyone interested in applying XBRL to business reporting processes can receive a license from XBRL International.

XBRL provides benefits to all members of the financial information supply chain, public and private companies, the accounting profession, regulators, analysts, the investment community, capital markets and lenders, as well as key third parties such as software developers, system integrators, consultants, and data aggregators.

How XBRL Affects Business Reporting

XBRL is a standards-based method for preparing, publishing in a variety of formats, exchanging and analyzing financial statements and the information they contain. XBRL facilitates reporting and makes it easier for companies to expose data that is valued by investors and regulators. XBRL does not set or require changes to existing accounting rules nor require a company to disclose any additional information beyond that which they normally disclose under existing accounting standards. Instead, XBRL improves the processes of preparing, analyzing, and publishing the information in business reports.

XBRL:

• Permits the automatic exchange and reliable extraction of financial information across all software formats and technologies, including the Internet.
  
• Reduces the need to enter financial information more than one time, reducing the risk of data entry error and eliminating the need to manually key information for various formats, (printed financial statement, an HTML document for a company's Web site, an EDGAR filing document, a raw XML file or other specialized reporting formats such as credit reports and loan documents) thereby lowering a company's cost to prepare and distribute its financial statements while improving investor or analyst access to information.
  
• Leverages efficiencies of the Internet as today's primary source of financial information. Increasing numbers of companies worldwide provide some type of financial disclosure on the Internet, including 80% of US companies, and the majority of information that investors use to make decisions comes to them via the Internet.
  
• XBRL meets the needs of today's investors and other users of financial information by providing accurate and reliable information for making informed decisions.

How XBRL Fits with Other Standards
There are several other XML-based standards that focus on financial information. These other standards include ebXML, FpML, RIXML, MDDL, FIX, FIMXL. IFX, and OFX, each of which addresses a specific aspect of financial transactions.

XBRL, on the other hand, is not designed for financial transactions, but for business reporting. This includes annual reports, SEC filings, and a variety of other reports from companies to investors, regulators, and business analysts. XBRL is for performance data rather than market data, for entities rather than investment instruments, and reported data rather than document data. XBRL defines how the numbers and facts inside a financial statement and related reports relate to one another.

Performance Management Imperative

What is Closed-Loop?

Significant Business Value

XBRL