XBRL is a language for the electronic communication of business and financial data which is revolutionising business reporting around the world. It provides major benefits in the preparation, analysis and communication of business information. It offers cost savings, greater efficiency and improved accuracy and reliability to all those involved in supplying or using financial data. It is an open standard, free of licence fees, being developed by a non-profit making international consortium. Other pages on this web site provide detailed information on XBRL, its technical features and its business opportunities.

XBRL can be applied to a very wide range of business and financial data. Among other things, it can handle:-

• Company internal and external financial reporting.
• Business reporting to all types of regulators, including tax and financial authorities, central banks and governments.
• Filing of loan reports and applications; credit risk assessments.
• Exchange of information between government departments or between other institutions, such as central banks.
• Authoritative accounting literature – providing a standard way of describing accounting documents provided by authoritative bodies.

All types of organisations can use XBRL to save costs and improve efficiency in handling business and financial information. Because XBRL is extensible and flexible, it can be adapted to a wide variety of different requirements. All participants in the financial information supply chain can benefit, whether they are preparers, transmitters or users of business data.

XBRL is set to become the standard way of recording, storing and transmitting business financial information. It is capable of use throughout the world, whatever the language of the country concerned, for a wide variety of business purposes. It will deliver major cost savings and gains in efficiency, improving processes in companies, governments and other organisations.

XBRL is being developed by an international non-profit consortium of major companies, organisations and government agencies. These include the world’s leading accounting, technology, government and financial services bodies.

XBRL increases the usability of financial statement information. The need to re-key financial data for analytical and other purposes can be eliminated. By presenting its statements in XBRL, a company can benefit investors and raise its profile. It will also meet the requirements of regulators, lenders and others consumers of financial information, who are increasingly demanding reporting in XBRL. This will improve business relations and lead to a range of benefits.

With full adoption of XBRL, companies can automate data collection. For example, data from different company divisions with different accounting systems can be assembled quickly, cheaply and efficiently. Once data is gathered in XBRL, different types of reports using varying subsets of the data can be produced with minimum effort. A company finance division, for example, could quickly and reliably generate internal management reports, financial statements for publication, tax and other regulatory filings, as well as credit reports for lenders. Not only can data handling be automated, removing time-consuming, error-prone processes, but the data can be checked by software for accuracy.

• XBRL-aware accounting software products are becoming available which will support the export of data in XBRL form. These tools allow users to map charts of accounts and other structures to XBRL tags.
• Statements can be mapped into XBRL using XBRL software tools designed for this purpose.
• Data from accounting databases can be extracted in XBRL format. It is not strictly necessary for an accounting software vendor to use XBRL; third party products can achieve the transformation of the data to XBRL.
• Applications can transform data in particular formats into XBRL. For example, web sites are in operation that can transform filings into XBRL format

The route which an individual company may take will depend on its requirements and the accounting software and systems it currently uses, among other factors.

Several software vendors are developing such tools in India and the companies are free to choose the one that suits them to create XBRL document.

A core purpose of Accounting Institutes around the world is to enhance the access, quality and breadth of financial information available to the investing public. XBRL will help achieve this. Institutes also believe that the development of XBRL will help position their members as valued knowledge providers for their clients. Businesses, large and small, are undergoing fundamental change. Accountants, as the managers of the underlying language of business, can help organisations fit into the new digital world, solve business issues and capitilise on opportunities.

No.   XBRL is simply a language for transmitting information. It must accurately reflect data reported under different standards – it does not change them.

XBRL benefits comparability by helping to identify data which is genuinely alike and distinguishing information which is not comparable.