Transparency, Investors and XBRL (part 2)

Transparency is important to investors and security markets. Transparency is equally important within company operations. Companies seem to be focused exclusively on complying with the SEC’s XBRL requirements, but they should begin to think about ways to increase the transparency of their operations. A quick and relatively inexpensive way of gaining that operational visibility is to utilize XBRL. Use of XBRL within company operations provides many advantages including:

·         Ability to access business and financial information from disparate computer platforms or applications

·         Ease of access to business and financial information including through use of existing desktop tools (like MS Excel)

·         Improved accuracy in the business and financial information obtained because amounts are selected using the related XBRL tag

·         Increased consistency of business and financial information because the information persists from its original source to its ultimate use

·         Speed of access to business and financial information

·         Increased automation and less manual data review, especially in handoffs of data from application to application

·         Increased ability to automate reporting