Advantages and Disadvantages of XBRL

The Advantages of XBRL

XBRL is a universally accepted information sharing tool. XBRL is available universally in many countries and facilitates sharing business information in many languages, on virtually any computer platform and in multiple accounting standards. Investors can access business information electronically with XBRL thereby enabling almost real-time analysis. Business information tagged with XBRL can be converted into a variety of formats including HTML, spreadsheets and databases. Because XBRL is so widely accepted, companies can increase automated information sharing with minimal implementation costs.

XBRL is beneficial for a variety of stakeholders. XBRL has broad appeal because it can be utilized by investors to facilitate analysis of financial results, by companies to eliminate manual input and review of information passed through the financial reporting process, and by governmental entities to efficiently gather information from business. XBRL can drive business information sharing efficiencies in a variety of situations. Companies should begin to explore using XBRL in other ways once they complete SEC compliance requirements.

XBRL adapts well to a variety of uses. XBRL is not just a financial reporting tool. XBRL can be used in a variety of business information sharing situations. XBRL could streamline tax return preparation and reporting, sharing of non-financial business information, like production volumes, inventory reserves or merchandise shrinkage. XBRL could facilitate internal corporate efficiencies including the automated movement of information from its source to its end use. XBRL can also enable information sharing between companies and their vendors, customers and business partners. Consider for instance that automated matching of purchase orders, receiving documents and invoices could be automated utilizing XBRL technologies. In addition, there is open source taxonomy, Global Ledger, that companies could utilize to jump-start the use of XBRL within their organization

XBRL provides context, validation, persistence and reusability. A company can use XBRL to improve both the speed and accuracy of information moved through its reporting cycle. In addition, XBRL can improve spreadsheet controls by electronically accessing information from source systems thereby significantly mitigating human input errors. In addition, business information tagged with XBRL persists from period to period and is thereby easily reusable.

XBRL is Open Source. Organizations have paid to develop taxonomies that can be used without any cost to those that use them. There are also web-based readers to read the taxonomies and web-based tools for rendering XBRL Instance files. Even Microsoft Office, a tool widely available in almost every company, is XML enabled (XBRL is a special type of XML). By utilizing the freely available XBRL resources, companies can benefit from XBRL while keeping implementation costs to a minimum.