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1.3 The Global Accounting Digital Library Project: Present and Future: Role of Business Reporting Standards Eric E. Cohen [email protected]
1.3 The Global Accounting Digital Library Project: Present and Future:
Role of Business Reporting Standards
Eric E. [email protected]
Expectations: Access
• Accounting and taxation resources– Journals and other publications– Databases, including annual reports and
other filings– Current texts, books and research– Accounting software
• Other reference materials• Research services • Copiers
XBRL is the use of XML and related W3 recommended specification to represent the information common to users across the Business Reporting Supply Chain.
Relevance and Reality
• General– Comparability– Printing and handling costs
• Global– Language– Timeliness– Rules and laws
XBRL separates meaning from presentation; language issues can be handled easily. Agreement on content brings new comparability – to data, and to underlying rules.
Access to Filings
• SEC Voluntary Filing Program
• Netherlands Taxonomy Project
• Many other countries and efforts– Japan EDINET– Singapore– China– Korea
XBRL facilitates more easily reused data, more comparable data (across regulators, across countries, across other boundaries). It is securities, it is tax, it is pan-governmental.
Research of the Future
• Standards, led by XBRL, facilitate the use of more consistent, context-rich metadata– Examples
• Search by FAS 158• Search by CashCashEquivalents• Search by CIK 0001160330
XBRL: relevant to establishing law, and researching laws across borders and languages. Each concept is tied to its underlying legislation; cross-topic research is then possible.
Research of the Future
• What if all business data, at the utmost level of detail, was delivered to “black boxes”
• Research institutions could have real-time, enhanced access to that data, selectively opening it
• Until full transactional detail (properly redacted) and audit information was available for study?
XBRL is more than tax returns, annual reports and like typical data; it is the underlying business detail (XBRL Global Ledger); it can be agreement on tomorrow’s audit documentation.
Conclusion
• The Global Accounting Digital Library– Simplified, more common data– In global databases– Language independent– Context-linked
Resources
• XBRL International– http://www.xbrl.org
• (U.S.) SEC and Interactive Data– http://www.sec.gov/spotlight/xbrl.htm
• Netherlands Taxonomy Project– http://www.xbrl-ntp.nl
XBRL and other standards will play an important role in the standardized, integrated, searchable, consistent environment of tomorrow.
