This means that all financial executives will need to understand the impact of XBRL implementation throughout the finance organization.
Recent public statements by SEC commissioners and staff indicate that the SEC intends to increase its use of XBRL data to analyze financial reporting and to strengthen its efforts to motivate filers to submit XBRL data that is free of the translation errors that have hindered its widespread use.
In April 2014 Mary Jo White, Chair of the SEC, in response to a Congressional inquiry about the SEC’s use of XBRL data stated that:
“The Commission is committed to using developments in technology and electronic data communications to facilitate greater transparency in the form of easier access to, and analysis of, information. I believe that requiring financial statement information in structured data format enables investors and others to search and analyze the financial information dynamically and facilitates comparison of financial and business performance across companies, reporting periods and industries.”
Rick Fleming, the SEC’s Investor Advocate, summed it up best when he said, “We should not expect the next generation of American investors to scroll through hundreds pages of disclosure to find the information they need to make investment decisions.”
The SEC is not missing a step in its push for XBRL implementation. Last year it released of “structured data sets” of XBRL information aimed at improving the access to electronically tagged data. Later this year, SEC says that data sets will be expanded to include information provided in electronically tagged footnotes.
What Are Your Plans?
Since 2011, the Financial Executives Research Foundation (FERF) has conducted annual surveys on the impact of XBRL on the SEC reporting process. The most recent SEC Reporting and the Impact of XBRL: 2013 Survey found that 71 percent of the respondents had changed their processes for creating and filing 10-Ks and 10-Qs to employ software solutions that integrate collaborative document drafting, XBRL tagging, EDGARization, and direct filing of both EDGAR and XBRL reports with the SEC. To access this and prior year’s reports, please click on the selected links below:
SEC Reporting and the Impact of XBRL: 2012 Survey
SEC Reporting and the Impact of XBRL: 2011 Survey
We want to understand filers’ views on how their processes for creating and filing reports with the SEC have changed as a result of the XBRL requirement. We would appreciate you taking the time to share your experiences of XBRL filings in this survey.
To thank you for your participation in the survey, we will send you a free copy of the final report.
Please click here to take the survey.