An emerging XML standard called XBRL, or eXtensible Business Reporting Language, promises to simplify the mechanics of working with financial statements. As XBRL catches on, analysts will be able to spend less time building intricate spreadsheets from scratch and more time scrutinizing companies' finances and accounting practices-which they're bound to be doing more of in the wake of the Enron scandal.

This year's debacles in financial disclosures have demonstrated the urgent need for better ways for companies to report results to investors and other stakeholders. Using XML data tags to describe financial information for public and private companies and other organizations, XBRL transforms corporate reporting from a paper-oriented publishing model into an Internet broadcasting model, providing significant benefits to all participants. This talk will describe for an XML-savvy audience a significant pilot project by NASDAQ, Microsoft and PricewaterhouseCoopers, and will cover in depth several significant XBRL announcements by government agencies, exchanges, and Fortune 500 companies, all scheduled for mid November.

In last month's edition of CIO, we kicked off our 'The Intelligent Real-Time Enterprise' series and briefly discussed extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). In doing so we highlighted two major implications XBRL will have on corporate reporting. Firstly that XBRL will become essential to corporate reporting, and secondly that it will likely reduce the importance of the format of published corporate information. In this article we examine these two implications in greater depth.

IFAC has joined the consortium of organizations that are actively contributing resources and funding to ensure the success of XBRL. XBRL stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language. Over 90 companies representing the global business reporting supply chain have joined forces to develop XBRL for the preparation and exchange of business reports and data. The initial goal of XBRL is to provide an XML-based framework that the global business information supply chain will use to create, exchange, and analyze financial reporting information including, but not limited to, general ledger information, regulatory filings such as annual and quarterly statements, audit schedules and tax schedules.

OneSource Information Services, Inc. (NASDAQ: ONES), a leading provider of business information solutions, today announced it has extended its support for eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) through the OneSource(R) AppLink(SM) software development kit (SDK) with financial data from over 750,000 UK and European companies. Using XBRL via the AppLink SDK, OneSource customers can integrate updated, fielded financial data on UK and European companies from the OneSource Enhanced Information Warehouse into standard business and custom financial applications. OneSource already provides access to an additional 28,000 global public companies'' financial data via XBRL, a standard for communicating financial data based on XML.

This presentation is based on the book Introducing XBRL: Decision Making in a Digital Economy (Prentice Hall; 2001). The presentation provides (I) a global overview of XBRL ("eXtensible Business Reporting Language"), then (II) proceeds to predict the impact XBRL will have on business, government and society.

Never underestimate the value of a common language. In September 1999, for example, NASA scientists controlling the Mars Climate Orbiter failed to convert crucial navigational data into the metric system. The result: The $125 million spacecraft crashed into the Red Planet.

The promise of XML (define) to help streamline and expand the collection and sharing of data is arriving at a federal financial institution that ensures the soundness of many of the nation's banks.

With the exception of attorneys, few people have as much to gain from the flush of earnings restatements as do boosters of the Extensible Business Reporting Language. XBRL is designed to make financial reports easier to post on the Internet and easier to understand once they're posted. And it's getting an important tryout beginning this week.

Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) will help companies achieve greater transparency and handle operational risk, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers' annual technology forecast. XBRL is an electronic format for simplifying the flow of financial statements, performance reports, accounting records and other financial information between software programs. Previously, there were no standards that would allow financial information to be automatically communicated between different applications.

OneSource Information Services, Inc. (Nasdaq: ONES), a leading provider of business information solutions, today announced support for eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) through the OneSource(R) AppLink(SM) software development kit (SDK). Using XBRL via the AppLink SDK, OneSource customers can access updated, fielded financial data on more than 28,000 global public companies from the OneSource enhanced information warehouse, and seamlessly integrate that data into standard business and custom financial applications. With the ability to provide five years of history on over 90 financial variables, reports and calculated variables via XBRL, OneSource now offers extensive support for this XML standard.

This article outlines the purpose and function of the XBRL project in text form. It provides an excellent intorduction to why XML languages can add huge value to web based material and how the XBRL team are planning to achieve this for financial reporting.

The recent Business Reporting Online conference in Amsterdam (19-22 May 2003) continued the development of XBRL.

On June 17, 2003, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and Federal Reserve Board jointly announced a $39 million contract they awarded to Unisys Corp. and a number of XBRL-US members - PricewaterhouseCoopers, Microsoft, EDGAR Online and UBMatrix -- to overhaul the system that regulators use to collect, process and distribute bank Call Report data. The reporting system modernization, which will include implementation of XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) will improve the timeliness, accuracy and efficiency of the information exchange process. XBRL was founded by the AICPA and the XBRL-International organization is currently hosted by the AICPA in New York.

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. expects to increase the efficiency of its foreign trade operations through the deployment of a new trade processing system developed by NEC.

You could say that PricewaterhouseCoopers consultant Walter Hamscher began his work with the XML standards consortium XBRL International more than a few years ago while he was working on his PhD in computer science at MIT.

XBRL International, a global consortium of over 200 leading accounting, technology and financial services companies and government agencies, announced today the Recommended Release of version 2.1 of its XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) technical specification. Enhanced functionality of version 2.1 will ease XBRL implementation by users of XBRL-enabled software and will improve the ability of application developers to create platform independent XBRL applications and tools.

Extensible Business Reporting Language is fundamentally transforming how businesses can provide information to investors, markets, and regulators.

What is it? A financial-reporting vocabulary created in eXtensible Markup Language (XML). XBRL is intended to make it easy for financial and analytical applications to import, manipulate and compare data.

Proposed changes and additions to an XML variant targeted for use in financial reporting will make information more accessible and easier to audit, say supporters of the technology.