Wednesday, January 23, 2013

An Evaluation of the Current State and Future of XBRL and Interactive Data for Investors and Analysts


CEASA's new white paper "An Evaluation of the Current State and Future of XBRL and Interactive Data for Investors and Analysts" is available here.

The paper includes specific recommendations:
We believe there are several conditions for XBRL to be widely used:
1. The entire XBRL community must find a way to reduce significantly the error rate and unnecessary extensions (company-specific data tags). Some approaches that might achieve this are: providing greater regulatory oversight, potentially requiring an audit of the data, or requiring filers to resolve the error and quality checks communicated to them by XBRL US.
2. Filers should spend the effort they are investing in attempting to destroy the SEC's XBRL regulation on improving the quality of their own data, as well as on making their own data more useful and accessible to users.
3. XBRL technology development needs to be taken over and run by technologists, rather than accountants and regulators. An alternate and challenging approach to improving the underlying technology would possibly be to partner with the major business information system vendors (like IBM, Oracle and SAP), the key web-based financial information suppliers (like Google and Yahoo) and possibly even the major data aggregators (Bloomberg, CapitalIQ, FactSet and Thomson Reuters) not only to ensure the necessary mapping to the regulatory use of XBRL is as seamless as possible, but, more importantly, to get them to help improve the XBRL technology overall.
- originally posted by Mike Willis on Linkedin

Thursday, January 03, 2013

The XBRL Canada Online Course


Advances in Business and Financial Reporting

XBRL Canada is offering an online course tht introduces the subject of XBRL to a Canadian audience. It is structured in three-levels, Strategic, Informational, and Detailed, which enables you to delve into XBRL to the extent you wish to. The content is fast moving, and consists of video extracts and access to a visual knowledge base.

Whatever your level of interest -  - this course will help you to understand XBRL-facilitated advances now happening worldwide, taking you through Global Adoption, Fundamentals, Implementation, Benefits, and the Future.

You do not have to commit at the outset to a particular level, just follow your interest as you move through the course, bearing in mind that the levels are cumulative. When you are ready to take the exam at the end, you simply select the appropriate one based on the level(s) you have followed. (Note that there is a $25.00 admin charge to cover course management costs.)

XBRL is a reality around the world and it is just a matter of time until it becomes adopted in Canada. This course is an opportunity to provide you with the tools you need to plan for it before it happens, whether that includes setting up an XBRL function in the enterprise or making sure the next accounting software you buy is XBRL ready so that you can move seamlessly into the XBRL environment when it becomes necessary.

The course can be found at this link.