Company Reporting in the UK – An XBRL Success Story

The use of eXtensible Business Reporting Language for company financial reporting in the UK has proved an outstanding success. Some 1.9 million UK companies file accounts and tax returns in XBRL each year.

The white paper Company reporting in the UK – an XBRL success story describes the UK XBRL programme and the factors behind its success. The publication explains the outstanding success of XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) for company financial reporting in the UK.

With some 1.9 million companies filing accounts and tax returns in XBRL each year, the UK XBRL programme is by some way the largest in the world in terms of numbers of reports. It is providing comprehensive company financial information in an “intelligent”, easily analysable electronic format to both the tax authority, HMRC, and the business register, Companies House. The latter is now publishing this company data in XBRL free-of-charge for investors and the public.

The use of XBRL in the UK has proved both efficient and cost-effective. The cost of filing in XBRL for individual companies is far less than in some similar projects elsewhere.

The UK approach enables comprehensive and efficient reporting in XBRL at low cost. It provides all the data required for analysis and comparison by regulators and other users without a need for companies to create their own effort-consuming XBRL 'extensions'. The UK success is founded on the use of the 'Inline XBRL' reporting format and advanced taxonomies which enable comprehensive identification of data in XBRL. An additional White Paper by XBRL UK outline the advantages of Inline XBRL.