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Essay on XBRL Extensible Business Reporting Language

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XBRL Report
XBRL, the eXtensible Business Reporting Language, is an open standards-based reporting system built to accommodate the electronic preparation and exchange of business reports around the world. XBRL started back in 1999 with 12 organizations as the founding members. There are now in excess of 450 organizations worldwide in over 30 countries involved in its development. It provides major benefits in the preparation, analysis and communication of business information. It offers cost savings, greater efficiency and improved accuracy and reliability to all those involved in supplying or using financial data. The idea behind XBRL, eXtensible Business Reporting Language, is simple. Instead of treating financial information as a …show more content…

It can flexibly be adapted to meet different requirements and uses. Data can be transformed into XBRL by suitable mapping tools or it can be generated in XBRL by appropriate software.
XBRL is all about the electronic tagging of data. It has been compared to the introduction of bar-coding and to the introduction of the ISBN number for books. While financial data is an obvious choice for electronic tagging, all data can be tagged. XBRL is an extension of XML, the eXtensible Markup Language. An extensible language means one that is designed to easily allow the addition of new features at a later date.
The XML specifications are developed by the World Wide Web Consortium. The XML specifications provide a standard format for computerized documents that is flexible enough to be used for diverse needs such as websites, genealogy, real estate listings and voice mail systems, and more. XBRL International is responsible for over seeing the development of the XBRL Specification which sets out exactly how the data is going to be tagged for use in XBRL related projects.
The two key items fundamental to understanding XBRL are taxonomy and an instance document. Taxonomy may refer to either a hierarchical classification of things, such as plants, or the principles underlying the classification. Almost anything for example animates, objects, inanimate objects, places, and events may be classified according to some taxonomic scheme.

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