Insider View: 11th XBRL Conference

The 11th XBRL Conference in Boston wrapped up last week. It featured numerous presenters from the AICPA, SEC and various international speakers showing the continued emerging global adoption of XBRL.
The International Conference cemented three things:

• A need exists for a structured way to share financial information. This is because of the massive amounts of financial information that is trying to be shared and consumed. Also, governments, across the globe, are asking their regulators to do more to protect the investing public. The only way to do this is with structure data so software can help with monitoring. Also, there is a need to uncomplicated financial reporting. In the past, for example, governments asked businesses to provide numerous reports, thereby bogging down the efficiency of business. Now, progressive governments, like the Dutch government, are taking 20+ business reports down into one, structured data format and then sharing the information within the various divisions of the government.

• XBRL is THE format for structured financial information. Kicked off over 5 years ago, the global momentum is such that no other company, group, consortium, or government can mandate a different standard.

• XBRL must go mainstream. To do this, XBRL must be simple to implement and use. New applications, like Rivet Software’s Dragon Tag and others, are coming to the marketplace to do this. To the large majority of the users, XBRL will become as easy as using web development tools to create a website, if not easier. Adoption by the creators and the users of financial information will begin to accelerate.

This article contributed by AccountingWEB Reader:
Wayne Harding CPA
VP - Business Development
Rivet™ Software – makers of Dragon Tag™