eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL)

eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is a standard based on XML markup language for providing financial statements electronically.

eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) explained

The business world is often bureaucratic as both large companies and small businesses constantly report on their actions. These reports are quite varied so they can be tax returns or some internal documents that contain a lot of data, and they have to be dealt with at a high frequency. It used to be purely manual work, but as the number of regulators increased, it became a real ordeal. Often the same data had to be entered into different forms for different reviewers.

As technology evolved, a new electronic reporting format, the XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language), was invented. Organizations that adopt it are no longer duplicating the same data in dozens of different forms for different entities. Instead, businesses enter all of their business information in a specific format, and regulators or other organizations select the information they need.

This open the XBRL standard of exchange of business information with unified requirements and a single data model allows the formation of analytical reporting in different sections. Most large foreign organizations prepare and submit reports using this format. The XBRL language has flexible structure and allows it to operate with a large volume of data, prepared in accordance with IFRS, Basel, Solvency and other principles.

It is the XBRL International that defines the taxonomy - a precise description of what should or could be contained in a report of an organization that works in a particular area. The taxonomy itself consists of concepts that are used to form the reports. 

Certain facts are linked to each of the concepts in the report, which give meaning to the content. It is the unified meaning and completeness of the transmitted information, independent of the way of interpretation, that became the main goal of XBRL.

TheXBRL as a way of business information exchange is widely used by major regulators in the USA, Europe and Asia. The introduction of the XBRL format improves the reliability and financial stability of the companies themselves by increasing control over them. This is a completely new technology of interaction, a new level of organization and data management.

The XBRL International has more than 600 members: individual companies, associations, and government agencies.