This Week in XBRL: Next Steps for XBRL

In a continued effort to educate on the development of XBRL technology in industries such as financial services (and beyond), Merrill Corporation will share articles and columns published on the topic.

As the XBRL mandate has been progressing, most of what has been written - both on this blog and in other places - has been focused on staying one or two steps ahead (or reviewing previous steps). This week, we got a breath of fresh air. 

Fierce ComplianceIT put out an article focused on the next set of benchmarks for XBRL filers, now that the last group with a compliance mandate had to file statements after mid-June in the new format.

According to the article:

This is only the beginning of the XBRL era, mind you. We are far from the end given the phased approach the SEC has adopted. In the first year of compliance, companies must tag individual items (dollar values generally) in the primary financial statements, while footnotes and certain financial schedules are individually tagged as blocks of text. In the second year, each amount in the notes and financial schedules must also be tagged. So the process will continue for at least a few years. There may be additional requirement along the way.

The XBRL transition is in that small category of business practices in which just getting started isn't the hardest part. This has caused many to ask, "will it be worth it?" This type of question should be expected, as it would be asked about any mandate in its early stages of being thrust upon an industry. We expect the answer, once a majority of the people feel more comfortable with the new processes, will be yes, especially as the technology and best practices get better developed.

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Merrill Corporation is proud to offer XBRL Complete, a suite of services that meets - and has options to exceed – the mandated requirements for XBRL for mutual funds. For more information, please click here or call 866-367-9110.

This Week in XBRL: Breaking Down the SEC's XBRL Review

In a continued effort to educate on the development of XBRL technology in industries such as financial services (and beyond), Merrill Corporation will share articles and columns published on the topic.

A couple weeks ago, we discussed the SEC's review of initial financial statements filed in XBRL. Overall, the review was positive, and while the SEC did go into specifics, we found a more concise breakdown of the SEC's thoughts.

Among the more intriguing aspects, as put forth by Moody, Famiglietti and Andronico include: 

• New filers have asked whether the rendered version of the XBRL financial statements need to look exactly the same as the HTML financial statements. The answer is no; filers should concentrate on the quality of the tagging rather than trying to make the two documents look exactly the same.
• Filers are incorrectly entering an amount with a negative value. Most XBRL tagged numbers are positive even if the HTML financial statements show a credit or negative value.
• Filers should not be extending when a US GAAP taxonomy element is already available Extending should only happen when there is a material difference between a standard element and the filer’s financial statement line item.
• Filers should ensure that parenthetical amounts in the financial statements and monetary amounts found in subscripted text.
• Each tagged item must have a unit attribute assigned to it.

In our opinion, the information provided by the SEC is extremely useful, just as the "review of a review" is. If the SEC can recognize that their points are coming across clearly to those that need to hear it, the open dialogue will be able to continue as the XBRL transition continues.

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Merrill Corporation is proud to offer XBRL Complete, a suite of services that meets - and has options to exceed – the mandated requirements for XBRL for mutual funds. For more information, please click here or call 866-367-9110.

This Week in XBRL: The XBRL Challenge Contest

In a continued effort to educate on the development of XBRL technology in industries such as financial services (and beyond), Merrill Corporation will share articles and columns published on the topic.

Like many other app-creating contests for computers or smartphones, the XBRL world has discovered that the best way to both improve and evolve their technology is by enticing some of the smarter programmers to explore new ways for XBRL to be used through the promise of cold, hard cash.

The XBRL Challenge is a contest developed and sponsored by Wharton Research Data Services and the CFA Institute. The goal is to create the best and most innovative for extracting data for multi-company comparison via desktop applications; or one that creates real-time valuation measures and delivers to mobile devices.

The prize: $20,000

Beyond the programming aspect, the contest will give contestants access to technical information, XBRL experts and a database of all XBRL-formatted financial statement data, updated within minutes of posting to the SEC to test out their projects. This will not only allow for proofing of the application technology, but because XBRL experts will be acting as pseud-trainers, these people can get an idea of who gets it and what needs to be done to better promote XBRL's benefits and advantages.

We will be very interested to see the results of some of the top candidates. With only about six months to plan, develop and submit projects (submissions must be made by January 31, 2012 with final judging and the awarding of prize will take place in February 2012) it is smart to allow participants access to XBRL experts. Additionally, with the panel of judges to include members of Google Finance, GIV Venture Partners, Pipeline Trading, Viano Capital and Wharton Research Data Services, even those that don't win will get a chance to have their work reviewed and critiqued by a number of influential people.

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Merrill Corporation is proud to offer XBRL Complete, a suite of services that meets - and has options to exceed – the mandated requirements for XBRL for mutual funds. For more information, please click here or call 866-367-9110.

This Week in XBRL: Reviewing the Initial XBRL Submissions

In a continued effort to educate on the development of XBRL technology in industries such as financial services (and beyond), Merrill Corporation will share articles and columns published on the topic.

This week, the SEC put out a review of the initial financial statements they received relating to the new rules on interactive data for financial reporting. Below are some excerpts from the executive summary:

Overall, the filings indicate that filers continue to devote significant effort to consider their responsibilities under this program, comply with the new rules and provide high-quality submissions.

The staff's reviews were conducted using data analysis tools to survey the entire population of filings and data points and, where appropriate, to review details of specific filings and tags on a targeted basis.

We have identified certain areas where there were common issues with the filings. As companies continue through the phase-in of the interactive data requirements, with the ongoing introduction of detailed tagging of notes to the financial statements and the phase-out of the limited liability provisions, we encourage them to prepare future filings that are consistent with the themes of our observations. 

It is our expectation that where the issues identified are related to the rules of the Commission they can be addressed by filers in their next series of interactive data filings. We believe this will help increase the overall quality of the interactive data submissions and the usability of the data.

For the full report, click here.

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Merrill Corporation is proud to offer XBRL Complete, a suite of services that meets - and has options to exceed – the mandated requirements for XBRL for mutual funds. For more information, please click here or call 866-367-9110.