This Week in XBRL: Site Outages, Congress Support, and IFRS Goes Global

XBRL has had a rocky week! Despite a growing increase in the use and spread of XBRL, experts are starting to see cracks appear in the automated solutions that some companies in the UK are already using.

For several hours yesterday, many UK businesses were unable to access http://www.xbrl.org, or any of its sub-domains. For those companies, this meant that their XBRL software was unable to connect to online taxonomies, and Corporation Tax returns could not be filed. Software can be configured to reference locally-stored taxonomies, but the process is complex and would require downloadable taxonomy packages. For now, current best practices require XBRL software to reference the online document, or companies can rely on XBRL experts like Merrill Corporation, who are less effected by such outages.

When the site outage dust cleared, discussion this week turned to the likely spread of IFRS through more global jurisdictions. Already popular in the UK, Brazil, and Japan, most analysts believe the SEC will support the International Financial Reporting Standards by the end of the year, and that means a change in the way corporations report business.

Finally, another major talking point came this week when AICPA reported on the numerous bills in Congress calling for the use of a reporting system like XBRL.

[The Standard DATA Act] is certainly not the first bill that calls for the use of XBRL. Earlier this year, President Obama signed the Children and Family Services Innovation and Improvement Act into law. This law requires that the Department of Health and Human Services designate a common data reporting standard, i.e. XBRL. Specifically the law is aimed at standardizing the reports that the states submit to the federal government on how they spend federal funds for child welfare programs.

AICPA also pointed out the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act), which is still under consideration. All of these pieces of legislation point toward the adoption of XBRL reporting for congressional purposes.

As always, Merrill Corporation will continue to monitor changes in the XBRL environment, to be better prepared to provide your XBRL solutions.

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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: CPA's Believe XBRL is a Perfect Fit for Government

Continuing our theme of XBRL use in government, we are looking this week at an article published by the Maryland Association of CPA’s.

Portions of the federal government have already adopted XBRLfor financial reporting. The MACPA hopes that this trend will continue. They interviewed Hudson Hollister, legal council for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

"It should be possible," says Hollister, "for citizens, watchdog groups, media, and even the appropriators in Congress to use all of this spending data to judge whether government is working for them or not."

The solution, he and [California Representative Darrell Issa] believe, is a single platform for federal spending information, driven by a consistent, government-wide set of data reporting standards.

Sound familiar, XBRL fans?

MACPA believes that XBRL could allow anyone seeking financial information to find transparency in the federal government, something which many feel has been lacking up until now. Both Hollister and MACPA point out that the DATA Act would require the government to designate a reporting standard, and that XBRL would be the best fit for that purpose.

It is not hard to see how a system as widespread, versatile,and efficient as XBRL could be beneficial for a project as large as this, but only time will tell what the government decides.

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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: How Can XBRL Improve Government Efficiency?

“I’ve heard nothing in early discussions about the so-called supercommittee charged with finding more than $1 trillion in budget cuts to indicate that it is considering structural changes in how the government operates,” says W. David Stephenson of Stephenson Strategies. “That’s a terrible omission.”

In a lengthy commentary on Federal Computer Week, Stephenson explains that the Federal Government’s reporting systems are too antiquated to properly function.

There’s little hope for long-term savings if we continue to run the government using obsolete 20th-century methods. That’s why the final package of cuts should include a management plan that builds on the proposals by the GOP and the Obama administration to radically alter the way government agencies report on their operations and process information from corporations.

XBRL is one such solution.

XBRL, in its most basic essence, is a method to preserve the context of given pieces of financial data. This allows that data to move seamlessly from one form to another, preventing the need for it to be entered over and over again, costing time and money.

It would let employees better coordinate with suppliers and customers to improve efficiency and earn public confidence through transparency…In addition, regulatory reports could be generated automatically from that same data, which would achieve the Republican goal of cutting regulatory compliance costs.

An XBRL-based reporting system is already in use in Australia and the Netherlands, according to Stephenson, allowing businesses to file a single XBRL report which is automatically filtered through to relevant agencies. Because American businesses are already filing XBRL reports with the SEC, it seems obvious that government adoption of the system would be the best step for financial transparency. 

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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: GRC Software ROI

There has been no shortage of publications this week regarding the umbrella concept of GRC, or Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance. In today’s blog, we’ll look at an analysis of the return on investment for GRC software, and explore how it may relate to your business.

Analysts at FierceComplianceIT.com have taken a look at the potential returns of a GRC initiative, something which has been somewhat dismissed until now. “Regarding GRC justifications, the returns can be somewhat hard to pin down, though I wouldn't say they are completely intangible,” the article reads. “The justification is usually there, it just has to be articulated in terms that key decision makers can understand.”

With help from Corporate Integrity’s Michael Rassmussen, they compiled a list of the most obvious ROI wins for using GRC software. One of these returns was a significant reduction in reporting errors, as high as “30 percent to 40 percent.” Other researched companies were able to save time and money by eliminating the need to manually update and compile paper manuals detailing compliance regulations.

“Lowering your overall risk creates a more stable environment … customers don't like to deal with unstable organizations,” said Stephen Fried, CISO and Vice President at People’s United Bank, “If you have a failure in your risk management program, it will affect your organization's ability to operate effectively.”

Of course, XBRL solutions, like MerrillCorp’s XBRL Complete, are one such way to control GRC in your financial reporting. XBRL Complete is an end-to-end service offering producing accurate and reliable data in XBRL format supported by dedicated XBRL experts, regulatory expertise, four decades of financial services experience, and a cost-effective and efficient process

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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.