This Week in XBRL: FERF Study Gathers XBRL Opinions

A recent study from the Financial Executives Research Foundation (FERF) presented data on the opinions of 300 public companies in regards to XBRL reporting. The reported concerns are very much in line with what one would expect, with efficiency and liability being the among the most common. Below, we’ve pulled some of the most significant pieces of data from the report.

• The most complicated parts of the XBRL process, according to Tier 1 companies, are education and the review process.
•  Legal liability remains the biggest concern for most companies, with cost-benefit in a close second.
• Most of the responding companies are skeptical that investors are actually using XBRL data.
• Companies are currently focused on improving the efficiency of the tagging process, and are concerned that they lack the resources to complete the process on time.

The report also found that companies have varying opinions based on their size.

• Larger companies are more concerned about presenting two different sets of data (HTML and XBRL) to investors than small companies are.
• Smaller companies are less concerned about auditor involvement.

Perhaps most interestingly, as pointed out in this Data Interactive synopsis of the report, the spread of methods that Tier 1 companies are using to handle XBRL reporting is vast.

Among companies that outsourced the process, 15 percent spent less than 40 hours on XBRL, 31 percent spent 41 to 80 hours, 12 percent spent 81 to 120 hours, and 32 percent spent more than 120 hours. The numbers aren’t significantly different for companies that handled the XBRL process internally: 8 percent spent less than 40 hours, 31 percent spent 41 to 80 hours, 23 percent spent 81 to 120 hours, and 38 percent spent more than 120 hours.

It may be discouraging to see such opposition to XBRL reporting, but we have confidence that the SEC’s efforts to promote the benefits of XBRL will take hold among reporting companies.

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