[August 2005] On April 25, 2005, XBRL International published Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) 2.1 with errata corrections as an update to the 2003-12-31 Recommendation. The organization also released a corresponding XBRL 2.1 Conformance Suite which provides "more than 200 tests to verify that applications process XBRL 2.1 documents correctly; this Conformance Suite was approved as a Candidate Recommendation by the XBRL International Steering Committee. The version 2.1 XBRL specification "defines XML elements and attributes that can be used to express information used in the creation, exchange, and comparison tasks of business reporting. XBRL consists of a core language of XML elements and attributes used in XBRL instances as well as a language used to define new elements and taxonomies of elements referred to in XBRL instances, and to express constraints among the contents of elements in those XBRL instances. XBRL allows software vendors, programmers, intermediaries in the preparation and distribution process and end users who adopt it as a specification to enhance the creation, exchange, and comparison of business reporting information. Business reporting includes, but is not limited to, financial statements, financial information, non-financial information, general ledger transactions and regulatory filings, such as annual and quarterly reports..." An informative XBRL Specification and Guidance Stack (SGS) 1.0 document provides an overview of the most important documents that XBRL International Inc, publishes, including an extensive glossary of terms.

The XBRL Specification models a creative implementation of W3C XLink: "Links between XML fragments occur in many forms in XBRL. There are links between XBRL instances and their supporting DTS. There are links between XBRL instance facts and the footnotes that describe relationships between those facts. There are links between concept syntax definitions and their semantics, defined in linkbases. The semantics themselves are expressed in the networks of links that constitute the linkbases. XBRL expresses all of these links using the syntax defined in the XLink specification, using both the simple links and the extended links defined in the XLINK specification..." the XBRL document "provides a set of standard XLink roles and arc roles that may appear in XBRL instances and linkbases. Broadening use of XBRL is leading to the proposal of new, non-standard roles which have common and useful semantics. The XBRL Link Role Registry (LRR) will be a public, online listing of these non-standard roles. It is designed to provide structured information about their purpose, usage, and any intended impact on XBRL instance validation."

[April 12, 2000] The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), joined by Reuters and thirty-some other organizations, recently announced that they "have joined forces to create an XML-based specification for the preparation and exchange of financial reports and data." The XML specification is 'XBRL'. "Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), formerly code-named XFRML, is an open specification which uses XML-based data tags to describe financial statements for both public and private companies." From the main announcement: "The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) announced today that as one of several sponsors of the international XBRL Project Committee, it is helping to develop and launch XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language). XBRL for Financial Statements, formerly code named XFRML, is a free, new XML-based specification that uses accepted financial reporting standards and practices to exchange financial statements across all software and technologies, including the Internet. The AICPA has been working with several companies for more than a year to develop the XBRL framework. The Institute spearheaded this initiative because as the U.S. standards-setting body for the accounting profession (along with the Financial Accounting Standards Board), it has the infrastructure, knowledge, training and credibility necessary to secure adoption of XBRL by participants in the financial information supply chain. The AICPA also represents some of the primary users and preparers of financial statements for both public and private companies. Members of the XBRL Project Committee represent the global financial, accounting and software and communities from around the world. XBRL for Financial Statements, developed by the Committee as the first product in a future family of XBRL-based products, is currently under review for comments by any interested party with the financial information supply chain and is anticipated to reach the market in July 2000. XBRL streamlines the financial information supply chain that includes public and private companies, the accounting profession, data aggregators, the investment community and all other users of financial statements. XBRL offers several key benefits: technology independence, full interoperability, efficient preparation of financial statements and reliable extraction of financial information. Information is entered only once, allowing that same information to be rendered in any form, such as a printed financial statement, an HTML document for the company's Web site, an EDGAR filing document with the SEC, a raw XML file or other specialized reporting formats such as credit reports or loan documents. More than 80% of major US public companies provide some type of financial disclosure on the Internet. Investors and users of the Internet need accurate and reliable financial information that can be delivered promptly to help them make informed financial decisions. XBRL meets these needs and is particularly important in delivering financial information via the Internet, including at a company's Web site. XBRL leverages efficiencies of Internet as today's primary source of financial information by making Web browser searches more accurate and relevant for all users of financial information. . ."

[April 28, 2003]   Working Draft for Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) Version 2.1.    XBRL International has announced the release of an XBRL version 2.1 Specification Working Draft and a 60-day public review period preliminary to consideration as a final XBRL 2.1 Recommendation. XBRL "provides users with a standard format in which to prepare business reports that can subsequently be presented in a variety of ways. It supports software vendors, programmers, and intermediaries in the preparation and distribution process and end users who adopt it as a specification to enhance the creation, exchange, and comparison of business reporting information. Business reporting includes, but is not limited to, financial statements, financial information, non-financial information, general ledger transactions, and regulatory filings such as annual and quarterly financial statements." The prose portion of the version 2.1 specification has expanded by 54 pages, including "many more usage examples, code fragments from the defining XML schemas, greater detail about pre-existing XBRL 2.0 features, and detailed explanations of the new features. Domain experts and application developers can now define the handling of new relationships not defined by XBRL itself; new relationships allow taxonomy authors to precisely connect taxonomy definitions to authoritative definitions and other supporting documentation. Calculation links have been made more powerful through a mechanism for expressing relationships between items in different contexts, meeting a key request from builders of complex financial reports."

[May 11, 2000] The XBRL Web site now hosts several demonstrations which reveal the capabilities of XBRL, and a recent announcement from Charles Hoffman indicates that several more such prototypes are planned for release in the coming weeks. The demos include a 'Taxonomy Viewer Prototype' which allows you to view the AICPA Taxonomy for Commercial and Industrial Companies [US GAAP]. The Taxonomy Viewer "is a Microsoft Access database that allows a user to more easily view the taxonomy; a prototype 'Taxonomy Builder' will soon be available." The XBRL 'Financial Statement Repository' stores five financial statements which have been prepared using XBRL and placed on the web site to provide test data. "For example, if you wanted to prepare extraction and comparison prototypes to test the XBRL concept, you could use this data." The Accountant report creation demo is an Access database having several functions which import XML from a document, export to various formats including XML, HTML, RTF, and text. The Great Plains Financial Statement demo is a complete set of financial statements prepared using XBRL; it does not require XML parser on the client side.

Principal References

• XBRL Home Page
• XBRL FAQ document
• An Introduction to XBRL
• XBRL Technical Index
• XBRL Specifications
• XBRL Spec Recommendations
• Financial Reporting Taxonomies
• Index of Financial Reporting Taxonomies
• General Ledger Taxonomy
• XBRL Technical Guidance
• XBRL Software Tools
• The Electronic Business Reporting Showcase

Other References: News, Articles, Papers

• [August 24, 2005] "Business Case for XBRL." By Charles Hoffman (CPA, UBmatrix, USA), Bryce Pippert, and Phil Walenga. August 24, 2005. White paper. "In this document, we first look at the evaluation criteria applicable to a business reporting system. We then provide a summary of the benefits. We provide a bit of background information to help business managers understand the concepts of 'reach' as compared to 'richness' of data, metadata, and business rules as these concepts are important to understand when looking at business reporting systems. We look at quantitative data of a business system without XBRL and then after it made the switch to XBRL. Then, we elaborate more about the benefits of XBRL to business reporting systems, expanding on the summary of benefits in the beginning of the document. Lastly we provide examples which XBRL will have on common use cases in business reporting using four specific examples..." [PDF source]

• [August 01, 2005] "XBRL Offers a Faster Route to Intelligence." By Doug Henschen. From Intelligent Enterprise Content Management (August 01, 2005). "Big banks, brokerages and consumer packaged goods companies put millions of dollars and months of effort into normalizing, cleansing and analyzing competitive data as quarterly and annual corporate earnings reports are released. Extensible business reporting language (XBRL) and a growing list of XBRL-enabled tools and applications now promise to help big companies skip the demanding normalizing and cleansing steps. Smaller companies, meanwhile, may be able to afford analyses that were formerly cost prohibitive. XBRL is an XML-based format for financial reporting that provides a computer-readable way to tag more than 2,000 financial data points such as cost, assets, net profit and other values. The SEC has recommended XBRL for reporting, but has held off on a mandate — a move widely viewed as inevitable. In the meantime, data aggregator Edgar Online is converting data reported to the SEC to XBRL, normalizing more than 1,000 data points on at least 12,000 companies... Tools and solutions that can make use of XBRL are multiplying. In June, Business Objects and Ipedo announced a joint technology partnership with Edgar Online to deliver XBRL-enabled BI capabilities. Ipedo's XQuery- and SQL-enabled XIP 4.0 information integration engine is used to bring XBRL data, from Edgar Online's Web-based I-Metrix service, as well as internal corporate data into the Business Objects XI platform. From there, corporate users can perform apples-to-apples comparisons of their own productivity or expenditures on R&D, marketing and sales against data on competitors. Financial analysts and banks could quickly compare companies across industry sectors, slicing and dicing new data as soon as it's available online..."

• [May 10, 2005] "Banking Regulators to Launch XBRL-Powered Call Report Database." By Ivan Schneider. From InformationWeek (May 10, 2005). "The Federal Financial Institution Examination Council (FFIEC) will soon launch a project that will enable federal banking regulators and the public to access a common pool of information about the banks under their supervision. The initiative, known as the 'Call Report Modernization Project,' revolves around a Central Data Repository containing the quarterly regulatory filings of over 8,400 financial institutions. All of the information within will be 'tagged' using eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), a cross-industry standard for representing financial data. The project will launch on or about October 1st, 2005, following a final end-to-end test of the system at the end of May. 'This will be the first mandatory electronic filing system for financial data in the United States,' said Mike Bartell, chief information officer, FDIC. Bartell spoke at a recent XBRL conference in Boston. Users of the FFIEC-sponsored system will include the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The idea behind the project was to simplify things for banks, regulators, analysts and the public. 'We want to come up with a single way to collect call data with a common-sense approach,' said Bartell..."

• [May 03, 2005] "XBRL Gets Real as the Standard for Financial Reporting." By Doug Henschen. From Intelligent Enterprise (May 03, 2005). "XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) is fast moving from the vision phase to a practiced global standard, and it's no longer a question of if but when it will be mandated by agencies including the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission). This much was clear at the 11th XBRL International Conference, held last week in Boston, at which SEC Chairman William H. Donaldson urged all companies reporting to the agency to adopt the XML-based format. Developed to ease electronic communication and analysis, XBRL tags each data cell and each line of content in a financial statement to provide computer-understandable context and, therefore, fast query and analysis. XBRL is already mandated by the FDIC, and it is supported and in various stages of adoption among regulatory agencies in the European Union, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Spain, Japan and Korea. Also represented at the event were SAP, Software AG, Fujitsu and Business Objects as well as professional organizations including IMA (Institute of Management Accountants), which last week endorsed XBRL and encouraged its widespread adoption. According to IMA President and CEO Paul Sharman, XBRL will "reduce costs, increase efficiency and significantly improve the quality of information available to support decision support, planning and control functions'..."

• [March 29, 2005] "Software AG, Rivet Software Collaborate on XBRL." By John Blau. From InfoWorld (March 29, 2005). "Software AG and Rivet Software have entered into a partnership to provide one of the industry's first software offerings for recording, storing and transmitting business and financial information based on the evolving XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) standard. The goal of XBRL is to make the analysis and exchange of corporate information more reliable and easier for organizations that store much of the same information in their own internal systems, but in widely varying formats and granularity. Information provided in the XBRL format can be electronically exchanged, extracted and compared without human intervention, providing for faster, more efficient financial reporting processes, the companies said in a statement. The technology, essentially, uses data tags based on the XML standard to describe business and financial data that can be read and analyzed automatically by computers. Tax authorities in several countries plan to introduce mandatory filing of financial statements in XBRL over the next couple of years. Belgium is targeting 2006, with the Netherlands and the U.K. to follow in 2007, according to the statement. The Securities and Exchange Commission in the U.S. will begin accepting voluntary filing of XBRL documents next month..."

• [February 14, 2005] "SEC Approves XBRL Rule." By Dibya Sarkar. From Federal Computer Week (February 14, 2005). "Earlier this month, Securities and Exchange Commission officials approved revised rules allowing companies to voluntarily submit supplements to their filings using the Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) standard. Through this voluntary test, SEC officials hope to determine XBRL's usefulness, including a company's ability to tag their financial information and the benefits of using such tagged data for analysis. XBRL is an open metadata standard that provides a format for tagging financial information and allows users to extract, exchange, analyze and display financial information. Officials from companies are generally required to file through the SEC's Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval system, commonly known as EDGAR. Volunteers must furnish XBRL-related documents as an exhibit to a filing..."

• [February 08, 2005] "After Sarbanes-Oxley, XBRL?" By Amey Stone and Jim Kerstetter. From BusinessWeek Online (February 08, 2005). "Financial execs may not appreciate it yet, but this new data-tagging system should speed the flow of info and create new ways to analyze it. On Feb. 3, financial reporting took a giant step into the future with the Securities and Exchange Commission's announcement that it's ready to start accepting corporate financial reports that have been tagged with newly developed software code known as XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language). What's stopping many companies from embracing XBRL is that it has been talked about for years now, without seeming to gather much momentum. The technology was developed in 1999, but the big hurdle was getting companies to agree on the common language for how to tag financial data. Liv Watson [EDGAR Online] remembers sitting around a table of the first meeting to develop XBRL tags more than four years ago and guessing it would take a year to create the so-called taxonomies. Now 90% of companies are covered, while extensions of XBRL for specific industries, like oil or banking, are still being developed..."

• [August 03, 2004]   US Securities and Exchange Commission Evaluates XBRL for SEC Financial Data Filing.    Announcements from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and XBRL-US describe a new initiative of the SEC regulatory body to assess the benefits of XML-tagged data and consider a proposal to accept voluntary supplemental filings of financial data using the XML-based Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). The goal of using XML-tagged financial reporting data is to provide "greater context for data through standard definitions, enabling investors and other marketplace participants to analyze data from different sources and to support automatic exchange of financial information across various software platforms, including web services." XBRL is a "royalty-free, open specification for software that uses XML data tags to describe financial information for public and private companies and other organizations. It supports all members of the financial information supply chain by utilizing a standards-based method with which users can prepare, publish in a variety of formats, exchange and analyze financial statements and the information they contain. XBRL is being developed by an international non-profit consortium of approximately 250 major companies, organisations and government agencies." SEC's new initiative is being developed by the SEC Division of Corporation Finance, Office of the Chief Accountant, Division of Investment Management, and Office of Information Technology. The initiative is aimed at determining "the benefits of tagging to reporting quality and efficiency, the implications of tagging data for filers, investors, the Commission and other market participants, and the compatibility of existing tag definitions with current disclosure requirements." In its own announcement, XBRL-US expressed confidence in the SEC initiative "to leverage this private sector collaboration consisting of companies, financial data providers, accounting firms, standard setters, investors and all participants in the business information supply chain."

• "SEC Announces Initiative to Assess Benefits of Tagged Data in Commission Filings." - "The U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission is assessing the benefits of tagged data and its potential for improving the timeliness and accuracy of financial disclosure and analysis of Commission filings. The Commission will seek public comment on alternative methods and the costs and benefits associated with tagged data. In addition, the Commission will consider a staff proposal to accept voluntary supplemental filings of financial data using eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). This voluntary program would enable the Commission staff to further investigate the types of data tagging currently available in the marketplace. The Commission may propose a rule this fall that would, if adopted, establish the voluntary program beginning with the 2004 calendar year-end reporting season..."

• "SEC to Assess Benefits of XBRL-Tagged Data in Commission Filings. Paves Way for Public Companies to Adopt XBRL Reporting Standard." - "XBRL-US announced today it is confident that the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) program to assess the benefits of data tagged with XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) will demonstrate that adoption of XBRL will bring broad benefits. 'Companies, markets and investors will benefit from improving the timeliness and accuracy of corporate reporting and simplifying analysis of SEC filings,' said Eric E. Cohen, chair of the XBRL-US Steering Committee. 'We applaud the SEC's initiative to leverage this private sector collaboration consisting of companies, financial data providers, accounting firms, standard setters, investors and all participants in the business information supply chain'..."

• Announcement 2003-04-26: "XBRL 2.1 Working Draft Released for Public Comment."

• Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) 2.1. Public Working Draft 2003-04-23. Also in Word .doc format. [cache]

• XBRL Schemas. See: "CORE DTD - defines the syntax of document instance files. METAMODEL XSD - defines xyntax of XBRL taxonomy definition documents. METAMODEL DTD - non-normative DTD that also describes the syntax of XBRL taxonomy definition documents. [cache]

• [June 18, 2003] "Federal Banking Regulators Award Unisys Outsourcing Contract to Transform the Collection of Bank Data. Call Agencies to Employ Web Services and XBRL to Streamline Bank Call Report Processing." - "Unisys Corporation announced today that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), on behalf of the Federal Financial Institution Examination Council (FFIEC) agencies, has selected the company to modernize the current collection of bank data, known as Call Report processing, and to help the agencies transition toward a paperless, electronic environment. The bank data are used in a wide range of regulatory, supervisory and analytical functions, including the design and conduct of banking policy and industry risk assessment. The business process outsourcing contract has an initial term of seven years and value of approximately $28 million; the FDIC can extend it for three additional one-year periods. In addition, the FDIC can order optional technical requirements. If the FDIC exercises all options and extensions, the contract will be worth approximately $39 million. Streamlining the Call Report process should help the agencies to reduce paperwork and lower the cost of doing business. Key to the new process is the implementation of a central data repository (CDR) using proven technologies to collect and process the bank data as well as serve as a single source for all information related to this data submitted by financial institutions. To help the Call Report agencies modernize business operations, the CDR will provide the platform for timely, efficient, low-cost and standardized exchange, storage and distribution of accurate Call Report data. Unisys will provide a range of services covering solution development, hosting, help desk and application maintenance... The solution will be implemented in a Web services architecture leveraging the Microsoft .NET framework. As a Web services-based architecture, the solution implements extensible business reporting language (XBRL) as the standard data format for the Call Reports. XBRL is the XML-based standard for identifying and better communicating the complex financial information in corporate business reports allowing for easier and more reliable exchange of corporate financial information..."

• [June 02, 2003] "XML Variant Consolidates Business Reporting." By John S. McCright. In eWEEK (June 02, 2003). "The XBRL data format could help companies more quickly create reports on business conditions and thus comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act reporting requirements, say proponents of the format. Extensible Business Reporting Language provides a means for IT departments to aggregate and consolidate financial information that is accurate, timely and reliable and to present that information to the accountable executives. It uses XML metadata tags to describe financial information. Applications that include XBRL tags, specifications and taxonomies are being used in financial statements, general ledger transactions, regulatory filings and other business reports. An XBRL taxonomy, which is akin to an XML schema, describes a standard way to report business information... XBRL eliminates what Willis calls the West Palm Beach effect -- hanging chads and errors in accounting. New York-based XBRL International is scheduled this month to review the draft Version 2.1 of XBRL, which is focused on increased interoperability with non-XBRL-compliant systems. The specification has been adopted by 24 regulators -- the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., in the United States; Inland Revenue, in the United Kingdom; and Deutsche Bank AG, in Germany, for example -- as their mandatory electronic filing formats. XBRL is making headway in packaged applications as well. Microsoft Corp. plans to release an XBRL plug-in for the Excel 2003 spreadsheet... Other experts said top management does not always understand the difficulties IT faces when called on to aggregate all the financial data to present a unified version of what's going on in a company. Sarbanes-Oxley provides an instance where IT can bend the executives' ears..."

• [May 27, 2003] "Q&A: Walter Hamscher, XBRL International." By Erin Joyce. From InternetNews.com (May 23, 2003). Interview. "You could say that PricewaterhouseCoopers consultant Walter Hamscher began his work with the XML standards consortium XBRL International more than a few years ago while he was working on his PhD in computer science at MIT. He was working with artificial intelligence and needed some data to feed the programs, but was frustrated by the lack of quality in formatting of the financial data available to him. Years later he would help write the first version of XBRL, or extensible business reporting language, which is a subset of XML, the fundamental building block behind the Web services movement to standardize and enable machines to share and interpret data. As the organization explains, XBRL uses XML data tags to describe financial information for public and private companies and other organizations. XBRL International and other standards bodies work together to produce specifications and taxonomies that anyone can license for use in applications. XBRL is also available to license royalty-free worldwide from XBRL International. These days, Hamscher spends every waking hour talking, walking, breathing and preaching his message about how XBRL will revolutionize not only how we use and share financial data, but how that data will improve how money makes the world go round... [He says:] 'XBRL International has over 200 members around the world working on XBRL, which is an XML standard that is meant to facilitate the transfer of financial information along the business information supply chain. The idea is by creating a common framework, a common XML standard, you can accelerate the flow of information to investors and other users... XBRL creates a common language in which a data point like a customer number or employee ID, or amount or currency, are always called the same thing and so an app that needs to consume that (data) will know what to do with that... With XBRL general ledger standards, for example, there are well over 50 different data items in order to capture what are called journal entries in an accounting system. A journal entry might be, say, a $1,000 credit to an account... In the U.S., we have a GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) taxonomy, which is what we call a whole collection of concepts encoded in XBRL, with well over 1,000 different data items. It's a very large task, something that's been in development for over two years, but it's nearing completion. Right now, there's really not a piece of software that can go and extract the revenue recognition policy of one company at a given point, and then go and get the corresponding policy at another point. There is no reliable way to do that. XBRL makes that possible. The reason that's important is because so much of what goes on in financial reporting isn't really about the numbers, but about the explanation that sits behind the numbers. If I tell you I have receivables of $1 million, you might ask, well, is that $999,999 from one customer? That's a very important question in order to understand the real value of those receivables. So the development of XBRL is a base language on which these richer taxonomies of terms are then built. There are dozens of these taxonomies under development or already published. In Japan, for example, the (main) stock exchange is now accepting financial information in XBRL format, and they have a taxonomy that represents Japanese accounting standards. At the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation), they're developing a taxonomy for bank reporting, Britain's version of the IRS has one for British tax filings, and so on. Then we have the largest of the taxonomies, the US GAAP taxonomies and what are called the international accounting standards (IAS), which are basically the accounting standards used by the rest of the world other than the US. It has its own very large taxonomies. The point is that XBRL is a base language with an emerging large number of taxonomies built in XBRL in order to capture different accounting standards, just like the IT industry has its own, such as RosettaNet'..."

• [April 08, 2003] "XBRL: Standardizing Financial Data." By Amy Rogers. In CRN (April 04, 2003). "In the wake of accounting scandals that have resulted in imprisoned corporate executives and distraught investors, Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), an offshoot of XML, promises to help make public companies more consistent in the way their financial data is transmitted, reported and presented to investors. XBRL could help prevent the financial chicanery allegedly engaged in by corporate entities such as Enron and WorldCom, experts say. It's a royalty-free, open standard under development by about 170 companies and agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which mandates a clearer set of rules by which companies make financial disclosures, has also added support to the XBRL initiative. With broader adoption, XBRL's proponents say, truly transparent financial information will be made available in annual reports, quarterly statements and other documents... XBRL involves tagging different elements of a financial statement so they can be more readily retrieved from a public company's financial documents. These components can then be pulled into various applications and formats, without having to generate a whole new set of accounting terms. Mary Knox, a senior research analyst in Gartner's financial services area, said it will be interesting to see if and when regulatory agencies mandate XBRL's adoption. In the meantime, 'some of the major accounting firms are very excited about XBRL because it will help them automate their auditing processes,' she said. 'One of the major issues is getting banks to sign on,' she continued. But if there were incentives to adopt the XBRL dialect,such as accounting firms realizing cost benefits from the automation of its auditing processes, and subsequently passing on those savings to win more banks as customers,any number of financial institutions might just fall in line, Knox said. PricewaterhouseCoopers is one of the accounting firms with resources invested in XBRL. Kim Jones, an independent consultant with his own firm, San Francisco's Spinning Electrons, is under contract to PricewaterhouseCoopers to help it devise its XBRL strategy. Microsoft is also closely aligned with this effort, Jones said..."

• [December 31, 2002] "XBRL International in 2002 and Beyond." By Walter Hamscher [and XBRL International Steering Committee]. 7 pages. Cross-posted 2002-12-31 with the following: "Our mission at XBRL International 'Transforming Business Reporting' took on new urgency and importance in 2002. High profile financial abuses in the United States and elsewhere brought unprecedented international focus on accounting practices and the need for greater transparency in financial reporting. The XBRL International consortium represents over 170 organisations around the world committed to transparency and the efficient transfer of information. In that spirit, the attached paper describes our successes over the past year, and also the challenging tasks facing us that we must execute on successfully to maintain our tremendous momentum..." The Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA) is one of two XBRL "live applications, using XBRL Version 1 in its system for collecting data from pension funds." See the APRA XBRL v2 Taxonomy Files and Statistics Project - Data Submission - XBRL." Wacoal (leader in designer intimate apparel in the United States, Japan, Asia and Europe) demonstrated "the first live production application of XBRL GL; they use XBRL GL, the Journal Taxonomy, for exchanging financial data among their internal reporting and business systems including purchasing, payroll, sales management, inventory management, and workflow systems." UK Inland Revenue, Edgar Online, the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, The Tokyo Stock Exchange, and the National Tax Agency of Japan are now committed to the use of XBRL Version 2 in 2003. From the XBRL Home Page: "XBRL is an XML-based, royalty-free, and open standard... delivering benefits to investors, accountants, regulators, executives, business and financial analysts, and information providers...Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) brings the publication, exchange, and analysis of the complex financial information in corporate business reports into the dynamic and interactive realm of the internet. XBRL provides a common platform for critical business reporting processes and improves the reliability and ease of communicating financial data among users internal and external to the reporting enterprise."

• [December 17, 2002] "XBRL: Still A Ways Away From Saving the Day." By Eileen Colkin Cuneo. In InformationWeek (December 17, 2002). "...But the standard is seen as an important part of restoring consumer and investor confidence in Big Business... Sixty percent of senior execs at financial institutions believe that trust in their industry has been eroded by the corporate scandals of the past year, according to surveys and interviews by PricewaterhouseCoopers and The Economist Intelligence Unit, an Economist Group business. To help cure the problem, the two organizations have presented a five-step recovery plan for financial institutions suffering from an erosion of public trust, including a strong endorsement for the Extensible Business Reporting Language, or XBRL. The financial-services vertical market, which stands to lose the most from accounting scandals, needs to move forward on Internet-based reporting standards, the report says. Pushing the use of XBRL, a programming language that uses standard data tags to identify specific information in financial reports, would help the financial-services industry in several ways. The language would make it easier for investors and regulators to navigate financial statements and more difficult for executives to hide financial information in footnotes, thus increasing the integrity of the reports. The standard also could help move the financial-reporting process toward real-time disclosure. Already companies such as Microsoft and Morgan Stanley are using the language for their financial statements... XBRL needs widespread adoption. That isn't immediately likely, as executives still know little about the language. According to the survey, only 42% of financial executives believe XBRL will make reports more useful, while 47% say they don't know what role XBRL could play..."

• [December 02, 2002] "Clear as Day: XBRL Greases the Information Supply Chain." By Amit Asaravala. In Intelligent Enterprise (December 05, 2002). "The eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is a fast-maturing specification that aims to automate the business information supply chain and make it more transparent at the same time. Although not specifically designed to prevent fraud, XBRL documents are based on an XML format that makes it easy for software applications to read and display financial facts -- thus making it easier for investors and regulators to interpret the results and catch potential inconsistencies. The format also saves time in the reporting process, leading to cost reductions for companies that adopt it. 'Ninety percent of the effort for a financial process, like a loan approval, is spent on putting the data in the right format,' explains Rob Blake, group program manager of finance and administration IT for Microsoft. 'Only 10 percent of the effort is spent on actual analysis,' he adds. One of the goals of XBRL is to change these percentages so that less time is spent on formatting the data -- a task better suited for a predefined stylesheet than a human being. If a specification's backers are any indication of its future success, then XBRL may soon reach its goal. More than 170 corporations have joined the XBRL Steering Committee, the group that oversees the specification -- a good sign that technologists may soon be called upon to support XBRL within their organizations..."

• [August 13, 2002]   Pilot Nasdaq-Hosted Web Service Features XBRL Financial Data.    Nasdaq, Microsoft and PricewaterhouseCoopers have announced the launch of a new pilot program "to provide investors with remote access to financial data from five years of financial reports for twenty-one (21) Nasdaq-listed companies. The pilot program, designed by PwC and stored on Nasdaq hardware, provides access to XBRL data through Microsoft Office. The online data, formatted in XBRL and publicly available via a Nasdaq-hosted Web Service, will showcase XBRL's ability to allow for easy comparisons of the financials of companies within a particular industry, like semiconductors. XBRL is a free XML-based specification that uses accepted financial reporting standards and practices to translate financial reports across all software and technologies, including the Internet. XBRL streamlines the way companies report and publish their financial data, and how analysts and investors can review that information. For example, before XBRL, investors would need to pore through numerous reports and precisely program their computers to recognize any given value from a financial statement. With XBRL, data is tagged to instruct the system how to handle the data in question and enables the user to locate the necessary information without leafing through multiplenumerous financial reports. Today, more than 140 of the world's leading accounting, software, business and technology companies and organizations participate in a global effort to support the development and use of XBRL."

• [August 19, 2002] "Easier Financial Reporting At Hand With XBRL. Nasdaq First Stock Market to Adopt XML-Based Tags for Financial Data." By Eileen Colkin and Paul McDougall. In InformationWeek (August 12, 2002), page 22. "At a time when scrutiny of corporate financial statements has intensified, Microsoft, Nasdaq, and PricewaterhouseCoopers have launched a pilot program to test the viability of using XBRL to provide greater transparency of financial statements, making it easier to report financials over the Internet. The Exensible Business Reporting Language is an open specification that uses XML-based data tags to describe financial data in business reports and databases. Under the pilot program begun last week, investors will have access to XBRL-enabled financial data from the financial reports of 21 semiconductor companies listed on the Nasdaq. Nasdaq extracted company data from Securities and Exchange Commission filings, and PricewaterhouseCoopers consultants tagged each of the documents in XBRL... The backing of three marquee firms will move XBRL from a 'talked about' issue to a more credible solution, says John Hagerty, VP of research at AMR Research. 'The success of this pilot will indeed accelerate the XBRL standard adoption,' he says. Hagerty predicts that XBRL-enabled financial reports will be a requirement within several years..."

• [August 13, 2002] "Nasdaq, PwC, Microsoft Team on XBRL." By Peter Galli. In eWEEK (August 06, 2002). "The Nasdaq Stock Market Inc., Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) and Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday will launch a pilot program that allows companies to more easily communicate their financial information over the Internet and which helps investors more easily analyze this data. The pilot program uses Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), a new platform developed for corporate reporting over the Internet and which is based on XML, the universal format for data on the Web. With XBRL, data is tagged to instruct the system how to handle the data in question and enables the user to locate the necessary information without leafing through numerous financial reports, said Mike Willis, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers. The pilot program, designed by PwC and stored on Nasdaq hardware, provides access to XBRL data through Microsoft Office. This data will be accessible through the Microsoft Excel interface via a custom solution built by Dell Professional Services. David Jaffe, the lead product manager for Microsoft Office in Redmond, Wash. told eWeek that XBRL and Excel had enabled 'instant analytics' meaning that analysts could now access accurate information in real time using the tools they were already familiar with... Any interested individual or organization would simply use the add-in, which is accessed in the form of a freely downloadable Excel workbook for Microsoft Office. This would allow them to easily access and analyze the data, he said... The pilot program, whose goal is to showcase XBRL's ability to allow easy comparisons of the financials of companies within a particular industry, will provide investors with remote access to financial data from the financial reports of 21 Nasdaq-listed companies, starting with a company's most recent financials and going back five years. The data is formatted in XBRL and publicly available via a Nasdaq-hosted Web Service..."

• Demo: Microsoft Excel Investor's Assistant. Demo developed collaboratively by Nasdaq, Microsoft and PricewaterhouseCoopers. "This demo provides a snapshot of how information reported by companies in the XBRL format will be more efficiently, accurately and timely consumed and analyzed by investors, analysts and other users. This demonstration attempts to highlight the inherent analytic capabilities related to XBRL formatted data for companies and their stakeholders. For the first time, users will be able to blend both stock market data provided in XML and financial data tagged in XBRL..."

• Announcement 2002-03-05: "XBRL International's New XML-based Specification Now Being Used by World's Leading Financial Services Institutions, Government Regulators and Software Developers. Michael Sanderson, CEO of Nasdaq Europe, Addresses Importance of XBRL Use in the Capital Markets."

• Announcement 2002-03-05: "Microsoft Becomes First Technology Company to Report Financials In XBRL Standard. XML-Based Technology Provides Easier Preparation, Exchange and Analysis of Financial Data."

• "XBRL Progress Report." February 2002. 9 pages. Overview of the most recent news and activities within XBRL International (Jurisdiction Reports, Liaison Activities, Vendor Reports, Member Products and Services. Membership List). [source]

• "The Road to Better Business Information: Making a Case For XBRL. A Conversation With Nasdaq, Microsoft and PricewaterhouseCoopers." By Al Berkeley (Vice Chairman of Thought Leadership at Nasdaq), with John Connors (Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer of Microsoft) and Mike Willis (Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers). XBRL White paper. [March] 2002. 15 pages. [source]

• [March 05, 2002]   XBRL Standard for Capital Markets Enjoys Growing International Adoption.    News from the March 4-8 German XBRL Symposium in Berlin and from a published 'XBRL Progress Report' highlights the global adoption of the Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) by financial services institutions, government agencies, regulatory bodies, software developers, and other organizations. Following closely upon the announcement by Bank of America that it has begun to pilot XBRL in the US, the Deutsche Bank has announceed its use of XBRL to process loan information and streamline its credit analysis process. An XBRL taxonomy for German Accounting Principles has been released, so German companies can now use XBRL as they move forward with implementation to obtain straight-through reporting efficiencies. The Australia Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) recently became the first banking regulator in the world to use XBRL to monitor the financial well being of 12,000 Australian super funds, insurers and banks required to report to APRA on a regular basis. Microsoft anounced that it has "become the first technology company to publish its financial statements on the Internet using Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) an XML-based framework for financial reporting." XBRL is designed to provide "public and private companies with an effective way to prepare and distribute financial statements, credit and loan reports, tax, audit, and others reports using the Internet in a cost effective and universal manner. For financial publishers and data aggregators, XBRL supports efficient data collection through straight-through processing which lowers operating costs associated with custom, idiosyncratic data feeds and reduces errors."

• [March 21, 2002] "XBRL: Standard Bearer of Financial Reporting." By Ivan Schneider. In CMP BankTech (March 05, 2002). "An emerging XML standard called XBRL, or Extensible Business Reporting Language, promises to simplify the mechanics of working with financial statements. As XBRL catches on, analysts will be able to spend less time building intricate spreadsheets from scratch and more time scrutinizing companies' finances and accounting practices-which they're bound to be doing more of in the wake of the Enron scandal. Indeed, XBRL, while nothing more than a standard, could have a fundamental impact on the financial services industry, in the manner that the barcode changed inventory management or the MP3 compression standard upended the music business... The beneficiaries of XBRL aren't limited to analysts or public companies. Virtually all of the participants in the financial information supply chain will find it worthwhile to take advantage of the enhanced data. 'No industry will benefit more from XBRL than banking,' said Coffin. 'A bank plays in numerous places around that supply chain.' To wit, banks have controllers, tax analysts, investor relations personnel, loan officers, credit analysts, and regulatory and compliance officers. Furthermore, converged financial institutions have brokerage, investment banking and research capabilities under the same roof. 'Literally, it hits them in about 20 different ways,' said Coffin. Essentially, XBRL allows preparers of business information to designate the purpose, denomination and time frame for each and every number, statistic and statement in a document, drawing from a standard dictionary of financial terms and accounting classifications. Non-standard elements can also be included, as long as they're also described within the document. Standards for describing information make it far easier for software developers to work with financial data. Accordingly, the industry is gearing up to provide XBRL-compatible tools for providers of business information. IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, PeopleSoft and SAP are among the many software companies involved with the standard-setting body. For example, FRx Financial Reporter, from Microsoft Great Plains, Fargo, N.D., will connect to over 24 general ledger systems. 'Users of the data that need to feed the banks [financial] information will be literally a few mouseclicks away from feeding the banks an XBRL product,' said Rob Blake, the Microsoft representative on the XBRL Committee. Banks, in turn, can benefit greatly from receiving XBRL-formatted financial information from their borrowers. 'It would reduce both the credit risk and the operational risk,' said Philip Walenga, assistant director in the insurance division of the FDIC. Among other things, the ability to systematically process incoming financial information will make it possible for banks to automatically evaluate the fiscal status of a large number of companies, prioritize the workload of loan officers and analysts, and detect loan covenant violations..."

• [February 12, 2002] Fourth International XBRL Conference. "XBRL Meets the Needs of Financial Services." March 4 - 8, 2002. Berlin, Germany. "Keynote speaker: Mike Sanderson, CEO NASDAQ Europe. Workshops on the impact of XBRL on Banking/Insurance Regulatory Reporting and Credit Risk Monitoring. Introduction of the IAS and the German-GAAP Taxonomies..." See the agenda.

• [February 25, 2002] "Using XBRL For Data Reporting." Submitted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. In UN/ECE Statistical Division (February 15, 2002). Statistical Commission and Working Paper No. 20. Conference Of European Statisticians Joint UNECE/EUROSTAT Work Session on Electronic Data Reporting (Geneva, Switzerland, 13-15 February 2002). Topic (iii): Metadata, conceptual models and standards. "Over the years, a number of different mechanisms for exchanging data have been developed. Until the Internet and Extensible Markup Language (XML) these mechanisms tended to be proprietary or unique to the application or purpose for which each was created. eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is one of the many industry specific 'languages' of XML. XBRL hailed as 'the digital language of business' facilitates the reuse of information contained in business reports, providing structure and context for that information... The Australian Bureau of Statistics sees XBRL as the 'language' likely to succeed as the industry accepted 'business reporting language'. Leaders in the accounting profession such as the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) have researched the impact of the Internet on the distribution of financial information and have reached the conclusion that XBRL, or something similar is needed. XBRL is strongly supported in the Australian accounting and consulting sector. The Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA) is also strongly supporting XBRL and is already accepting and disseminating information in XBRL... An XBRL taxonomy is not a standard chart of accounts to use, rather, it is a way to map an internally used chart of accounts to common terms used externally. XBRL does not change the underlying accounting and classification differences that exist today in financial reporting."

• From the Third International XBRL Conference in Sydney: Fujitsu gave a presentation on XBRL processing. "...Fujitsu is currently developing technologies for processing XBRL documents, such as instance documents, taxonomies and linkbases. XLink processing technology is a key in processing XBRL documents. Fujitsu has applied its Fujitsu XLink Processor (XLiP) in developing a new technology to support XLink and Xpointer application to XBRL, and this is the first almost complete implementation for XBRL Specification 2.0 in the world... This program is a server-side application which processes XBRL Spec. 2.0 documents. Many programs such as Web browsers can be used as clients of the program, and you can see XBRL documents in the form you like..."

• Taxonomy page. AICPA-US-GAAP is a sample [cache]

• US GAAP Taxonomy for Commercial and Industrial companies (XML schema). [cache version]

• XBRL Express web site

• Categorized industries with resources in the XBRL repository. For example: Airlines; Automotive Retailing And Services; Beverages; Computer Software; Computers And Office Equipment; Entertainment; Food And Drug Stores; Food Services; General Merchandisers; Motor Vehicles And Parts; Petroleum Refining; Pharmaceuticals.

• XBRL Australia. "Set up by the Joint Standing Committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia and CPA Australia to extend the international XBRL taxonomy for Australian reporting requirements with its Australian members." See the FAQ and Member List.

• XBRL Tools. Software tools for creating and validating XBRL documents, viewing them, and converting SEC filings into XBRL format.

• XBRL Technical Specification. [cache version 04-06, HTML, PDF 0406]; earlier draft: [cache, HTML 04-04 version, PDF 04-04]

• [February 21, 2002] "General Electric Implements enumerate Software To Streamline Financial Reporting." - "Software developer enumerate Solutions, Inc. today announced that the Corporate Tax Department of General Electric, the world's eighth largest corporation, has signed a contract to use enumerate's software tool -- the XBRL Creator -- to simplify and speed its tax reporting processes. GE will use enumerate's technology to more efficiently coordinate and consolidate financial information from its global subsidiaries. 'GE's federal tax return -- running more than 40,000 pages -- is the largest return received by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS),' said Steve Francis, Director of Tax Systems at GE. 'To generate the return, we must gather and evaluate information from over 150 distinct general ledgers, each with its own financial system. It's both time consuming and error-prone.' XBRL Creator, based on the new reporting standard known as eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), will now allow GE to streamline its tax reporting processes. XBRL Creator will enable accountants in GE's individual business units to easily map financial information from their systems to a tax sensitive chart of accounts, store these maps in a central corporate database, and then use this information over and over again to prepare tax returns, all with a few mouse clicks... XBRL Creator includes three integrated components to implement XBRL. Companies can readily adopt XBRL without having to abandon any of their own long-standing accounting practices. (1) Designer: This component of XBRL Creator allows corporations to easily create a master chart of accounts or other schemas specifying the financial information they want reported from outlying business units. (2) Mapper: With this component, accountants in the outlying units map the information in their financial databases to the items requested by corporate headquarters. (3) Builder: Most companies collect thousands of pieces of financial data, but for any one report, only a few may be needed. enumerate's Builder lets users drag-and-drop specific pieces of financial information from a schema to build an XBRL document..."

• [December 22, 2001]   EDGAR Online Launches XBRL Express Repository for Financial Statements Tagged in XBRL.    EDGAR Online, Inc. has announced the launch of an 'XBRL Express' web site designed to serve as a public repository for company financial statements tagged in XBRL. The new web site will function "as a marketplace for companies and organizations wishing to display their XBRL statements and where XBRL developers can demonstrate their applications and tools. XBRL Express represents the first step towards a centralized XBRL repository for all public companies, and initially will provide access to tagged XBRL statements from 80 companies in 12 industries; the designers envision the XBRL Express Repository as a resource for analysts, investors, credit and lending institutions, news organizations and accountants for storing and referencing company financials prepared and published in XBRL format. XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) has been developed as a business-specific XML financial reporting language being advanced by the XBRL Organization, a global consortium of over 120 companies including the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) and other major financial services, technology, and public accounting organizations. The Bank of America recently announced that XBRL is being piloted to collect data from its customers that are required to provide financial statements on a regular basis for lending and credit analysis purposes. XBRL is expected to become the standard way in which U.S. public companies will prepare, report and disseminate their financial information." [Full context]

• [June 21, 2001]   XBRL.org Releases 'XBRL for General Ledger' and W3C XML Schema Version of Financial Statements Specification.    XBRL.org recently announced the release of 'XBRL for General Ledger' for public comment, along with a new version of the 'XBRL for Financial Statements' specification. The XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) initiative "is a worldwide effort to develop a common framework for using XML for business reports such as financial statements, bank loans, credit reports and tax filings." The enhanced XBRL Financial Statements "harmonizes with the new World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) XML Schema to better align itself with initiatives of the W3C and other XML organizations and share technology and tools. The new XBRL for General Ledger specification "is an agreement on how to represent accounting and after-the-fact operational information and transfer it to and from a data hub or communicate it in a data stream. It incorporates the UN Standard Messages ENTREC (Journal) and LEDGER. Users of XBRL for General Ledger will be able to more easily bridge the gap between operational, off-site or outsourced systems and their back office accounting and reporting systems. XBRL for General Ledger is currently designed to meet international accounting requirements and allow an extensible, flexible, multi-national solution to exchange data required by internal finance, accountants, creditors, banks or other audiences across all software formats that can be brought into and out of accounting systems and reported using XBRL. It will also allow the future linkage of XML development on the transactional level to the general ledger level as such frameworks are developed. Working in alliance with the UN/EDIFACT Working Group (EWG) this Joint EWG Accounting, Auditing, Registration and Financial Information Services (EWG sub working group D14) and XBRL.org effort is focused on the urgent need to fill the gap between e-business and e-accounting and overcome the inefficiencies of disparate, non-integrated and outsourced accounting and financial systems by using the power of XML." XBRL for General Ledger has been released for a ninety-day feedback period, from June 18, 2001 to September 17, 2001. UML models for the specification are to be released soon. [Full context]

• XBRL for General Ledger:

  • Announcement: "XBRL.org Releases Software Format for Public Comment That Allows Data to be Moved Into and Out of the General Ledger. XML-Based Software Format Allows Linkage of Other XML-based Transaction Level Efforts to the General Ledger."
  • Announcement May 16, 2001. "XBRL.org Forms Alliance With UN/EEIFACT Working Group to Jointly Develop XBRL for The General Ledger."
  • XBRL and General Ledger (GL)
  • XBRL and General Ledger Schema, [cache]
  • XBRL and General Ledger executive summary
  • XBRL and General Ledger - Detail
  • XBRL and General Ledger vs. Financial Statements

• Announcement: "XBRL.org Releases Enhanced XML-Based Specification for Public Comment. Harmonizes XBRL with W3C XML Schema To Better Align With Other XML Organizations and Share Technology and Tools. R.R. Donnelly, CPA2Biz, Bowne & Co., U.S. Census Bureau, FDIC and Others Join Effort to Secure Adoption of XBRL."

• [March 15, 2001] The XBRL New Comer's Meeting is on April 4, 2001, from 1pm - 4pm. It will be held at the KPMG Consulting Office in Tyson's Corner, 12th Floor Address - 1676 International Drive McLean, VA. This meeting is open to anyone who has an interest in XBRL and would like to learn more about XBRL. Anyone who is planning to attend should RSVP to Karyn Waller of the AICPA.

• [June 05, 2001] "FRx Forecaster 4.0 Supports New XML, XBRL Industry Standards." - "FRx Software Corporation has announced [2001-05-28] that version 4.0 of its FRx Forecaster product is now available. FRx Forecaster was most recently known as ebudgets, a product that FRx Software acquired through its acquisition of ebudgets.com in March 2001. The new release of FRx Forecaster, which is immediately available to current customers, supports the extensible markup language (XML) and extensible business reporting language (XBRL) standards for streamlining the exchange of data. These standards greatly facilitate the exchange of information between best-of-breed solutions that include systems from multiple vendors. The use of XML and XBRL helps users shorten implementation times, alleviates errors and the rekeying of information imported from multiple sources, and eliminates the need for customized interchange mechanisms. FRx Forecaster is the first budgeting software solution to support these industry standards, which are endorsed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), among others. FRx Forecaster 4.0 also includes enhancements to the system's administrative, setup, input and reporting features -- widening the gap in capabilities between FRx Forecaster and competing products. The XBRL standard was developed by a committee of global financial, accounting and software organizations to provide common data structures for the transfer of information between back-office systems, such as those for budgeting, financial reporting, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and procurement. The standard describes the type of data an output file contains, turning output from one system into a database in which data can be exchanged with other systems. The standard greatly facilitates the exchange of information between best-of-breed solutions that include systems from multiple vendors..." [alt URL]

• [March 15, 2001] "Issues Raised in DFAS XBRL Proof of Concept." Federal CIO Council XML WorkingGroup. March 2001. "Under the guidance of the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Defense Information Infrastructure Common Operating Environment (DII COE) Chief Engineer has established a XML management framework and web based registry for DoD XML users. This framework is designed to address the causes of non-interoperable XML and ballooning management overhead resulting from proliferation of XML groups. One mechanism for addressing data disambiguation (collisions/conflicts) is the namespace concept. Within the DoD XML namespace and registry, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) is the manager for DoD finance and accounting data items (tags). In carrying out this responsibility, DFAS is developing a technology adoption strategy for the XML family of technology. Using this approach, DFAS identifies a technology "area of opportunity " and proactive sponsor. Our first area of opportunity identified was financial reporting and the DFAS sponsor was Accounting Directorate. The Agency selected this area as a 'proof of concept' because the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is a market based framework that provides a method to prepare, publish, extract and exchange commercial financial statements, and that a Federal taxonomy was under development for Department/Agency reporting. Proof of Concept: KPMG Consulting, LLC was contracted by DFAS to provide an XBRL proof of concept. XML and XBRL are emerging technologies, and a proof of concept was necessary to assess the applicability of XBRL in meeting DFAS strategy. The proof of concept was designed to demonstrate the ability to dynamically create DoD financial statements in HTML through the use of XML technology and more specifically XBRL. The HTML was selected as the final output based on its ability to be viewed by a large audience through the use or a browser. In order to demonstrate this, KPMG started with the XBRL (in process) Federal Taxonomy, which restates the OMB Form and Content for Federal financial statements. This taxonomy was extended for differences in the DoD Form and Content. Next, actual balance sheet data was populated in the XML document to create an XBRL instance document. XSLT style sheets were then created to dynamically generate three HTML documents representing a consolidated and consolidating balance sheet as well as one footnote . Additionally, links were inserted in the balance sheets to demonstrate the capability to "drill down" into detailed data from a summary presentation. In Summary, the DFAS XBRL proof of concept project demonstrated the ability to render financial data in HTML through the use of XBRL. By using XBRL, source data modifications resulted in dynamic updates to the HTML documents..." The XBRL Consortium's responses will be posted ca 2001-03-23 at http://xml.gov/documents_work_in_progress.cfm. Note in this connection the presentation 'eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL)' by Zach Coffin, Sergio De la Fe, and Chris Moyer, summarized in Federal CIO Council XML Working Group Meeting Minutes, October 18, 2000.

• [February 23, 2001]   International Accounting Standards Committee Releases 'Taxonomy of XBRL for Financial Statements'.    At the first global meeting of XBRL.org in London, the XBRL member organization International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) announced a "draft taxonomy of XBRL for Financial Statements to members of XBRL.org for review. The IASC taxonomy is an XML-based specification for the 'Commercial and Industrial' sector that allows users and suppliers of financial information to exchange financial statements across all software and technologies, including the Internet." The draft/beta taxonomy is available as an XML schema and in Microsoft Access database format. The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) has also formed a broad-based steering group in London that is in the process of developing the UK taxonomy for financial statements. With over 85 member organizations, XBRL.org is now "expanding as industry sectors and foreign jurisdictions begin development of XBRL specifications for financial and other business reporting. Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is an open specification which uses XML-based data tags to describe financial statements for both public and private companies. [Full context]

• [February 15, 2001] XBRL International Meeting. "XBRL will be having an international meeting next week in London, 19-23 February [2001], with Monday and Tuesday containing several sessions open to the public. Note that Tuesday afternoon we'll have a session on XBRL's relationship to the information provider community, led by Kevin Roche (Dow Jones), including discussion of how XBRL should work with NewsML, IRML, RIXML, PRISM, etc. Zachary Coffin (XBRL Liaison Chair, KPMG Global XBRL Leader).

• [February 01, 2001] XBRL for Tax Filings. - XBRL "Liaison & Outreach" Symposium: XBRL for Tax Filings Washington, D.C. - February 8. Thursday, February 8, 2001, 1 PM - 4 PM EST. The Urban Institute, 2100 M Street, NW, 5th Floor, Washington, DC 20037. "United Effort brings Private Sector, Government, Financial Services, Accounting, Software, XML/Metadata, and Tax Communities Together." Tax professionals and trade associations and companies interested in learning more about XBRL with the possibility of joining the Steering Committee and/or establishing a formal liaison relationship, are invited to attend an important tax symposium on Thursday, February 8. XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) is a new XML-based standard for tax, financial information, reporting and analysis that has been jointly developed by over 85 leading companies and organizations around the world. XBRL will help companies: collect and update information about tax reporting; distribute or collect information related to sales and purchases; provide improved information to shareholders for financial reports as a public entity; provide information to local, state and federal regulatory authorities to help automate tax, and business reports that contain tax information; and other companies do business with. XBRL is creating an Internet standard for business reports. [cache]

• [January 19, 2001] XBRL Specification Working Group Requests Requirements for XBRL Version 2.0. The Specification Working Group of the Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) initiative recently posted an announcement requesting public contributions to requirements for XBRL 2.0. The goal of XBRL.org in XBRL is "to provide an XML-based framework that the global business information supply chain will use to create, exchange, and analyze financial reporting information including, but not limited to, regulatory filings such as annual and quarterly financial statements, general ledger information, and audit schedules. XBRL is freely licensed and facilitates the automatic exchange and reliable extraction of financial information among various software applications anywhere in the world." From the announcement: "The Specification Working Group of XBRL.org is soliciting input from all interested parties for the enhancement of the technical requirements for XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language). The first version of the XBRL Specification was published in July, 2000 and can be found at http://www.xbrl.org; see http://www.xbrl.org/TR/2000-07-31/default.htm. It is the intention of XBRL.org to update the specification periodically to take advantage of technology advances and facilitate market implementation. Market experiences with adoption and implementation of XBRL, along with new developments in other technologies, are expected to inform changes to the specification. If you want to participate in this important opportunity to influence the future direction of the technical design of XBRL, please help us now! We hope to receive proposals covering many areas of the specification. As examples of the types of comments that might be proposed: (1) Suggestions of better leverage, conformance or alignment with another specifications within the financial industry, or in the wider community of W3C and international standards. As an example, XML Linking and XML Schema are moving towards Recommendation status with the W3C. Your proposal may indicate that XBRL should take advantage of specific parts of those emerging technologies. (2) A deeper exploration of the domain of financial, accounting and business reporting. As an example, you may propose that XBRL documents explicitly state whether it is safe to do calculations (totaling, ratios, etc.) on the assumption that the data in the document is complete, or that it is not safe to make that assumption. You may suggest new use cases and scenarios in which XBRL can contribute, and which should influence XBRL. You may suggest that XBRL taxonomies should contain information on the 'natural balance' of a financial concept if that makes sense..."

• [November 27, 2000] XBRL Taxonomy. "The scope of the XBRL open specification today encompasses US financial reporting (US GAAP) but is flexible enough to improve the transparency and usability of financial information everywhere, including International Accounting Standards and USSGL (U.S. Standard General Ledger for federal agencies). In this [Symposium] presentation we will describe how the current members of the XBRL steering committee have worked together to produce a multi-layered XML-based specification that is comprehensive, substantive, flexible and powerful. We: (1) Discuss the concept of an accounting taxonomy and the framework for creating taxonomies by industry and by country. (2) Discuss experiences creating our first taxonomy, which was created for US GAAP commercial and industrial companies. (3) Demonstrate how this initial taxonomy is extended for the reporting requirements of an individual company. (4) Discuss how this initial taxonomy will differ from the next taxonomy being created for other industries and countries, including the about-to-be-released-for-comment taxonomy XBRL for U.S. Federal Reporting..." [Presented at the XBRL Symposium, Hyatt Regency Washington, 400 New Jersey Avenue, Washington, DC, Sunday December 3, 2000.]

• [November 01, 2000] "XBRL Helps Meet Market Needs in Fair Disclosure Rule Communications." - "Starting last week, U.S. public companies will be required to comply with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's new Fair Disclosure Rule (Regulation FD). The new rule, which became effective on October 23, is part of the agency's efforts to level the playing field for all investors by requiring companies to fully disclose material data and relevant information that may influence decisions to all investors at the same time, not just selectively to analysts and insiders before events occur. Mike Willis, Partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Louis Matherne, Director of Information Technology at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), who together serve as co-chairs of the XBRL Strategy Work Group, are available to talk with you about a revolutionary software language called XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) being developed by 70 of the world's largest accounting, technology and financial services companies to help public companies communicate with their stakeholders more efficiently and on a more timely basis. We believe that XBRL will facilitate compliance with the new SEC regulation while also providing information to the stakeholders in a significantly more useful format. XBRL is an XML-based, freely available software language that provides an Internet platform for distributing company information. Using "bar codes" understood by the accounting, technology and financial service sectors, specific line items on a business report are tagged with XBRL. Analysts, investors, accountants and finance teams within companies can now quickly prepare, distribute and review data for better investment and management decisions. Under the new Fair Disclosure regulation, all parties involved in the business reporting chain will now have equal access and better comprehension of the information contained within business reports taking advantage of this faster, cheaper and better process to disclose information using the power of the Internet. All a public company needs to do is put its business reports and financial statements into the XBRL format and post them to its Web site..."

• [December 04, 2000] "EDGAR Online Creates Repository for Financial Statements Tagged in XBRL. XBRL Expert Joins Company." - "EDGAROnline, Inc. announced today at the XBRL committee meeting in Washington, D.C. that it is establishing the first public repository for company financial statments in XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) format. The Company also announced it has hired Liv A. Watson as Director to establish and manage its XBRL repository. XBRL, the newly developed business-specific XML financial reporting system developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) and other major financial services, technology, and public accounting organizations, is expected to become the standard way in which U.S. public companies will prepare, report and disseminate their financial information. The EDGAR Online XBRL Repository will provide a single source for analysts, investors, credit and lending institutions, news organizations and accountants to find any company financials prepared and published in this format. The majority of U.S. companies are expected to release their financial statements in XBRL format in the near future. In other news, EDGAR Online Inc. announced that it has hired Liv A. Watson as Director. Ms. Watson will develop short and long-term strategies for implementing XBRL capabilities and functionality into the EDGAR Online Web site and financial information delivery value chain. Through the XBRL Steering Committee Ms Watson has aided in the establishment of the universal 'business reporting language' that will facilitate the worldwide dissemination, analysis and interchange of business reporting. She presently serves as XBRL Education and Communication Committee Co-Chair and has spent fifteen years in film and television production, multimedia training, and information technology consulting in the public and private sector. Among other national and regional projects, she recently led a government project that will automate and streamline records systems for counties across the nation. Ms. Watson is a specialist in information systems project strategies, as well as management and information technology consulting for medium to large organizations. Prior to joining EDGAR Online, Inc., Ms. Watson served as the Managing Partner of Gaither Technologies LLC. The incorporation of XBRL will allow EDGAR Online, Inc., to provide superior services to companies, analysts, investors and other audiences allowing for more informed financial and management decisions. 'However, XBRL does not change existing accounting standards. Rather, XBRL provides an efficient and reliable means for business reporting information exchange and gives the professional and individual user fast and easy access to this SEC information.' said Mike Willis, XBRL Chairman from PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP."

• [December 07, 2000] "eKXBRL 1.0 Software Facilitates Generation of XBRL Solutions for Financial Reporting." - "eKeeper.com, a leading provider of Web content management solutions to the middle market, announced today that it has released eKXBRL, a software component that significantly reduces the time it takes for a developer to generate XBRL-compatible code. XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is an Internet specification that first appeared on the financial and accounting scene in October of 1999. It uses a financial reporting specification, agreed upon by key members of the financial information supply chain, which allows an open exchange of financial reporting data across all software and technologies including the Internet. 'eKeeper.com has taken an active interest in the XBRL initiative in great part due to the sophistication of XBRL.org and the power of the XBRL specification. The specification has reached a point where third-party developers like eKeeper.com are now developing software components that will make it easier for developers to create XBRL software,' said Doug Steen, CEO for eKeeper.com and member of XBRL.org. 'In addition, the momentum generated by XBRL.org in signing up members and member countries guarantees a market for our software. Consequently, eKeeper.com is committed to devote significant resources to continued XBRL tools development.' The eKeeper XBRL component (eKXBRL) significantly reduces development time by making it easier to manipulate XBRL items and elements. Currently, a developer would need to repeatedly traverse the XBRL taxonomy and instance document by hand to answer questions like: 'Given an XBRL item, what is its label?' or 'Given a taxonomy element, what other elements roll-up into this element?' By using the eKXBRL software component, these answers are available to the XBRL programmer immediately. The end result is that XBRL has been made easier, whether you are: (1)Adding a Save As XBRL feature to your existing application; (2) Making an XBRL document compatible in multiple languages and multiple currencies; or, (3) Creating XBRL-based Web sites that offer XBRL content or use XBRL content offered by others. XBRL offers several key benefits -- technology independence, full interoperability, efficient preparation of financial statements, and reliable extraction of financial information. Information is entered only once allowing that information to be rendered in any form such as a printed financial statement, an HTML document for the company's Web site, an EDGAR filing document with the SEC, a raw XML file, or other specialized reporting formats including credit reports or loan documents."

• [December 04, 2000] "FRx Software Supports XBRL Initiative. Denver Firm Among First to Support Internet-based Financial Disclosure Initiative." - "FRx Software Corporation, a Denver-based company specializing in the development of advanced financial reporting and business analytic application software, announced its endorsement and support of the XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) for Financial Statements specification released by the XBRL Consortium. FRx Software is a long-time supporter of the XBRL initiative and was one of the first companies to join the XBRL Consortium. With the release of the first XBRL taxonomy in July 2000, companies across all industries are now able to incorporate XBRL into their business reporting and analysis processes and start reaping its primary benefits. More than 80 percent of major U.S. public companies provide some sort of financial disclosure on the Internet. As a result, investors need accurate and reliable financial information that can be delivered promptly over the Internet to help them make informed financial decisions. XBRL for Financial Reporting meets these needs and leverages the efficiencies of the Internet as today's primary source of business information. In recent remarks made to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), Arthur Levitt, chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), acknowledged XBRL and recommended its further development to turn financial statements into meaningful information for investors using this new revolutionary technology. 'The XBRL specification is critical to the financial reporting success of companies across all industries because it empowers people to employ the Internet as a highly efficient channel by which to communicate business information,' said Chris Scherpenseel, President of FRx Software. 'In addition, XBRL is highly conducive to FRx Financial Reporting Version 6.0, which offers Web-based financial reporting as part of its host of product features and benefits.' FRx Financial Reporting Version 6.0 offers XML (Extensible Mark-up Language) as the primary report output when generating FRx financial reports. Leveraging this XML support, FRx plans to release an upgrade to its Version 6.0 product line in early 2001, and will provide an add-on XBRL module so that users can easily begin to take advantage of the benefits of XBRL. With more than 80,000 customers and 320,000 + users worldwide, introducing XBRL support into FRx's product suite will help facilitate rapid global adoption of XBRL. Denver-based FRx Software Corporation produces advanced financial reporting and analysis software that interfaces with more than 50 best-of-breed financial accounting systems and is used at approximately 80,000 sites worldwide. FRx applications, distributed exclusively through 30+ strategic partnerships, enable finance and accounting professionals to streamline processes with ease and generate the financial knowledge necessary to gain a competitive advantage."

• [October 14, 2000] "XBRLWire - A monthly e-mail newsletter covering the latest developments in eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), an XML-based framework for the preparation and exchange of business reports and data. Finance professionals will learn how XBRL can aid in the creation, exchange and analysis of financial reports and streamline the sharing of financial information among disparate software applications. Written by XBRL steering committee member Neal Hannon, XBRL Link will cover news, implementation initiatives, and tips and techniques of how to use XBRL. . . Currently [2000-10] supported by more than 70 partner organizations world-wide including software vendors, consulting firms, and the Big Five accounting firms, XBRL will enable organizations to extract more value from financial data at significantly reduced costs. XBRL will soon be the standard Import/export format for the distribution and use of financial results."

• [August 03, 2000] The 2000-07-31 specification document (in PDF, HTML, or .DOC formats) is Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) Specification."; reference 2000-07-31, edited by Walter Hamscher and David Vun Kannon. Abstract: "XBRL is the specification for the eXtensible Business Reporting Language. XBRL allows software vendors, programmers and end users who adopt it as a specification to enhance the creation, exchange, and comparison of business reporting information. Business reporting includes, but is not limited to, financial statements, financial information, non-financial information and regulatory filings such as annual and quarterly financial statements. This document defines XML elements and attributes that can be used to express information used in the creation, exchange and comparison tasks of financial reporting. XBRL consists of a core language of XML elements and attributes used in document instances as well as a language used to define new elements and taxonomies of elements referred to in document instances." The DTD and XML Schema are also published. [DTD, cache] [schema, cache] [spec, cache]

• [August 02, 2000] "XBRL Taxonomy: Financial Reporting for Commercial and Industrial Companies, US GAAP." 2000-07-31. Edited by Sergio de la Fe, Jr. (CPA, KPMG LLP), Charles Hoffman (CPA, XBRL Solutions, Inc.), and Elmer Huh (Morgan Stanley Dean Witter). ['Taxonomy for the creation of XML-based instance documents for business and financial reporting of commercial and industrial companies according to US GAAP.'] Abstract: "This documentation explains the XBRL Taxonomy Financial Reporting of Commercial and Industrial Companies, US GAAP, dated 2000-07-31. This taxonomy is created compliant to the XBRL Specification, dated 2000-07-31. It is for the creation of XML-based instance documents that generate business and financial reporting for commercial and industrial companies according to US GAAP. XBRL is a specification for the eXtensible Business Reporting Language. XBRL allows software vendors, programmers, and end users who adopt it as a specification to enhance the creation, exchange, and comparison of financial reporting information. Financial reporting includes, but is not limited to, financial statements, financial information, non-financial information and regulatory filings such as annual and quarterly financial statements." (1) summary description; (2) XML Schema. [cache]

• XBRL Symposium: "XBRL for Financial Services" September 13, 2000.

• "Design of the XBRL specification." By David Vun Kannon and Yufei Wang (KPMG Consulting, LLP). Presented at XML Europe 2000. "Vocabulary design is driven by several factors, including business requirements, available technology and politics. XBRL, as the leading vocabulary for the global accounting industry, has been strongly influenced by each of those factors. The adoption and implementation of XBRL will enable great changes in many financial processes." See the index. Also in HTML. Note: "MITRE determined that much of the paper is not relevant to the XBRL review, because: (1) It is an informal paper authored by two individuals. (2) It does not seem to be an XBRL-endorsed paper, and was not obtained from the XBRL website. (3) It is inconsistent with the current draft of the XBRL specification in some ways (e.g., the description of valid values for a date/time period, lack of discussion of "tuples"), since it seems to be tied to an out-of-date version of the specification (2000-03-31). (4) It focuses on rationale for the design decisions, while this review focuses on the XBRL syntax and compliance requirements. (5) The paper references XML for General Financial Reporting (X4GFR), which seems to be an obsolete term. Some information was derived from the design paper, however, such as the identification of an unmet requirement to use the XML Namespace standard to validate the XBRL elements against the XBRL taxonomy; see paragraph 5 in the above list of discussion points for a way to meet that requirement..." [cache]

• [October 03, 2000] XBRL Update 2000-10-03. "The XBRL consortium is almost a year old - an infant in the physical world but a fast growing adolescent in the Internet world. Well beyond its initial growing pains, the consortium now has over 65 members, hailing from all sectors of the business reporting supply chain and representing over 20 jurisdictions. The XBRL consortium is making strong headway in fulfilling its goal of becoming an independent, international organization and will take the important step of formally spinning out from its founding organization, the AICPA. This move will ensure that the necessary international framework is based upon a global orientation and that participating jurisdictions and industries take full responsibility for development of their individual taxonomies. Formal XBRL launch events are scheduled in the next few months for Canada, Australia and Germany. This is expected to exponentially increase both XBRL membership and the availability of resources for developing taxonomies in several jurisdictions that are seeking to make their corporate reporting supply chains e-business enabled. Expect that additional XBRL products (tax reports, statutory and regulatory reports, etc.) will go from the strategy document to the working group effort in the near term. The XBRL Internet language is still in its formative stages and many of the early prognostications are still the responsibility of XBRL consortium membership. With the remarkable progress already made and more headway expected, the consortium's vision of e-business for the business reporting supply chain is taking shape and it's path to future adoption is clear..."

• [August 02, 2000] "Navision Software Releases XBRL Solution; XML-Based Financial Reporting Language Now Available in Navision Financials 2.50." - "Navision Software, a leading worldwide provider of business management solutions to the middle market, announced today that it has released its XBRL solution, one day after the publication of the official XML-based taxonomy. XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is a free specification that first appeared on the financial and accounting scene in October of 1999. It uses a financial reporting specification, agreed upon by key members of the financial information supply chain, that allows an open exchange of financial reporting data across all software and technologies, including the Internet. The XBRL coding contained in Navision Financials 2.50 will enable customers to more easily and efficiently connect and communicate with both competing products in the ERP space and complementary products such as Caseware. For example, a set of subsidiary offices using Navision Financials can now more quickly collaborate with a parent office using a larger ERP system, while realizing significant time and cost savings. XBRL offers several key benefits: technology independence, full interoperability, efficient preparation of financial statements and reliable extraction of financial information. Information is entered only once, allowing that same information to be rendered in any form, such as a printed financial statement, an HTML document for the company's Web site, an EDGAR filing document with the SEC, a raw XML file or other specialized reporting formats, such as credit reports or loan documents. More than 80 percent of major US public companies provide some type of financial disclosure on the Internet. Investors and users of the Internet need accurate and reliable financial information that can be delivered promptly to help them make informed financial decisions." See XBRL Taxonomy - "Taxonomy for the creation of XML-based instance documents for business and financial reporting of commercial and industrial companies according to US GAAP."

• The announcement: "AICPA Leads Global XBRL Initiative to Facilitate the Exchange of Financial Statements Across All Technologies, Including the Internet. United Effort Brings Global Financial, Accounting and Software Communities Together to Create First XML-Based Specification Developed for Financial Statements."

• Sample documents, 04-06 version. [Sample documents, 04-04]

• Earlier information: "Extensible Financial Reporting Markup Language (XFRML)."

• [September 15, 2000] "CFOs shun manual labor. Standard takes sweat out of pulling together data." By Roberta Holland. In eWEEK (September 11, 2000). "For Greg Adams, chief financial officer of Edgar Online Inc., quarterly report time means long hours scrolling through massive Securities and Exchange Commission documents to see how the competition is doing. Currently, Adams has to search each SEC filing individually, pluck out the 20 or so variables he needs, and manually re-enter the data into a new file. But software based on an emerging standard called XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) will enable him to type in competitors' ticker symbols and the variables he needs and watch while the information is automatically pulled into a spreadsheet or chart. The estimated time difference: 8 hours whittled down to 3 minutes. Based on XML (Extensible Markup Language), XBRL allows for the generation, extraction and exchange of financial data from financial statements presented in software applications. Once tagged in XBRL, the financial statements can be rendered in different forms, such as an annual report, HTML for a company Web site, tax returns or an SEC filing. The protocol is being developed by the XBRL Committee, an international coalition whose 63 members include a virtual who's who of the financial services world. The group's first published taxonomy, for financial reporting of commercial and industrial companies under generally accepted U.S. accounting principles, was released July 31. Software companies are now starting to roll out products that incorporate XBRL. While the U.S. taxonomy was the first published, roughly a dozen more are expected, to accommodate accounting terms used in other countries, including New Zealand, Australia and Germany. Once all the taxonomies are in place, the next layer will be tools to make those frameworks useful. All of the 63 companies and groups in the coalition have agreed to implement XBRL into their own products and processes. Edgar Online, in fact, is setting up a repository of companies that have their information tagged in XBRL."

• [April 19, 2000] "XML To Speed Financial Data Online. Committee releases specification to help countries' systems interoperate smoothly." By Matthew G. Nelson. In InformationWeek (April 17, 2000). "The use of the Extensible Markup Language to convey information among different systems and across international boarders continues to gain momentum, as the XBRL Project Committee last week released a framework for the exchange of financial information online. Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is an XML-based specification that uses financial-reporting standards to exchange financial information. By using XML, XBRL lets individual countries' financial systems -- each of which has a different way of defining currency worth, different standards of measurement, and other factors -- interoperate smoothly. Companies that adopt the XBRL framework will also be able to more easily assimilate financial data when they merge or acquire other companies, says David vun Kannon, a manager at KPMG Consulting..."

• [May 05, 2000] "Sage Software Joins Global Initiative in Launching XBRL, a New Specification That Exchanges Financial Reports Across All Technologies Including the Internet. United Effort Brings Financial, Accounting, Software and Governmental Communities Together for First Standardized Specification Developed for Financial Statements." - "Sage Software Thursday announced that through its membership on the international XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) Project Committee, it is helping to develop and launch XBRL. XBRL, formerly code named XFRML, is a free, new XML-based specification that uses accepted financial reporting standards and practices to exchange financial reports across all software and technologies, including the Internet. Members of the XBRL Project Committee represent the financial, accounting, software and governmental communities from around the world. XBRL for financial statements, developed by the Committee as the first product in a future family of XBRL-based products, is currently under review for comments by the accounting profession and is anticipated to reach the market in July 2000. XBRL streamlines the financial information supply chain that includes public and private companies, the accounting profession, data aggregators, the investment community and all other users of financial statements. More than 80 percent of major US public companies provide some type of financial disclosure on the Internet. Investors and users of the Internet need accurate and reliable financial information that can be delivered promptly to help them make informed financial decisions. XBRL meets these needs and is particularly important in delivering financial information via the Internet, including at a company's Web site. XBRL leverages efficiencies of Internet as today's primary source of financial information by making Web browser searches more accurate and relevant for all users of financial information. Initially, Sage will implement XBRL through its affiliate, Best Software Inc. and through its strategic partnership with FRx Software. Best Software produces leading-edge HR/payroll, fixed asset, and planning and budgeting solutions. Best's products already utilize XML technologies and will implement XBRL to broaden the scope of their comprehensive analytic solutions."

• [April 30, 2000] "Finance Players Back XML-Based Standard. Consortium to push report specification." By Maria Trombly. In ComputerWorld (April 17, 2000). "Many of the world's top financial institutions have formed a consortium to promote a new XML-based specification for exchanging financial reports over the Internet. The group, the XBRL Project Committee, expects to launch the specification by July 1, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the group's founder, announced last week. The initial release in July will cover specifications for publishing a company's financial statements in XBRL, said Mike Willis, a partner at New York-based accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and chairman of the XBRL Project Committee. Willis said XBRL won't be used for individual transactions, but for high-level aggregate data, such as that included in quarterly sales reports, for example. XBRL will ultimately affect any company that processes financial reports or uses them online, according to a statement by Keith Macbeath, director of strategic planning at financial information publisher Reuters Group PLC in London. Reuters is considering using XRBL to help it acquire, process and deliver financial data..."

• [April 25, 2000] "EDGAR Online, PricewaterhouseCoopers in Agreement to Market XML Data from EDGARSCAN. Future XBRL Enhancements Expected." - "EDGAR Online and PricewaterhouseCoopers announced today they have signed an agreement that will give EDGAR Online the exclusive right to market the XML-based output of the popular EDGARSCAN software developed by PricewaterhouseCoopers. EDGARSCAN, which is currently available only via the PricewaterhouseCoopers Web site, is the state-of-the-art technology for parsing financial data from SEC documents filed by public companies. EDGARSCAN, for which PricewaterhouseCoopers has sought patent protection, is used by accountants, financial analysts, and other professionals to extract and analyze income statement, balance sheet and cash flow data from EDGAR documents. The agreement will enable EDGAR Online to create XML data feeds using EDGARSCAN and to sell the feeds directly to high volume users who want to use this data on their Intranets and for internal analytics. XML (extensible markup language) is a Web-based system that uses tags to describe data. It is a common way for disparate information systems to exchange specific data over Web-based platforms. EDGAR Online and PricewaterhouseCoopers anticipate their agreement will be extended to include data using the XBRL (extensible business reporting language) standard for online financial reporting recently introduced by a consortium of more than 30 companies and financial organizations."

• [April 12, 2000] "SAP Joins Global Initiative to Launch XBRL Specification To Bring Financial Reporting Collaboration to Users of mySAP.com. New XML-Based Standard Will Enable Users of mySAP.com To Collaborate Easily With Stakeholders Around the World." - "SAP AG, the leading provider of inter-enterprise software solutions, announced today that through its membership on the international XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) Project Committee, it is helping to develop and launch XBRL and will be adopting this standard within SAP(TM) Strategic Enterprise Management (SAP SEM) with mySAP.com. This will allow customers to exchange financial statements data based on XBRL standards seamlessly and at Internet speed within their organization and with stakeholders such as investors, financial analysts, business partners, data aggregators, accounting professionals and public authorities. . ."

• [April 12, 2000] "EDGAR Online Joins Global Initiative In Launching XBRL, a New Specification that Exchanges Financial Reports Across All Technologies, Including the Internet. United Effort Brings Financial, Accounting, Software and Governmental Communities Together." - "EDGAR Online, Inc. announced today that through its membership on the international XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) Project Committee, it is helping to develop and launch XBRL. XBRL, formerly code named XFRML, is a free, new XML-based specification that uses accepted financial reporting standards and practices to exchange financial reports across all software and technologies, including the Internet. Members of the XBRL Project Committee represent the financial, accounting, software and governmental communities from around the world. XBRL for financial statements, developed by the Committee as the first product in a future family of XBRL-based products, is currently under review for comments by the accounting profession and is anticipated to reach the market in July 2000. XBRL streamlines the financial information supply chain that includes public and private companies, the accounting profession, data aggregators, the investment community and all other users of financial statements..."

• [April 12, 2000] "Microsoft Joins Global Initiative to Launch XBRL, a Specification That Exchanges Financial Data Across the Internet. United Effort Brings Financial, Accounting, Software and Governmental Communities Together; First Standardized Specification Developed for Financial Statements." - "Microsoft Corporation today announced that through its membership on the international Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) Project Committee, it is helping to develop and launch XBRL. XBRL is a free, new Extensible Markup Language (XML)-based specification that uses accepted financial reporting standards and practices to translate financial reports across all software and technologies, including the Internet. Members of the XBRL Project Committee represent financial, accounting, software and governmental communities from around the world. . ."

• [April 12, 2000] "PricewaterhouseCoopers Participates in Launching XBRL, A New Business Reporting Language for the Internet, Other Technologies. First Standardized Specification Developed for Financial Statements Created by Financial, Accounting, Software and Governmental Communities." - "PricewaterhouseCoopers participated today as one of the founding members of a joint industry and government consortium that launched XBRL, the eXtensible Business Reporting Language. XBRL, formerly code named XFRML, is a free, XML-based specification that uses accepted financial reporting standards and practices to prepare, publish and exchange financial reports across all software and technologies, including the Internet. The XBRL Project Steering Committee, representing the financial, accounting, software and governmental communities from around the world, demonstrated XBRL for financial statements, the first in a future family of XBRL-based products. It is currently under review for comments by the accounting profession and others and is anticipated to reach the market in July 2000. XBRL solves two significant problems for those who prepare and use financial statements by providing more efficient preparation and more reliable extraction of financial data across all technology formats. Use of XBRL streamlines the financial information supply chain that includes public and private companies, the accounting profession, data aggregators and distributors, the investment community and all other users of financial information. . ."

• [April 12, 2000] "Reuters Joins Global Initiative Launching XBRL. New Multi-industry Standard Allows Exchanging of Financial Reports Across All Technologies, Including the Internet." - "Reuters today announced that it has joined the initiative to develop XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language), an open-standards based format for the publication of financial reports. Reuters has become a member of the international XBRL Project Committee. . .

• [April 12, 2000] "FRx Software Joins Global Initiative in Launching XBRL, a New Specification That Exchanges Financial Reports Across All Technologies, Including the Internet. United Effort Brings Financial, Accounting, Software and Governmental Communities Together; First Standardized Specification Developed for Financial Statements." - "FRx Software announced today that through its membership on the international XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) Project Committee, it is helping to develop and launch XBRL. XBRL, formerly code named XFRML, is a free, new XML-based specification that uses accepted financial reporting standards and practices to exchange financial reports across all software and technologies, including the Internet. Members of the XBRL Project Committee represent the financial, accounting, software and governmental communities from around the world. XBRL for financial statements, developed by the Committee as the first product in a future family of XBRL-based products, is currently under review for comments by the accounting profession and is anticipated to reach the market in July 2000. XBRL streamlines the financial information supply chain that includes public and private companies, the accounting profession, data aggregators, the investment community and all other users of financial statements. . ."