Out of the Clouds and Into Reality: XBRL for the Business User

XBRL Signage

There are a couple things to get used to in XBRL reporting that may not apply to presentational reporting. One is that the numbers are taken out to the decimal place. You never create XBRL data scaled in the thousands or millions (although it can be rendered for viewing as scaled information).

One issue that can be a little trickier depending on how you currently report is signage. If you're working on your data and running into calculation errors but the numbers look fine this could be the culprit. Below, I've included the table from the specification that shows when to make a number positive or negative in XBRL. Keep it in mind. This issue was identified early in the voluntary program by Corey Booth (Chief  Information Officer and Director of the Office of Information Technology U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) as an area where he was seeing errors.

-- Ed Hodder

XBRL Changes the Regulatory Playing Field

A nice article over at Data Storage Today on data mining, XBRL and the SEC. This is one of my favorite topics and worth keeping in mind as you move into data-driven reporting.

-- Ed Hodder