XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language)
Since January 2010, XBRL filings is mandatory for companies with a market capitalization greater than $5 billion and is quickly moving to lower capitalization. Until then, all publicly traded companies are invited to a voluntary XBRL filing to help them prepare for this historic financial reporting and filing revolution.
What is XBRL, simply put?
XBRL is a language for the electronic communication of business and financial data which is revolutionising business reporting around the world. It provides major benefits in the preparation, analysis and communication of business information. It offers cost savings, greater efficiency and improved accuracy and reliability to all those involved in supplying or using financial data.
Often referred to as the bar coding for financial statements, XBRL is a universal language, adaptable to any nation’s accounting standards and requirements, and is quickly becoming the global standard for financial reporting.
Also known as ‘Interactive Data’, XBRL allows computers to identify and analyze corporate financial data automatically and in real-time. This will drastically change the financial reporting and analysis world as we know it.
XBRL data is also the most accurate and timely in the marketplace with the lowest error rate of any available dataset.
Simply put, with XBRL, every piece of your financial data is linked to explanatory information so you get numbers with their context.
Why prepare now for XBRL?
More than a reporting language for filing, XBRL's advantages can be leveraged to all company's financial reporting, analysis and sharing needs.
XBRL enables all producers and consumers of financial data to switch resources away from costly manual processes, typically involving time-consuming comparison, assembly and re-entry of data. Accessing particular information, which might in the past have taken hours, can be completed with XBRL in a fraction of a second.
Who can benefit from XBRL?
Saving costs
- automatically generate reports without re-keying of data and other manual tasks
- Simplify the process and reduce the costs involved in regulatory reporting to tax and other authorities
Improving investor relations
- through provision of more transparent and user-friendly information
- Leverage the internet in communicating with investors
- Being perceived as well-run “tech-savvy” company
Achieving quicker and more efficient decisions
- Improve accuracy and reliability of financial data
- Consolidating results across divisions and subsidiaries with much greater speed and reliability
- Focus effort on analysis, forecasting and decision making, rather than on laborious tasks in gathering, compiling and preparing data
- Obtain quicker responses from counterparties, including banks and regulators
- Improve understanding of your competition with benchmark information
Facilitating their operations
- Free themselves from proprietary systems and software which are difficult and costly to replace
- Easily communicate and exchange financial data with anyone who collect business data, including governments, regulators, economic agencies, stock exchanges, financial information companies and the like, and those who produce or use it, including accountants, auditors, company managers, financial analysts, investors and creditors
Inovestor and XBRL
Thanks to our renowned contribution made over the years, Inovestor enjoys a foremost position in the Canadian XBRL community.
With our significant role within the XBRL Canada Organisation, Inovestor is getting recognised among its peers and primary financial institutions as a strategic tehcnology partner for XBRL solutions.
Through innovative and proprietary technologies, Inovestor already benefits from XBRL and can help your company also benefit from XBRL in a simplified and affordable way.
How to start using XBRL?
Inovestor already converts documents filed by over 1,000 publicly traded Canadian corporations with the Securities and Exchange Commission and SEDAR into XBRL instance documents by our StockGuide analysts. This data is then being used by more than 30% of all Canadian brokerage firms through their StockGuide subscription.
YOUR COMPANY'S FILINGS MIGHT ALREADY BE AVAILABLE IN XBRL FORMAT
so you could start benefiting from it now!
Enter your company symbol below to lookup if it already has an XBRL instance document produced by our StockGuide analysts.