XBRL in CanadaHaven’t heard of XBRL? You aren’t alone. There hasn’t been a lot written about theuse of XBRL in Canada although it has been adopted by our largest trading partner,the U.S. and is in use in many countries around the world including TheNetherlands, Australia and Japan. CGA Canada has been associated with XBRLCanada, a not-for-profit consortium since 2001. So what is it and what impact will ithave on CGA’s in Alberta?XBRL is the acronym for eXtensibleBusinessReportingLanguage which is based on
the language of the internet “XML” eXtensibleMarkupLanguage. XML “is a general-
purpose specification for creating custom markup languages. It is classified as anextensible language because it allows the user to define the mark-up elements.XML's purpose is to aid information systems in sharing structured data, especiallyvia the internet”
The intention is to allow users of financial statements the ability to analyze,compare, redraft, and transfer to another computer without having to re-key anydata. Computers can be used to do this work thereby saving an accountant oranalysts’ valuable time. The language achieves this by adding “tags” to each lineof the document. The financial reports so created can use different reportingstandards and even different languages and still be analyzed by users.Data can be formatted into XBRL using mapping tools or created by accountingsoftware. A number of major software vendors have added XBRL to their reportingmodules. They have done this through the use of taxonomies which are “electronic,machine-readable “dictionaries” consisting of many linked files containingthousands of elements linked to each other.”
SAP, Oracle, JD Edwards, CaseWareand Microsoft’s FRx 6.7 all have the ability to prepare statements in an XBRL format.Financial statements can be published to an investor relations website anddownloaded by lenders, investors and analysts for their use. There are a number of available report viewers which enable users to view XBRL taxonomies anddocuments. Viewers are free and some companies such as Rivet Software(www.rivetsoftware.com) provide a free viewer and also sell a version called Dragon Tag that allows for export to Microsoft Word or Excel. You can even purchasesoftware to analyse the statements according to your criteria.When will CGA’s need to learn about XBRL? The SEC in a final filing on December17, 2008 approved a ruling to make filing public company financial statementsinXBRL mandatory. Other countries have been preparing XBRL public companyreports since 2005. Will we be doing the same in Canada? Currently the major issuein Canadian financial reporting is the transition to IFRS by 2011 for all Canadianpublic companies. It’s logical to assume that XBRL will also be an importantinitiative of Canadian Securities Administrators. There has been a voluntary filingprogram in Canada since May 2007 through the System for Electronic DocumentAnalysis and Retrieval (SEDAR). The time for CGA’s to learn about this issue is now.For many CGA’s in Alberta who whose role involves SEC reporting I would imagine
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XBRL in Canada
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| Upload Date: | 07/09/2009 |
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