Bob Jensen's Overview
and Timeline of OLAP, GML, SGML, HTML, XML, RDF, and XBRL
Bob Jensen at Trinity University
Timeline Leading to XBRL
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Click on Any
Underlined Link in the Following Timeline
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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse
---> GML,SGML --->Internet
--->Hypermedia --->HTML, HTTP, WWW --->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML/SMIL --->RDF and OWL
---> OLAP ---> XBRL -
SEMANTIC WEB
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Semantic.html and http://logicerror.com/semanticWeb-long
"Opening Search to Semantic Upstarts:
Yahoo's new open-search platform is giving semantic search a helping hand,"
by Kate Greene, MIT's Technology Review,
September 8, 2008 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/21342/?nlid=1322&a=f
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html
THE FUTURE OF SEARCH (or so
says IBM) --- The Future of Search (or so says IBM) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm#FutureOfSearch
From the National Science Foundation
The Birth and Rise of the Internet --- http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/nsf-net/?govDel=USNSF_51
Also
see Richard Jensen's (History, U of Illinois-Chicago) --- Scholars' Guide to WWW
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Extended
Overview of How to Publish Excel Documents as Dynamic Web Pages (Roundtripping)
Extended Overview of OLAP
Extended Overview of HTML
Extended Overview of XML and SMIL
Extended Overview of RDF
Extended Overview of Metadata XBRL and Business Reporting on the
Internet (Including a tutorial on using
the demos)
I created a video
tutorial for XBRL. You can download the
xbrldemos.wmv file from the following path
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/windowsmedia/
XBRL Update Threads
VRXML for Stock Exchanges and Vendors
Bob Jensen's threads on XML and RDF are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/xmlrdf.htm
Bob Jensen's Technology Glossary (including links to accounting
glossaries) is at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245gloss.htm
Bob Jensen's Accounting Information Systems Course is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5342/index.htm
Bob Jensen's Homepage is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/
Timeline Leading Up to XBRL
STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse
---> GML,SGML --->Internet --->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW
--->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF ---> OLAP
---> HBRL
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html
Hypertext= Pages of computer text that are
authored in software allowing for non linear navigation based upon button
controls, hotwords, or other controls that make sequencing of pages virtually
irrelevant. Hypertext authoring packages typically differ from word processing
packages that are intended primarily for preparing text for hard copy printing.
Hypertext software may have options to print particular pages, but the intent
is for computer use rather than printing. The key to hypertext is random access
that allows lightning-fast non linear navigation based upon reader choice or
other reader actions such as responses to questions. (See also Hypermedia
and Timeline presentation.) Popular software terminology for
hypertext early on included HyperCard "stacks," Authorware
"network icons," and ToolBook "books." The
history of hypertext dates back to 1945 in the early days of computing and long
before the invention of the PC by IBM. Sun Microsystems provides a
history of hypertext at http://www.sun.com/950523/columns/alertbox/history.html
From the book Multimedia and Hypertext: The Internet and Beyond
1945 Vannevar Bush proposes Memex
1965 Ted
Nelson coins the word "hypertext"
1967 The Hypertext Editing System and FRESS, Brown
University, Andy van Dam
1968 Doug Engelbart demo of NLS system at FJCC
1975 ZOG (now KMS): CMU
1978 Aspen Movie Map, first hypermedia videodisk,
Andy Lippman, MIT Architecture Machine Group (now Media Lab)
1984 Filevision from Telos; limited hypermedia database widely
available for the Macintosh
1985 Symbolics Document Examiner, Janet Walker
1985 Intermedia, Brown University, Norman Meyrowitz
1986 OWL introduces Guide, first widely available
hypertext
1987 Apple introduces HyperCard,
Bill Atkinson
1987 Hypertext'87
first major conference on hypertext
1991 World Wide Web
at CERN becomes first global hypertext, Tim
Berners-Lee
1992 New York Times Book Review cover story on
hypertext fiction
1993 Mosaic
anointed Internet killer app, National Center for Supercomputing Applications
1993 A Hard Day's
Night becomes the first full-length feature film in hypermedia
1993 Hypermedia encyclopedias sell more copies than print
encyclopedias
1995 Netscape Corp.
gains market value of almost $3G on first day of stock market trading
WWW Consortium's list of hypertext projects
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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse
---> GML,SGML --->Internet --->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW
--->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF ---> OLAP
---> HBRL
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html
PC= Personal Computer developed initially by IBM but
not really appreciated for what it was worth by IBM executives who at the time believed
that the future of computing would be in ever bigger and faster mainframe
computers. A short history of the PC is provided by GDS at http://www.highwaygds.net/gds/pchist.html.
Central to the PC was the development of the DOS operating system, invention of
the BASIC computing language by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, and later
developments of GUI operating systems such as the Macintosh operating system
from Apple Corporation and the Windows operating systems from Microsoft
Corporation. One of the most popular innovations was the development of
laptop and notebook versions of the desktop computers.
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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse
---> GML,SGML --->Internet --->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW
--->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF ---> OLAP --->
HBRL
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html
GUI= An acronym for Graphical User Interface, this term refers to a
software front-end meant to provide an attractive and easy to use interface
between a computer user and application, which historically gave rise to the
icon-based operating system of Apple Corporation computers. The GUI concept
actually had its origins in the work of Alan Kay at Xerox Corporation's Palo
Alto Research Center (PARC) in the early 1969. However, it was
Apple Corporation who eventually exploited the technology that is now the
fundamental basis of Mac, Windows, and other GUI operating systems that perform
commands based upon bit-mapped graphics icons. This paved the way for
object-oriented systems of the 1990s.
Mouse= the first screen pointer and still the most popular GUI screen
pointer that allows computer users to point, click, and drag on selected areas
of a computer's screen image. A history is provided at http://www.bergen.org/AAST/Projects/Engineering_Graphics/_EG2001/mouse/history.html
The computer mouse has become a standard input device
for modern computers. Its ease of use and the simplicity of pointing and
clicking has made it as important as the keyboard.
Douge Englebert, a graduate student of electrical
engineering at Berkely developed the modern mouse. Engelbat wanted to create a
device that anybody could use to control a computer more naturally than a
keyboard. His inspiration came from being a radar technician during World War
II. In the war, he saw various types of computer input devices, some resembling
the mouse. In 1959 he was granted the opportunity to pursue his goal of
developing a new user interface for the computer. By 1968 Engelbat and a group
of other computer scientists and electrical engineers presented their invention
to the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Fransisco. Amazingly, the mouse
didn't catch on until the 1980s.
The mouse didn't catch on at first because even
though it was an amazing innovation, there was no need for it in the early
years of computing. Most computers were simple text-only telescreens with no
cursor arrows. It wasn't until the graphical interfaces that became popular in
the 1980s that the mouse became widely used.
The first computer to come equipped with a mouse
was the Xerox Star, an office computer introduced in the early 1970s. However,
the mouse became popular when it was included with the Apple Lisa in 1983.
Since then, the mouse has become increasingly more advanced and complex.
Additional buttons and track wheels have been added in addition to the original
two buttons. The optical mouse is a revolutionary advance in mouse technology.
Because it does not have any moving parts, dirt getting caught in the gears is
no longer a problem. Instead of a ball and gears, it uses a beam of light to
track location on a surface. Another advantage is that it can operate on any
non-reflective surface.
Englehart also came up with a larger,
foot-operated control called a rat, but it never caught on.
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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet --->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW
--->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF ---> OLAP
---> HBRL
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html
GML and SGML= acronyms for Generalized Markup
Language and Standardized Generalize Markup Language.
GML text scripting was conceived in1969 IBM researchers depicting Generalized
Markup Languages (and not-so-coincidentally
the lead researchers were named Goldfarb, Mosher,
and Lorie). It had its roots in the development of
"tags" that could describe blocks of computer code, especially code
dealing with document formats. You can read the following historical account at
http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/sgmlhist0.html
Also in the late 1960s, a New York book designer named Stanley Rice
proposed the idea of a universal catalog of parameterized 'editorial structure'
tags. Norman Scharpf, director of the GCA, recognized the significance of these
trends, and established a generic coding project in the Composition Committee.
The committee developed the 'GenCode(R) concept',
recognizing that different generic codes were needed for different kinds of
documents, and that smaller documents could be incorporated as elements of
larger ones. The project evolved into the GenCode Committee, which later played
an instrumental role in the development of the SGML standard.
2. GML and SGML: languages for generic coding
In 1969, Charles Goldfarb was leading an IBM
research project on integrated law office information systems. Together with
Edward Mosher and Raymond Lorie he invented the Generalized Markup Language
(GML) as a means of allowing the text editing, formatting, and information
retrieval subsystems to share documents.
GML (which, not coincidentally, comprises the
initials of its three inventors) was based on the generic coding ideas of Rice
and Tunnicliffe. Instead of a simple tagging scheme, however, GML introduced
the concept of a formally-defined document type with an explicit nested element
structure.
Major portions of GML were implemented in
mainframe 'industrial strength' publishing systems by IBM and others and
achieved substantial industry acceptance. IBM itself, reckoned to be the
world's second largest publisher, adopted GML and now produces over 90% of its
documents with it.
After the completion of GML, Goldfarb continued
his research on document structures, creating additional concepts, such as
short references, link processes, and concurrent document types, that were not
part of GML but were later to be developed as part of SGML.
3. Development of SGML as an International
Standard
In 1978, the American National Standards
Institute (ANSI) committee on Information Processing established the Computer
Languages for the Processing of Text committee, chaired by Charles Card, then
of Univac, with Norman Scharpf as a member. Goldfarb was asked to join the
committee and eventually to lead a project for a text description language
standard based on GML. The GCA GenCode committee supported the effort and
provided a nucleus of dedicated people for the task of developing Goldfarb's
basic language design for SGML into a standard.
The first working draft of the SGML standard was
published in 1980. By 1983, the GCA was able to recommend the sixth working draft
as an industry standard (GCA 101-1983). Major adopters included the US Internal
Revenue Service (IRS) and the US Department of Defense.
In 1984, with feedback from the GCA standard in
hand, three more working drafts were produced. The project, which had been
authorized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as well
as ANSI, reorganized. It began regular international meetings as what is now
called ISO/IEC JTC1/SC18/WG8, chaired by James Mason of the US Oak Ridge
National Laboratory. Work also continued in the ANSI committee, now called
X3V1.8, chaired by William Davis of SGML Associates, and supported by the GCA
GenCode committee, chaired by Sharon Adler of IBM. Alignment between ISO and
ANSI was maintained by Goldfarb continuing as technical leader, serving as
project editor for both groups.
SGML is especially important in leading up to HTML, XML, and XBRL. See
http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/general.html
One of my favorite SGML sites is at http://www.ucc.ie/xml/
SGML is the Standard Generalized Markup Language
(ISO 8879:1985), the international standard
for defining descriptions of the structure of different types of electronic
document. There is an SGML FAQ at http://www.infosys.utas.edu.au/info/sgmlfaq.txt
which is posted every month to the comp.text.sgml
newsgroup, and the SGML Web pages are at http://xml.coverpages.org/.
SGML is very large, powerful, and complex. It has
been in heavy industrial and commercial use for over a decade, and there is a
significant body of expertise and software to go with it. XML
is a lightweight cut-down version of SGML which keeps enough of its functionality
to make it useful but removes all the optional features which make SGML too
complex to program for in a Web environment.
ISO standards like SGML are governed by the
International Organization for Standardization in Geneva, Switzerland,
and voted into or out of existence by representatives from every country's
national standards body.
If you have a query about an international
standard, you should contact your national standards body for the name of your
country's representative on the relevant ISO committee or working group.
You can read more about SGML by clicking on the
Extended Overview of XML
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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet --->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW
--->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF ---> OLAP
---> HBRL
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html
Internet= An international grouping of computer
networks. The Internet started as a relatively tiny United States Department of
Defense (DOD) Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) project in 1969. It
commenced with the networking of four computers. The Internet was not
widely known between 1969 and 1991. Its popularity exploded when HTML, HTTP,
and the World Wide Web made it much easier to use the
Internet. For interactive computing between computers on the Internet,
see Distributed
Network Computing. For web browsers see Web
browsers, Java, GINA,
Gopher,
Mosaic,
and SLIP.
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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet
--->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW
--->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF ---> OLAP
---> HBRL
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html
Hypermedia= Hypertext with added features for
audio and video features. Hypermedia may also entail touch screen or remote
control capabilities such that users can navigate by touching the computer
screen or remote control devices. Eventually hypermedia will entail other
senses such as smell. The key to hypermedia is random access that allows
lightning-fast non linear navigation based upon reader choice or other reader
actions such as responses to questions. The term "multimedia" is not
totally synonymous with "hypermedia," because multimedia may not
entail hypertext authoring. Hypermedia is rooted in the early
"intermedia" 1985-1991 developments for Apple computers by Norman
Meyrowitz from Brown
University. For a
brief history in intermedia, see http://www.iicm.edu/rp_feedback/n46 .
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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet
--->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW
--->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF ---> OLAP
---> HBRL
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html
HTML= An acronym for a HyperText
Markup Language DTD.
HTML is the language used to tag various parts of a Web document so browsing
software will know how to display that document's links, text, graphics and
attached media. Your are viewing an HTML document at this moment. The popular
HTML is a subset of the GML text scripting conceived in1969 IBM researchers
depicting Generalized Markup
Languages (and not-so-coincidentally the lead researchers
were named Goldfarb, Mosher, and Lorie).
Between 1978 and 1987, Dr. Charles F. Goldfarb led the team that developed the
SGML Standard GML that is became International Standard ISO 8879. In
1990, Tim Berners-Lee led a team of particle physicists that invented the World
Wide Web using a very small part of SGML that became the widely known and used
scripting language known as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). SGML is
tremendously powerful but inefficient and complex. HTML is marvelously
simple but not very powerful.
In 1990 there were less than 50 users of HTML. Most of them were
physicists connected in one way or the other to Tim Berners Lee. In 2001,
there were over 300 million users of HTML documents on the Web. The World
Wide Web (WWW) or the Web as it is popularly known commenced with
HTML. It would, however, not have taken off if the HTTP protocol
for reading HTML documents had not been developed for Web browsers.
Credit for this goes to Mosaic
invented in 1992 by a University
of Illinois undergraduate
student named Marc Andreessen. The history of Mosaic is given at http://www.wunderland.com/WTS/Jake/CubeArt/Descriptions/MosaicHistory.html
. Andreessen later founded Netscape and the famous Netscape browser that
led to an explosion of users on the Web.
Continued at Extended Overview of HTML
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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet
--->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW --->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP
---> XML --->RDF ---> OLAP ---> HBRL
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html
CGI,
Java,
JavaScript, DHTML,
ActiveX,
ASP,
and other developments came along to provide dynamic and/or computational
computing to the Web. Actually, Common Gateway Interface (CGI) coding that
allows remote (client) computers to communicate with server (host) computers
commenced in 1969 about the same time as the Internet. Among other
things, CGI was used in MAGI by IBM for television commercials.
Whereas CGI scripts reside on the server (host) computer and process data
(e.g., search requests) from the remote users, other dynamic computing
alternatives can be downloaded into the computers of the remote users such that
the remote machines actually do the computing of such things as mathematical
functions and data processing. JavaScript and DHTML are popular scripting
inserts into HTML that add dynamic computing to "dead" HTML scripts.
The Micrrosoft 2000 upgrades make use of HTML, DHTML, and XML. For
example, it is possible to save an interactive Excel workbook or an Excel chart
as a dynamic D HTML document. For an illustrations
and a video summary, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/dhtml/excel01.htm
See CGI,
Java,
JavaScript, DHTML,
ActiveX,
ASP
Also see Round Tripping.
Also See CFML
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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet
--->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW --->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML
--->RDF ---> OLAP ---> HBRL
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html
XML= eXtensible Markup Language. One of my
favorite XML sites is at http://www.ucc.ie/xml/
XML is the
Extensible Markup Language. It is designed to improve the functionality of the Web
by providing more flexible and adaptable information identification.
It is called
extensible because it is not a fixed format like HTML (a single, predefined
markup language). Instead, XML is actually a `metalanguage' -- a language for
describing other languages -- which lets you design your own customized markup
languages for limitless different types of documents. XML can do this because
it's written in SGML, the international
standard metalanguage for text markup systems (ISO 8879).
XML is intended `to make it easy and straightforward to
use SGML on the Web: easy to define document types, easy to author and manage
SGML-defined documents, and easy to transmit and share them across the Web.'
It defines `an extremely simple dialect of SGML which is
completely described in the XML Specification. The goal is to enable generic
SGML to be served, received, and processed on the Web in the way that is now
possible with HTML.'
`For this reason, XML has been designed for ease of
implementation, and for interoperability with both SGML and HTML'
[Quotes are from the XML specification]. XML is not just for Web pages: it can be used to store
any kind of structured information, and to enclose or encapsulate information
in order to pass it between different computing systems which would otherwise
be unable to communicate.
Continued
at Extended Overview of XML
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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet
--->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW --->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF and OWL ---> OLAP ---> HBRL
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html
Resource Description Framework
(RDF) = a framework for metadata and provides for interoperability for
applications in "machine-understandable" information on the
Web. RDF draws upon several technologies such as XML (Extensible Markup
Language). RDF a recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium
currently headed by Tim Bermers-Lee, the creater of the HTML markup language
and the http protocol that is the basis of the World Wide Web. Over the
long run, Berners-Lee envisions a time when Web sites can be devoid of most
broken links and difficult-to-find information.
The first
step to understanding RDF is to distinguish between data and
metadata. Metadata tags in documents and databases provide
"data about data" like unseen
genes provide data about body parts. One of the drawbacks of HTML is that HTML
tags relate only symbols rather than attributes of what the symbols
depict. For example, HTML tags tell us how to display the word
"eyes" in a web document but there are no tags related to attributes
such as eye color, eye size, vision quality, and susceptibility to various eye
diseases.
For example,
HTML tags relate only to formatting and linking tags on words red and purple
appearing in a document. HTML tags do not disclose that both words depict
colors, because HTML does not associate words with meanings. Metadata, on
the otherhand, attaches meanings to the data by attaching hidden attribute
tags. For example, attached to the word
"petal" might be an invisible tag that records
information that the petal has color having particular coded
numbers for color hue and color saturation
for rose petals.
When any petal's invisible tags are read in a meta search engine,
it would be possible to identify types of roses having a range of hue and
saturation commonalities. Poppies would be excluded because they do
not have rose tags. Red herrings (a term for false
leads in a mystery) would be excluded because they do not have a tagged
attribute for color.
In a sense,
metadata is analogous to genetic code of a living organism.
Attributes in hidden tags become analogous to attributes coded into genes that
determine the color of a flower's petals, degree of resistance to certain
diseases, etc. If we knew the genetic "metadata" code of
all flowering plants, we could quickly isolate the subsets of all known
flowering plants having red petals or resistance to a particular plant
disease. In botony and genetics, the problem lies
is discovering the metadata codes that nature has already programmed into the
genes. In computer documents and databases, the problem is one of
programming in the metadata codes that will conform to a world wide standard. That
standard will most likely be the RDF standard that is currently being developed
by the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) having Tim Berners-Lee as its current Director.
Click Here for an Extended Overview of RDF
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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet
--->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW --->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF ---> OLAP ---> HBRL
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html
OLAP= Online
Analytical Processing database design in which data can be
analyzed from a multidimensional point of view. The term was first
used in 1993 by the father of relational database systems, an IBM mathematician
named E.F. Codd. Both OLAP and its history are briefly explained by
Don Burleson at http://www.oreview.com/9602burl.htm
Dr. E. F. Codd first used the term OLAP in a 1993 white
paper sponsored by Arbor Software. In this same paper, Codd also created 12
rules for OLAP. (See the "OLAP Bibliography" for a summary of OLAP
white papers and magazines articles, including Dr. Codd's white paper.) Despite
Codd's claims of new technology, some offerings such as IRI Express, now called
Oracle Express, date to the early 1970s. (For more information on OLAP and
Oracle Express Objects, please see Dan Bulos' article, "OLAP Comes of Age:
Oracle Express Objects.") There is a popular forum on the Internet that
discusses OLAP issues at http://www.comp.database.olap .
The history
and background of OLAP are also given in the OLAP Council Whitepaper at http://www.olapcouncil.org/research/whtpaply.htm
To read more
about OLAP and view its demos, go to Extended Overview
of OLAP
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STATIC WEB TIMELINE
Hypertext ---> PC ---> GUI,Mouse ---> GML,SGML --->Internet
--->Hypermedia --->HTML,HTTP,WWW --->
DYNAMIC WEB TIMELINE
CGI,Java,JavaScript,DHTML,ActiveX,ASP ---> XML --->RDF ---> OLAP
---> XBRL
SEMANTIC WEB
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Semantic.html
EXTENSIVE COMPUTING
TIMELINE
http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~waynec/history/timeline.html
XBRL=
eXtensible Business Reporting Language. This is an extension of XML metatag
technology key terminologies in business, accounting, and financial
reporting. The major purpose is to allow
users to locate and analyze financial reports or portions of financial reports
in a manner that is far more efficient and effective than using traditional
search engines and EDGAR utilities. I also highly recommend the XBRL history
and news site at XBRL headquarters at http://www.xbrl.org/Home/
Also see http://www.w3.org/
A good site for current XBRL updates ---
http://www.computercpa.com/
February 4, 2010 message from Roger Debreceny
[roger@DEBRECENY.COM]
Many
on the list will know Eric Cohen of PwC, one of the founders of the XBRL
community. There is a recent video interview with Eric on YouTube (http://tinyurl.com/ericcoheninterview)
where he covers recent and coming developments on the SEC's interactive data
mandate.
Roger Debreceny
School of Accountancy
Shidler College of Business
University of Hawai'i at Manoa
2404 Maile Way
Honolulu, HI 96822, USA
Google Voice: +1 (513) 393-9393
roger(at)debreceny.com
rogersd(at)hawaii.edu
www.debreceny.com www.twitter.com/debreceny
Sent from Honolulu, Hawaii, United States
XBRL
for Dummies (book) ---
http://xbrl.squarespace.com/xbrl-for-dummies/
XBRL for
Dummies (book) ---
http://xbrl.squarespace.com/xbrl-for-dummies/
"Avoiding
Common Errors of XBRL Implementation," by Jon Bartley, Y.S. Al Chen, and
Eileen Taylor, Journal of Accountancy, February 2010 ---
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2010/Feb/20092058.htm
Most of the posts I looked at for XBRL are quoted
and linked at:
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm#TimelineXBRL
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm#HTMLextended
Many of these links are dated, but they do
provide a history of XBRL.
Question
Do you want to teach XBRL in some of your courses?
Hi Bill,
I think many financial statement analysis courses around the world now have XBRL
modules. These are not well documented and are probably more focused on how to
use available XBRL-tagged financial statements than on how to do the tagging.
Universities in Singapore and South Korea are probably ahead of the U.S. in
teaching XBRL. The South Korean stock exchange was certainly a wonderful leader
in XBRL adoption which I demo on video ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/
Note that my videos may not work with Windows 7 since Microsoft dropped an audio
codec that Camtasia used before Windows 7,.
Go to YouTube and search on XBRL ---
http://www.youtube.com/
Clinton (Skip) Whte at the University of Delaware has a book on XBRL and teaches
XBRL
http://www.lerner.udel.edu/faculty-staff/faculty/clinton-white
See
The Guide & Workbook for Understanding
XBRL (4th edition), SkipWhite.com, 2010
You might check
Zane Swanson's XBRL Blog ---
http://blog.askaref.com/
I think Zane teaches some modules on XBRL.
Zane Swanson's Website ---
www.askaref.com
Also go to the XBRL International home page at
http://www.xbrl.org/
A helpful list of contacts is provided at
http://www.xbrl.org/StandardsBoard
Some of these people like Ray Lam may be able to suggest some college
instructors to contact.
Some teachers to contact suggested by the SEC are listed at
http://www.sec.gov/news/otherwebcasts/2010/xbrlseminar032310-transcript.pdf
Our XBRL actives on the AECM may provide other suggestions. These include
Neal Hannon, Saeed Roohani, Bill Richardson, Zane Swanson, and Glen Gray. I
would also suggest Roger Debreceny, although Roger has been inactive on the
AECM for a long time. Bill Richardson in Australia is a great foreign
contact and technical expert.
You might check with Rivet Software for a listing of academic users of their
product. My old contact in Rivet was Jaci
Schneider Rivet Software
jschneid@ischool.utexas.edu
I'm not certain that Jaci is still with Rivet.
Bob Jensen's threads on the history of XBRL are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm
From Ernst & Young's Week in
Review, March 3, 2011
For additional information on
the SEC's rule regarding the use of XBRL, we encourage you to monitor
the XBRL page on the
SEC's website (http://xbrl.sec.gov) and to consider our publications
and webcast, which are available on AccountingLink:
March 9, 2011 reply from Glen Gray
Another nice
source of XBRL classroom material is available from Kelly Williams, Rick
Elam, and Mitch Wenger. The contact person is Mitch at
mrwenger@olemiss.edu
They start with
XML exercises and then move on to XBRL. They use XML and XBRL software
from Altova at
www.altova.com who provides free licensing of
their products to educators.
Glen L. Gray, PhD, CPA
Dept. of Accounting & Information Systems
College of Business & Economics
California State University, Northridge
18111 Nordhoff ST
Northridge, CA 91330-8372
818.677.3948
http://www.csun.edu/~vcact00f
Respectfully,
Bob Jensen
October 20, 2011 reply from Tom Hood
Bob,
Thanks for aggregating the
great resources on XBRL.
Here is one more for your
list on XBRL resources:
While our blog CPA Success
is not dedicated to XBRL, Bill Sheridan and I have been writing
extensively about the developments in XBRL and you can get all of our
posts here:
Our most recent post may be
of interest wit the advent of several pieces of federal legislation
moving with XBRL and the interview Bill did with the Chief Counsel to
the House Government Oversight Committee (Chairman Issa), Hudson
Hollister. We think this is significant development in the use and
adoption of XBRL and more specifically XBRL GL (Global Ledger). See Eric
Cohen's resources from his earlier response.
You can view our
presentation on XBRL for non-profits done by our CFO and accounting
intern from Salisbury University and presented at the XBRL US Conference
last month
Tom
Zane Swanson's XBRL Blog ---
http://blog.askaref.com/
Zane Swanson's Website ---
www.askaref.com
October 14, 2011 Message from Zane Swanson
I started a blog
http://blog.askaref.com/ this week to support my
website
www.askaref.com . Four user groups are targeted:
professors, students, statement preparers and analysts.
www.askaref.com is
designed for mobile devices with the intent to help broaden the usage of
XBRL. However, in order to do so I thought it necessary to address
situations why the users will want XBRL information in mobile devices. A
blog is a great way of communicating that type of application solution. For
example, professors may want to give mini case examples to students to
introduce XBRL. Students may want to know the definitions of accounting
terms and reference ASC standards wherever and whenever. And so on.
I will be including scenario situations on the blog using the mobile
device applications with screen shot walkthroughs. I encourage anyone to
visit the blog and post requests for XBRL mobile device needs that can be
used in the classroom, business meeting, financial analyst session, etc.
Zane Swanson
"Flex or Break? Extensions in XBRL Disclosures to the SEC," Roger S.
Debreceny, Stephanie M. Farewell, Maciej Piechocki, Carsten Felden, Andre
Gräning, and Alessandro d'Eri, Accounting Horizons, December 2011,
pp.631-658
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has
adopted the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) in a multi-year
program to enhance the functionality of the Commission's EDGAR database.
Filers tag their financial statements with elements from a taxonomy that
defines the reporting concepts so that the XBRL files can be understood by
information consumers. The U.S. GAAP taxonomy was designed to represent
common reporting practices and support the disclosure requirements of U.S.
GAAP. If taxonomy elements for each disclosure concept are not present, the
filer creates an extension element. Extensions, when used appropriately,
provide decision-relevant information. When used inappropriately,
particularly when a semantically equivalent element already exists in the
foundation taxonomy, extensions add no information content. This research
analyzes extensions made in a subset of XBRL filings made to the SEC between
April 2009 and June 2010. Forty percent of these extensions were
unnecessary, as semantically equivalent elements were already in the U.S.
GAAP taxonomy. Extensions that aggregated or disaggregated existing elements
comprised 21 percent of the extensions. New concepts accounted for 30
percent of the extensions, although many were variants of existing elements,
rather than significantly new concepts.
Continued in article
Probably the most important XBRL and IDEA links
at the moment are as follows:
IDEA (destined
to replace EDGAR) ---
http://www.sec.gov/spotlight/idea.shtml
XBRL Home ---
http://www.xbrl.org/Home/
www.xbrl.org is XBRL International.
www.xbrl.us is the U.S. jurisdiction.
Financial
Reporting Using XBRL (maintained by Charles Hoffman) ---
http://xbrl.squarespace.com/journal/?currentPage=2
XBRL Canada Blog (maintained by Jerry Trites) ---
http://www.zorba.ca/xbrlblog.html
XBRL Networking ---
http://xbrlnetwork.ning.com/
Hitachi
interactive data blog on XBRL ---
http://hitachidatainteractive.com/
TryXBRL ---
http://www.tryxbrl.org/
Bryant
University Resource
Center ---
http://www.xbrl.org/Home/
Rivet
XBRL Markup Software (Proprietary) ---
http://www.rivetsoftware.com/
UB Matrix Enterprise Applications Suite (Proprietary)
---
http://www.ubmatrix.com/products/enterprise_application_suite.htm
"Make Sense of Financial Reporting with XBRL,"
Pennsylvania CPA Journal via SmartPros, April 4, 2009, ---
http://accounting.smartpros.com/x66163.xml
April 14,
2009 reply from Eric E. Cohen/RBJ
[cybercpa@SPRYNET.COM]
A few more
links:
FREE XBRL software for use by academics/consortium:
http://www.fujitsu.com/global/services/software/interstage/xbrltools/
FREE (and royalty free) XBRL Validation engine and (not free) XML/XBRL tooling:
http://www.altova.com
Important webcasts and learning resources for one of
the NON-financial reporting sides of XBRL - the XBRL Global Ledger Framework
(XBRL GL) -
http://gl.iphix.net
XBRL
"Exposure Draft of the IFRS Taxonomy 2012," IAS Plus, January
18, 2012 ---
http://www.ifrs.org/Alerts/XBRL/Exposure+Draft++IFRS+Taxonomy+2012.htm
The
IFRS Foundation has published for public comment an exposure draft of the
International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Taxonomy 2012. The
proposed Taxonomy is a translation of IFRSs and interpretations as issued at
1 January 2012 into
XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language).
The
2012 Taxonomy consolidates all
IFRS Taxonomy interim releases
that were published in 2011.
In
addition, the proposed IFRS Taxonomy 2012 will be the first IFRS Taxonomy to
include common practice extensions to the IFRS XBRL Taxonomy. These
extensions were derived from an analysis of approximately 200 IFRS financial
statements and will diminish the need for preparers to customize the
taxonomy to fit their individual business when filing IFRS compliant
financial statements online.
The
exposure draft IFRS Taxonomy 2012 is open for comment until 17 March 2012.
IFRSs issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) from 1
January 2012 onwards will be published as interim releases to the Taxonomy.
Bob Jensen's threads on XBRL ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm
XBRL in the News
"Staff Observations from the Review of Interactive Data Financial Statements,
SEC, December 13, 2011---
http://www.sec.gov/spotlight/xbrl/staff-review-observations-121311.shtml
. . .
We continue to see the same issues around the
topics of formatting of the financial statements, negative values, use of
unnecessary extensions, and the completeness of the tagging (i.e.,
parentheticals and string values). Filers should continue to pay attention
to these topics when submitting information to the Commission and should
carefully review our previous Staff observations (http://www.sec.gov/spotlight/xbrl/staff-review-observations.shtml).
Continued in article (much more)
Bob Jensen's somewhat neglected threads on OLAP and XBRL ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm
From Deloitte's IAS Plus on June 3, 2011 ---
http://www.iasplus.com/index.htm
3 June 2011: IFRS Foundation publishes proposed IFRS Taxonomy
'common-practice' enhancements
 |
The IFRS Foundation has published
for public comment an exposure draft of the IFRS Taxonomy 2011
interim release: common-practice concepts.
The proposed interim release
contains supplementary tags for the IFRS Taxonomy that reflect
disclosures that are commonly reported by entities in their IFRS
financial statements. The supplementary tags are intended to enhance
the comparability of financial information, and are consistent with
IFRSs and with the
XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting
Language) architecture of the IFRS Taxonomy 2011.
The supplementary tags result
from the IFRS Foundation
previously announced intention to extend
the IFRS Taxonomy. This was partially a response to United
Statements Securities Exchange Commission (SEC)
concerns about the suitability of the existing
IFRS Taxonomy 2011 for US filing purposes, together and the outcomes
of an
pilot XBRL study. The SEC has issued a
'no action' letter in which it states
foreign private issuers that prepare their financial statements in
accordance with IFRS as issued by the IASB are not required to
submit XBRL information to the SEC until it endorses an IFRS
Taxonomy it considers suitable.
The proposals are open for
comment until 2 August 2011.
Click for
IFRS Foundation announcement (link to IASB website). More
information about XBRL is available on our
XBRL page. |
Bob Jensen's sadly neglected threads on XBRL are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm
"Key Insights for Companies With New XBRL Requirements," Ernst &
Young's To the Point, April 21, 2011 ---
Click Here
http://www.ey.com/global/assets.nsf/United%20Accounting/TothePoint_CC0321_XBRL_21April2011/%24file/TothePoint_CC0321_XBRL_21April2011.pdf
Did Microsoft drop its original plans to build XBRL analysis into Excel?
It will be a loss to colleges and students if XBRL financial statements cannot
be analyzed in Excel!
July 7, 2011 message from Zane Swanson
The incorporation of XBRL in software packages is
happening. See 2 copies of web site posts about XBRL and Microsoft’s GP2010.
The XBRL financial statement 1st tagging (with the
exception of the footnote issue) could be a 1 time event (sort of like Y2K).
This also is an issue that faculty only learn because someone asks … it just
may not to be getting that much “air time” in the ais/accounting textbooks
about your question.
Zane Swanson
www.askaref.com
Jensen Comment
The problem is the system and server requirements and cost of GP2010 for
colleges and student licensing fees ---
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/using/gp-system-requirements.aspx
Accounting courses may have to rely on video to teach financial statement
analysis of GP2010 rather than give students hands on learning.
I was hoping after the demo jointly developed years ago by Microsoft, PwC
and NASDAQ that our main teaching software package for analyzing XBRL
financial statements would be Excel. Did Microsoft drop its original plans
to build XBRL analysis into Excel?
Bob Jensen's Old XBRL Video Tutorial called XBRLdemos.wmv
Years ago (I can't remember exactly when) I prepared a XBRL tutorial on how
to use XBRL in financial statement analysis. The tutorial itself was
actually developed by NASDAQ, Microsoft, and PwC in a NMP partnership.
NASDAQ selected 20 companies and marked up their financial statements in
XBRL. Microsoft wrote a fancy Excel program to analyze those financial
statements in Excel. PwC served up the data on the Web. This NMP tutorial
was intended to have a short life since the plan was eventually to use XBRL
directly in Web browsers without having to use Excel. Indeed, PwC no longer
serves up this tutorial. Bob Jensen probably has the only recorded history
of this NMP tutorial on video in the file XBRLdemos.wfm at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/
Did Microsoft drop its original plans to build XBRL analysis into Excel?
It will be a loss to colleges and students if XBRL financial statements
cannot be analyzed in Excel!
Analysis of XBRL Financial Statements Using Excel
July 8, 2011 message from Rick Lillie
Good morning Bob,
During Spring Quarter 2011,
I taught the Seminar in AIS course in our MSA program. Approximately
one-third of the course focused on XBRL. Skip White (University of
Delaware) guided me through design of the XBRL part of the course. I
completed Skip's XBRL Workshop at AAA a couple of years ago. This was my
first attempt at incorporating XBRL into a course design.
We used Skip White's book,
The Accountant's Guide to XBRL, 5th Edition (January 2011) as the
text for the XBRL part of the course. Additionally, we used I-Mextrix
Professional (http://www.edgar-online.com/OnlineProducts/IMetrixProfessional.aspx),
a software tool developed by EDGAR Online.
Through I-Metrix Professional, students got hands-on experience with
accessing and researching company data through a web-hosted service.
Students accessed XBRL information submitted by public companies to
regulators.
An exciting feature of I-Metrix
Professional is an Excel plug-in. The plug-in makes it possible to link
data in I-Metrix Professional to Excel-based models. As data updates in I-Metrix
Professional, Excel linked models also update. Students were able to see
how the process works and understand benefits of interactive data transfer
to enable financial analysis. As I understand it, this interactive process
is similar to what the SEC and other regulators are developing in order to
make their work more efficient.
Students completed three
XBRL-related, team-based projects during the course. Two projects involved
tagging information (i.e., one created a UBL document and the other tagged a
balance sheet). The two projects gave students hands-on experience with
tagging and working with the US GAAP taxonomy.
The third project was
designed as a "treasure hunt for information." Students used web-based
company financial information and I-Metrix Professional to search for
answers to 50 questions. One question involved analysis/comparison of key
metrics for Microsoft and Apple.
Through the three projects,
students journeyed from traditional financial information through the XBRL
conversion process to web-based interactive financial information. They
learned where interactive information comes from and how XBRL financial
information compares to traditional financial information.
I believe the three
projects provided students with an experience similar to that of manually
preparing a tax return before using tax software to prepare a tax return.
The tagging process provided a level of understanding similar to what is
needed in order to properly check a box on a tax software screen.
Students were introduced to
tagging software. However, I wanted them to learn more than just tagging
information. Through the EDGAR Online website, I learned about I-Metrix. I
emailed I-Metrix and asked if they would be willing to allow my students to
use the I-Metrix online service for course projects. A company
representative contacted me. I-Metrix allowed students to use I-Metrix
Professional throughout the XBRL part of the course.
I was satisfied with this
first attempt at incorporating XBRL into a course. Student feedback
regarding the experience was very positive. I am talking with I-Metrix
about how we might work together in future courses.
If anyone has questions,
please email me at
rlillie@csusb.edu. I'll be happy to share my experience with you.
Best wishes,
Rick
Lillie, MAS, Ed.D., CPA
Assistant Professor of Accounting
Coordinator, Master of Science in Accountancy
CSUSB, CBPA, Department of Accounting & Finance
5500 University Parkway, JB-547
San Bernardino, CA. 92407-2397
Email:
rlillie@csusb.edu
Telephone:
(909) 537-5726
Skype (Username): ricklillie
"Third Phase of XBRL Implementation Takes Effect June 15," Journal
of Accountancy, June 7, 2011 ---
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Web/20114207.htm
The third
phase of the SEC’s XBRL implementation program takes effect June 15, with
nearly all public companies using U.S. GAAP now required to submit data in
the fully searchable, digital format.
Over the
past two years, the largest SEC reporting companies have begun submitting
financial information in XBRL. The first phase, which took effect in 2009,
required companies with a worldwide public equity float of $5 billion to
file in XBRL; the second phase, for the next-largest tier of public
companies, took effect in 2010.
XBRL allows
computers to read financial information and use it in analytical tools, much
like barcodes applied to merchandise are used for computerized inventory
controls. In order to create an XBRL submission, filers must select tags
from the U.S. GAAP taxonomy that best represent their financial reporting
concepts.
The
selected tags are then attached to the filer’s financial information by
software programs or third-party service providers to complete the XBRL
submission. XBRL helps to provide investors access to financial information
in a form that’s ready for analysis and can help companies automate checks
on the data quality in their reports. In addition, XBRL has helped companies
enhance and streamline their reporting process. More and more companies are
realizing this benefit and, as a result, there is demand to adopt XBRL
across other reporting streams. Two bills currently are pending in the U.S.
Congress – S. 904 and H.R. 1745, the Jobs, Opportunity, Benefits and
Services Act of 2011 – that designate data reporting standards such as XBRL
be used for the reporting of certain information under the Social Security
Act.
In a
company’s first year of XBRL compliance, each amount in the primary
financial statements is tagged in XBRL, and each note to the financial
statements and certain financial schedules is individually tagged as a block
of text. In the second year of compliance, more detailed information is
required, including: each accounting policy, each table and each amount in
the notes and financial schedules also must be tagged separately in XBRL.
The only
companies the XBRL rules do not apply to are investment companies registered
under the Investment Company Act, business development companies and other
entities that report under the Exchange Act and prepare their financial
statements in accordance with Article 6 of Regulation S-X, according to the
SEC. In addition, since the SEC has not yet approved the taxonomy for
foreign private issuers that report under IFRS, these companies will not be
required to submit XBRL exhibits.
For new
XBRL filers, the rules include two permissible grace periods: a 30-day grace
period for a company’s initial, basic tagged submission and, in the
following year, a 30-day grace period for a company’s initial, more detailed
tagged submission. The rules also include modified liability provisions for
the first two years a company is required to provide XBRL submissions. The
modified liability provisions are eliminated on Oct. 31, 2014.
For more
information on XBRL filing, see the
final
rule on the SEC’s website, visit
xbrl.org/us
or see the
EDGAR
Filer Manual.
For additional resources, visit the
AICPA’s XBRL resource center.
This site includes links to additional articles, webcasts, events and other
helpful information.
Mach 7, 2011 message from Jim Richards
I can
update you on Just Systems application. It is called xfy Report and is part
of MashIQ.
It is not
moved across to MetaMoji – an offshoot of Just Systems with the same owners
– and it is now free. However you do have to register to get a key and to
download it. To the best of my knowledge this is not a 30-day trial; it is
the full version with no expiry date.
There are a
couple of online Flash tutorials and the latest produced shows a very simple
example of how to do a comparison between two companies.
The web
site is
http://www.mashiq.com/community/.
Jim
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim
Richards
Phone
(Home): (08) 9249 6874
Phone
(Mobile): 0419-172-100
Steve Hornik suggested Dipity ---
http://www.dipity.com/timeline/SEC-XBRL/#timeline
From Ernst & Young's Week in Review, March 3,
2011
For additional information on the
SEC's rule regarding the use of XBRL, we encourage you to monitor the XBRL
page on the
SEC's
website (http://xbrl.sec.gov) and to consider our publications and
webcast, which are available on AccountingLink:
March 9, 2011 reply from Glen Gray
Another nice source of XBRL classroom material is
available from Kelly Williams, Rick Elam, and Mitch Wenger. The contact
person is Mitch at
mrwenger@olemiss.edu
They start with XML exercises and then move on to
XBRL. They use XML and XBRL software from Altova at
www.altova.com who
provides free licensing of their products to educators.
Glen L. Gray, PhD, CPA
Dept. of Accounting & Information Systems
College of Business & Economics
California State University, Northridge
18111 Nordhoff ST
Northridge, CA 91330-8372
818.677.3948
http://www.csun.edu/~vcact00f
Question
What is your accounting program doing to upgrade faculty and the curriculum on
the rapidly changing times for XBRL?
"XBRL US Expands Education Program to Meet Growing Public Company Filer
Demand," XBRL US, February 11, 2011 ---
http://xbrl.us/News/Pages/20110211.aspx
XBRL US, the national consortium for XML standards
in business reporting, has increased the number and coverage of educational
programs offered in 2011 to meet rising demand from an estimated 8,000
public companies that will be filing XBRL-formatted financials in 2011 for
the first time. A new monthly webinar 'Detailed Footnote Tagging in XBRL', a
60-minute program to help companies that are getting started on the second
phase of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rollout, has been
added. XBRL US SEC Filer Training Workshops have been expanded to include a
90-minute online preparatory session in addition to the full-day in-person
training, and will now be offered eight times in 2011. Upcoming programs
include:
Implementing XBRL for SEC Reporting, 2/16,
3pm ET – Free introductory program. No CPE available.
Covers the essentials of implementing XBRL for SEC reporting including
organizing data – mapping, extending, tagging, creating the XBRL
document; quality control and validation; updates on taxonomy
development and findings from the XBRL data to date. Learn more and
register at
http://xbrl.us/webinars.
Detailed Footnote Tagging in XBRL, 2/23, 3pm
ET, 60 minutes. Earn 1 CPE.
Provides the skills to begin mapping and tagging detailed footnotes
including handling tables and establishing the correct process. Covers
review of SEC requirements and approach to timing for footnote tagging;
differences between year one and year two tagging of footnotes; examples
of simple and more complex detailed footnote tagging. Learn more and
register at
http://xbrl.us/DFTwebinar.
In-Person Training: SEC Filer Training
Workshop, 3/4 online session and 3/10 in-person training in New York, NY.
Earn up to 10 CPE.
This interactive 2-part workshop explains how to use the US GAAP
Taxonomy, convert primary financial statements and block tag footnotes
in XBRL format. Learn more and register at
http://xbrl.us/training.
Who should attend: CFOs, Controllers,
Assistant Controllers, External Reporting Managers, and finance staff
members who have direct responsibility for implementing SEC XBRL filing
requirements.
About XBRL US
XBRL US is the non-profit consortium for XML business reporting
standards in the U.S. and it represents the business information supply
chain. Its mission is to support the implementation of XML business
reporting standards through the development of taxonomies for use by U.S.
public and private sectors, with a goal of interoperability between sectors,
and by promoting XBRL adoption through marketplace collaboration. XBRL US
has developed taxonomies for U.S. GAAP, credit rating and mutual fund
reporting under contract with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
XBRL US Labs, the research and development arm of XBRL US, leverages the
XBRL US platform, methodologies and people to address the quality of
taxonomies and the harmonization of XBRL with other XML standards. For more
information, go to xbrl.us.
Mike Willis himself called my attention to the excellent XBRL update article
below that may be helpful to share with students and clients.
One thing I've noticed when comparing accounting professor conference
programs with finance professor programs is that finance professors tend to
ignore XBRL happenings relative to their accounting professor counterparts, and
even among accounting professors interest in XBRL updates is highly variable. We
all need to be more up to date on XBRL happenings!
And we really need to get more finance professors involved in XBRL. The
following article by Mike would be excellent to share with your finance
colleagues along with a warning that they should not be ignoring what is
happening on the XBRL front. It's really not hard to explain why!
I also think that, as Chairman of XBRL International, Mike should make a
concerted effort to have this organization involve finance professors in a
variety of ways. Firstly, Mike should reach out to leading finance and
investment textbook authors with an appeal to add chapters on XBRL and to
provide these authors with videos and cases that are now available from XBRL
International and its associates. Secondly, I think Mike should lean on his best
XBRL experts to propose joint research projects with professors of finance and
investments. Thirdly I think accounting professors themselves should suggest
possible joint research and teaching projects with finance and investments
professors. Where have finance professors been in the past 10 years of XBRL?
Both accounting and finance professors should make more of an effort to bring
alumni up to speed on XBRL happenings. Efforts should be made to make CPE
presentations about XBRL.
"Standardize to Streamline - The Implications of Supply Chain Standards
for Accountants," by Mike Willis, Chesapeake System Solutions,
October 15, 2010 ---
http://www.chessys.com/news_display.php?id=39
Question
What are the four main take aways from Mike's article?
"The XBRL Mandate: Opportunities, And Threats, For Non-Big 4 Auditors,"
by Daniel Roberts via Francine McKenna, re:TheAuditors, January 2, 2010
---
http://retheauditors.com/2011/01/02/the-xbrl-mandate-opportunities-and-threats-for-non-big-4-auditors/
This is a guest post by Daniel Roberts, the past
Chairman of the XBRL US Steering Committee, a voting member of the XBRL
International Assurance working group, and a member of numerous XBRL working
groups.
Daniel has more than 25 years of professional
services experience helping clients with engagements in the areas of
innovation, sustainability, internal audit, risk management, corporate
governance, and implementation of technology to support these initiatives.
Daniel participates actively in discussions on CSR & sustainability
solutions for organizations. He wrote to the SEC to advocate for more
effective disclosure and mandated improvements in MD&A reporting of climate
related issues and risks. He believes CSR & sustainability are business
issues and must be approached as such.
Daniel has been involved at all levels in the
XBRL world since the beginning of 2003, included serving as Chairman of the
XBRL US Steering Committee. He also chaired the XBRL International
Accounting Supply Chain group. He is a voting member of the XBRL
International Assurance Working Group, and was instrumental in supporting
the SEC’s decision to mandate the use of XBRL for filings.
Daniel comes from a USAID family, was born in
Libya, and has lived in Tanzania, Tunisia, Thailand, Syria, Greece, New
Zealand, the United States, and most recently France and the UK. In 1985, he
earned his Bachelor of Science in Behavior and Social Science at the
University of Maryland.
Continued in article
This is neat: Dynamic Multivariate Data Visualization and Filtering
World Bank Data Visualizer ---
http://devdata.worldbank.org/DataVisualizer/
Click on the arrow buttons to change variable selections
Check and uncheck nation selections
Remember to click the Play button when you change the
variables and country selections
I found it fascinating to compare economic variables for the BRIC nations
compared with the U.S.
You can choose from a variety of economic variates
|
Brazil, Russia,
India and China, (the BRICs)
sometimes lumped together as BRIC to
represent fast-growing developing economies, are selling off their
U.S. Treasury Bond holdings. Russia announced earlier this month it
will sell U.S. Treasury Bonds, while China and Brazil have announced
plans to cut the amount of U.S. Treasury Bonds in their foreign
currency reserves and buy bonds issued by the International Monetary
Fund instead. The BRICs are also soliciting public support for a
"super currency" capable of replacing what they see as the ailing
U.S. dollar. The four countries account for 22 percent of the global
economy, and their defection could deal a severe blow to the
greenback. If the BRICs sell their U.S. Treasury Bond holdings, the
price will drop and yields rise, and that could prompt the central
banks of other countries to start selling their holdings to avoid
losses too. A sell-off on a grand scale could trigger a collapse in
the value of the dollar, ending the appeal of both dollars and bonds
as safe-haven assets. The moves are a challenge to the power of the
dollar in international financial markets. Goldman Sachs economist
Alberto Ramos in an interview with Bloomberg News on Thursday said
the decision by the BRICs to buy IMF bonds should not be seen simply
as a desire to diversify their foreign currency portfolios but as a
show of muscle.
"BRICs Launch Assault on Dollar's Global Status," The Chosun IIbo,
June 14, 2009 ---
http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/06/12/2009061200855.html
|
This might be a great way to compare selected XBRL subsets of corporate
financial statements ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm#TimelineXBRL
Multivariate data visualization has always fascinated me and has been a
subject of my research and scholarship over the years ---
Visualization of Multivariate Data (including faces) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm
October 22, 2010 message from
Jaci Schneider Rivet Software
jschneid@ischool.utexas.edu
Hi Dr. Jensen,
Hope your semester is going great. My name is Jaci Schneider, and I am an
intern for Rivet Software, the leading XBRL compliance and financial
reporting provider in the world.
Based on your experience in accounting and technology, we are hoping to get
some advice from you about a new project. I promise to be brief.
As you know, the SEC mandated in 2008 that public companies use XBRL in
their filing reports. Since we know that fitting new regulatory mandates
into your syllabus isn?t always the most pleasant task, we?re developing a
program to provide professors of accounting and finance with our newest
software program, Crossfire, along with classroom tools to get your whole
class on board with XBRL in an interactive and practical way. My assigned
project is to learn as much I can from professors in your field so that we
better understand how to expand our program.
Our XBRL software, Crossfire, provides easy-to-use tools and support for
XBRL document creation, review and filing, and we are creating a network for
students to explore and begin to understand all the uses of XBRL through our
program. They will use real-world data and have the opportunity to discuss
their questions and problems in an online environment, created just for
students and their professors.
Our team is now working with students and professors to decide on the
structure of the program to make sure it meets the needs of its users, and
we would love your input. Here are the questions. Feel free to write as
little or as much as you like.
1) Does your department use a specific XBRL curriculum or do you teach XBRL
in any of your classes?
2) Where do you get your information about XBRL? Conferences, publications,
other professors?
3) If we were to provide software and a workbook for you to use in class,
what would make you more likely to include it in your syllabus? Cost,
support, ease of use, etc.?
Knowing more about your needs and preferences will help us roll out the
program efficiently and provide the needed support and coaching right from
the start. So, let us know your questions and concerns, and we?ll be sure to
take them into consideration as we put the final touches on the program?s
roll-out.
Thanks for reading this email and please provide us with feedback, even if
it?s just to say that this program sounds interesting or that it doesn?t fit
your needs. We?ll respect your thoughts and promise not to pass on your
information to anyone else.
Best regards,
Jaci Schneider
Rivet Software
jschneid@ischool.utexas.edu
Probably the most important XBRL and IDEA links
at the moment are as follows:
IDEA (destined
to replace EDGAR) --- http://www.sec.gov/spotlight/idea.shtml
XBRL Home --- http://www.xbrl.org/Home/
www.xbrl.org is XBRL International. www.xbrl.us is the U.S. jurisdiction.
Financial
Reporting Using XBRL (maintained by Charles Hoffman) --- http://xbrl.squarespace.com/journal/?currentPage=2
XBRL Canada Blog (maintained by Jerry Trites) --- http://www.zorba.ca/xbrlblog.html
XBRL Networking --- http://xbrlnetwork.ning.com/
Hitachi
interactive data blog on XBRL --- http://hitachidatainteractive.com/
TryXBRL --- http://www.tryxbrl.org/
Bryant
University Resource
Center --- http://www.xbrl.org/Home/
Rivet
XBRL Markup Software (Proprietary) --- http://www.rivetsoftware.com/
UB Matrix Enterprise Applications Suite (Proprietary)
--- http://www.ubmatrix.com/products/enterprise_application_suite.htm
"Make Sense of Financial Reporting with XBRL,"
Pennsylvania CPA Journal via SmartPros, April 4, 2009, ---
http://accounting.smartpros.com/x66163.xml
April 14,
2009 reply from Eric E. Cohen/RBJ [cybercpa@SPRYNET.COM]
A few more
links:
FREE XBRL software for use by academics/consortium: http://www.fujitsu.com/global/services/software/interstage/xbrltools/
FREE (and royalty free) XBRL Validation engine and (not free) XML/XBRL tooling:
http://www.altova.com
Important webcasts and learning resources for one of
the NON-financial reporting sides of XBRL - the XBRL Global Ledger Framework
(XBRL GL) - http://gl.iphix.net
October 20, 2011 reply from Tom Hood
Bob,
Thanks for aggregating the
great resources on XBRL.
Here is one more for your
list on XBRL resources:
While our blog CPA Success
is not dedicated to XBRL, Bill Sheridan and I have been writing
extensively about the developments in XBRL and you can get all of our
posts here:
Our most recent post may be
of interest wit the advent of several pieces of federal legislation
moving with XBRL and the interview Bill did with the Chief Counsel to
the House Government Oversight Committee (Chairman Issa), Hudson
Hollister. We think this is significant development in the use and
adoption of XBRL and more specifically XBRL GL (Global Ledger). See Eric
Cohen's resources from his earlier response.
You can view our
presentation on XBRL for non-profits done by our CFO and accounting
intern from Salisbury University and presented at the XBRL US Conference
last month
Tom
Zane Swanson's XBRL Blog ---
http://blog.askaref.com/
Zane Swanson's Website ---
www.askaref.com
October 14, 2011 Message from Zane Swanson
I started a blog
http://blog.askaref.com/ this week to support my
website
www.askaref.com . Four user groups are targeted:
professors, students, statement preparers and analysts.
www.askaref.com is
designed for mobile devices with the intent to help broaden the usage of
XBRL. However, in order to do so I thought it necessary to address
situations why the users will want XBRL information in mobile devices. A
blog is a great way of communicating that type of application solution. For
example, professors may want to give mini case examples to students to
introduce XBRL. Students may want to know the definitions of accounting
terms and reference ASC standards wherever and whenever. And so on.
I will be including scenario situations on the blog using the mobile
device applications with screen shot walkthroughs. I encourage anyone to
visit the blog and post requests for XBRL mobile device needs that can be
used in the classroom, business meeting, financial analyst session, etc.
Zane Swanson
"What is the XBRL Cloud Report?" Rivet Blog, No Date ---
http://blog.rivetsoftware.com/2010/03/03/xbrl-cloud-report/
The Cloud Report is a validation
tool created by a third party to assist with the XBRL
filing process. In fact, some printers use this tool as
their validation tool for their XBRL clients. Rivet
currently uses its own proprietary tool to perform this
function and does not rely on a third party for its
validation. In addition, Rivet’s validation rules are
based on official SEC guidelines, as are documented in
the EDGAR manual. We work very closely with the SEC to
ensure our interpretation of the SEC guidelines adhere
to the EDGAR manual appropriately.
It is important to note that
all filings submitted to the SEC pass EDGAR validations
otherwise they would not have been accepted by the SEC.
The Cloud is a third party’s interpretation of the SEC
guidelines as are all the validation tools on the
market. It is not an official validation tool of the
SEC. When the Cloud was first created, there were
concerns that the terminology used, specifically
error, was interpreted as not being accepted by the
SEC for filing. This was not the case. The Cloud’s term
error includes both SEC Rule violations and SEC
Warnings. For example, the Cloud lists Error LC3. This
Cloud error is actually an SEC warning related
to the fact that no numbers can be listed in the element
name label. Yet the SEC Rule requires that the element
name label exactly match the financial statement label
including the numbers. The filer must meet the SEC Rule
as they will not be able to submit through Edgar without
following it. Yet because the filer is following the SEC
Rule, they will get a SEC warning because the label
includes numbers and therefore, an error LC3 in
the Cloud.
The Cloud has always meant to
be used as a collaborative tool to help vendors and
filers interpret the SEC EDGAR Rules. If you have ever
looked at these rules, you will agree that it is very
difficult for a non-technical person to interpret. We
have worked with the Cloud’s founder to offer guidance
on how we interpret the rules and he has provided us
with valuable feedback in our interpretation. This has
led to conversations with the SEC and has helped
everyone in interpreting the SEC Rules more accurately.
In summary,
- The Cloud Report is not an
SEC endorsed tool. It is a third party
interpretation of the guidelines.
- All filings run through
the Cloud Report were successfully filed with the
SEC. The Cloud errors do not mean SEC errors.
- The Cloud Report was meant
to be used as a validation tool, not to evaluate
XBRL vendors.
The Cloud should not be used as
a tool to rank XBRL vendors for several reasons:
- First, all filers have
passed the SEC Rules during the filing process
otherwise they would not have been able to file. The
errors listed on the Cloud Report are SEC
warnings.
- Second, XBRL vendors
cannot necessarily control what the filer decides to
do with regard to the SEC warnings. For example, if
Rivet is providing our full service solution to a
client, we change the terse element label to reflect
the element name so that there is no SEC warning
produced. If our client has taken the filing process
in house, we cannot control if they make this change
or not. Either way is accepted by the SEC, but
without updating the terse element label, a warning
is produced and on the Cloud, an error is
produced. Since this has no bearing on their filing,
they usually pass on performing this step.
- Third, the Cloud was meant
to be a collaborative tool to be used in the filing
process to ensure accuracy. All XBRL vendors have
Cloud errors. The Cloud is an
interpretation of the SEC guidelines and is not an
official SEC validation tool.
If you find that this tactic is
being used by a XBRL vendor vying for your business, you
may want to ask the following:
- Please show me your
percentage of overall errors compared to the other
XBRL vendors for all filings to date. All
vendors have some Cloud errors because Cloud errors
are the same as SEC warnings and are accepted by the
SEC for filing.
- Drilldown into a
particular filing and have the XBRL vendor show you
the actual Cloud error and have them
explain in detail how this error impacted
the filing.
Please let me know if I can be
of any assistance during your evaluation phase. I would
be more than happy to work with you in evaluating your
XBRL needs.
|
"IFRS XBRL taxonomy for
2010 is available," IAS Plus, May 1, 2010 ---
http://www.iasplus.com/index.htm
The
IASC Foundation has released the IFRS XBRL Taxonomy 2010. The 2010 taxonomy
is consistent with IFRSs and with the IFRS for Small and Medium-sized
Entities (SMEs), and for the first time both have been integrated into a
single taxonomy. The IFRS Taxonomy 2010 is a translation of IFRSs as issued
at 1 January 2010 into XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language). XBRL
facilitates simpler and faster electronic filing of financial information
and comparison of IFRS financial data by companies, regulators, investors,
analysts, and other users of financial information.
Click Here to access the IFRS Taxonomy files and accompanying materials
on the Foundation's website.
http://www.iasb.org/XBRL/IFRS+Taxonomy/IFRS+Taxonomy+2010/IFRS+Taxonomy+2010.htm
"23 Reasons Why Companies Choose
Integrated XBRL," CFO.com, February 2010 ---
http://www.cfo.com/whitepapers/index.cfm/displaywhitepaper/14479744
With an Integrated XBRL Solution, the XBRL tagging
process is embedded within the external reporting process. As such, XBRL
tags can be applied and validated at any time within the external reporting
process ý avoiding a "mad rush" to apply the XBRL tags just prior to filing
with the SEC. Integrating XBRL into the external reporting process makes the
tagging, validation and creation of XBRL documents dramatically more
efficient and less error prone.
August 20, 2009 message from Roger Debreceny
[roger@DEBRECENY.COM]
Stephanie Farewell at the University of Arkansas at
Little Rock, Skip White at the University of Delaware and Ernie Capozzoli at
Kennesaw State University and myself are collaborating to bring eleven
cases, class exercises and other learning resources on XBRL to the
accounting and auditing curricula. These learning resources can be used in
undergraduate introductory and intermediate accounting, auditing,
information systems auditing and accounting information systems as well as
graduate auditing and accounting information systems courses. The cases and
class exercises are designed for both US and international adoption.
Much of this material was developed for the recent
AAA XBRL bootcamp held prior to the AAA Annual Meeting. Some materials have
been developed jointly, some individually,
We seek faculty who will be interested in adopting
the cases and learning resources, particularly for the coming semester. We
need input and feedback so that the cases can be further improved and
enhanced. A description of each case or learning resource, together with
contact information is at tinyurl.com/xbrlcases.
Aloha,
Roger D
August 19, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen
In the meantime, I have two older videos that might be
useful.
My Korean Stock Exchange video on the use of XBRL
(2005) ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/XBRLdemos2005.wmv
Note that the Korean Stock Exchange illustration is in the latter part of
the clip.
You can read about KOSDAQ and XBRL at
http://www.xbrl.org/nmpxbrl.aspx?id=92
My video on a defunct demo that PwC, Microsoft, and
NASDAQ cooperated in developing in 2001.
It illustrates the use of Excel software for XBRL applications (note that
the demo comes late in the video clip) ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/XBRLdemos.wmv
PS: This video may be the only public record of this original XBRL demo.
From that standpoint it is useful for history buffs.
Bob Jensen
500
Largest Corporations Registered by the SEC Must Markup Financial Statements
with XBRL Tags
December 17,
2008 message from Neal Hannon [nhannon@GMAIL.COM]
Some of the largest U.S. companies
will have to file their financial reports next year using technology designed
to make it easier for investors to read and analyze the data under a rule
adopted by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. The SEC voted
4-1 to require 500 of the largest public companies to begin filing their
financial reports using the technology known as XBRL, or extensible business
reporting language, by mid-2009. The SEC voted, also by 4-1, in favor of
requiring mutual funds to file their risk and return information using XBRL to
make it easier for investors to analyze the performance, risk and fees of
thousands of funds. Mutual funds will be required to file the data using the
electronic tags by Jan. 1, 2011."
Pop the champange and throw
the confetti! XBRL is finally mandatory for SEC filings starting with quarters
and years ending after June 15, 2009. Although the final rule details will not
be official until published in the Federal Register, we did learn today that
XBRL filings will be required and that liability on the XBRL will be phased in
over a two year period. In other words, the XBRL filing of G.E. for the second
quarter of 2011, two years after the first filing in 2009, will carry "as
filed" status. The one discenting vote, from commissioner Aguilar, was an
objection to the push back on liability. Commissioner Aguilar wanted full
liability on XBRL filings as of June 15, 2009.
"TryXBRL.org
Launched," SmartPros, March 28, 2008 --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x61325.xml
A new Web site,
TryXBRL.com, allows free access to view and analyze complete XBRL-tagged
financial statements for over 12,000 publicly traded corporations.
After registering on
the portal, TryXBRL.org, corporate finance professionals can educate
themselves about the XBRL tagging process and view their own historical
financial information in XBRL format. Investors and analysts can experience how
XBRL reduces the complexity and costs associated with analyzing performance
data.
The site is a collaboration
of EDGAR Online Inc., a business and financial information provider, and
R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company, a print services company.
"Our goal has been to
deliver solutions that do not require technical expertise or excessive time
commitments by corporations wishing to take part in the SEC Voluntary Program
or to familiarize themselves with XBRL," said Philip Moyer, President and
CEO of EDGAR Online, Inc. "We are providing open access to our vast XBRL
database through a solution that enables corporations to begin filing XBRL
content with the SEC in as little as a few hours."
RR Donnelley and EDGAR
Online have collaborated to deliver XBRL filing solutions to corporations since
2005.
Once again
that site is at http://www.tryxbrl.org/
April 1, 2008
reply from Amy Dunbar [Amy.Dunbar@BUSINESS.UCONN.EDU]
I just tried the site. Wow.
Very powerful. I confirmed the numbers for one company to make sure I knew what
I was seeing. It pulled the 2007 four quarter numbers for my selected company
and then the 4th qtr numbers for the three peer companies and my selected
company. I'm not sure where that 12,000 publicly traded corporations is coming
from. They must mean filings, not corporations. I found the following table for
March/June 2005 in Appendix F. http://www.sec.gov/info/smallbus/acspc/acspc-finalreport.pdf If you include pink sheet companies, the data for which
are not publicly available (at least to my knowledge), the total climbs to
13,094. Does anyone have a source for more recent numbers of publicly traded
corporations?
Listing Venue Number of
Companies Listed NYSE 2,553 AMEX 747 NASDAQ National Market 2,580 NASDAQ
Capital Market1 593 OTC Bulletin Board 2,955 Total 9,428
The table (I only show part
of it) has the following footnote explanation: Source: Public data includes
13,094 companies from the Center for Research in Securities Prices at the
University of Chicago for NYSE and AMEX companies as of March 31, 2005 and from
NASDAQ for NASDAQ and OTC Bulletin Board companies and from Datastream Advance
for Pink Sheets companies as of June 10, 2005. This table was compiled by
members of the staff of the SEC's Office of Economic Analysis and does not
necessarily reflect the views of the Commission, the Commissioners, or other
members of the Commission staff.
Amy
Dunbar UConn
Transparency,
Regulation, and XBRL
"Transparency
Is More Powerful Than Regulation FDR sided with advisers who argued for
disclosure," by L. Gordon Crovitz, The Wall Street Journal, March
30, 2009 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123837223623167841.html
In 1933, newly elected president Franklin
D. Roosevelt had to make a tough choice in dealing with the aftermath of the
stock-market crash that wiped out much of the equity in American companies.
Leading members of FDR's brain trust wanted federal regulators to get the power
to make key decisions over markets, such as which companies deserved to be
publicly traded. Today, many of President Barack Obama's advisers want
unprecedented authority to oversee details of the credit markets, and how banks
lend.
FDR decided instead to side with advisers
who argued for disclosure as the key operating principle of our markets.
Helping markets function better, they reasoned, was a sounder safeguard than
trusting regulators to decide.
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis had
made the point that "sunlight is the best disinfectant," and the
Securities Act of 1933 mandated the information that public companies would
have to share. One indicator that disclosure was more important than regulatory
power is that it wasn't until the following year that the Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC) was created.
What worked to restore confidence in the
equity markets then can help to restore confidence in the debt markets now:
more disclosure, aimed at making the terms of debt such as mortgages more
transparent. Unlike the case of stocks, under current law no one in the chain
of making, insuring and rating debt is required to disclose full terms to
regulators or to the market. Instead, debt markets function based on best
estimates, with mathematical models determining probabilities of cash flows and
defaults.
Ever since the models failed due to an
unpredicted bubble, the market has been paralyzed with uncertainty. There is
still a wide gap between what banks think their bad debt might be worth and
what the Treasury or private investors are willing to pay.
It didn't get much attention, but earlier
this month Congress got a lesson on the potential of better disclosure.
"Today's financial crisis was driven in part by a lack of accurate, easily
usable information to give investors what they need to make informed,
responsible decisions," testified Mark Bolgiano, chief executive of a
nonprofit technology and accounting consortium called XBRL US. "The
value of toxic asset-backed securities remains a mystery because information on
the underlying loans and ongoing viability of those loans and the securities
themselves was not collected consistently and even if it had been, it would not
have been in a usable, portable form."
XBRL sounds complicated, but eXtensible
Business Reporting Language is simply a new technology language that allows
data to be easily extracted, searched and analyzed. XBRL is already being used
for some equity disclosures, tagging financial information into a globally
consistent, computer-readable format.
Philip Moyer, who runs the Edgar Online
service that distributes SEC data, studied more than 500 mortgage-backed
securities priced between 2006 and mid-2008. He found there were only 600
relevant data points needed to assess the risk of a mortgage, which is many
fewer than the tens of thousands of factors used to report on stocks.
"This crisis has proven that lack of transparency ultimately destroys a
market," Mr. Moyers said.
The good news is that with the innovation
of XBRL, tracking debt instruments is no longer a technological challenge.
Instead, it's a political challenge.
Regulators would need to define new
disclosures robust enough that data can be collected and compared, even as
credit instruments continue to be rolled into complex securities and their
derivatives. Other factors would include tracking the institutions holding
various positions and how much leverage is involved. Put another way: If bar
codes can track down bad peanuts on store shelves, shouldn't we be able to use
technology to track details of mortgages and other debt instruments?
Paul Wilkinson, a lawyer who worked with
former SEC Chairman Chris Cox to support the development of XBRL, has set the
goal of making debt markets as regularized as titling property or registering
shares. "Thanks to XBRL, there is a means to achieve the goal of moving
from pseudocapitalism based on speculation to real capitalism based on facts,
and a world where willing buyers and sellers can make markets based on those
facts," he said.
This is an encouraging vision during
these anxious times. But even with the country's long tradition of relying on
disclosure, the discussion in Washington
has focused almost exclusively on new powers for regulatory agencies.
FDR was no Milton Friedman, and neither
was Brandeis, but they grasped what we seem to be forgetting, which is that
markets are too complex for even the most powerful regulators to dictate.
Better transparency is the surest way to make markets more efficient and less
volatile. Market wisdom results when more people access better information.
The global credit crisis was made
possible by real-time markets powered by new technologies that enabled massive
global trading and the creation of opaque securities. It would be fitting now
to use another new technology, in the form of XBRL, to make the credit markets
simpler, more transparent and better insulated against bubbles.
Bob
Jensen's threads on XBRL are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm
August 19,
2008 message from Roger Debreceny
The SEC
was much quicker than I had expected in getting up the archive of the webcast
on IDEA .. it is now available at http://www.connectlive.com/events/secnews/ .. see Chairman Cox
as the highest paid computer tutor in the USA!
The new system is called IDEA, short for Interactive Data
Electronic Applications. Based on a completely new architecture being built
from the ground up, it will at first supplement and then eventually replace the
EDGAR system. The decision to replace EDGAR marks the SEC’s transition from
collecting forms and documents to making the information itself freely
available to investors to give them better and more up-to-date financial
disclosure in a form they can readily use.
SEC Announces Successor to EDGAR Database, 2008-179 --- http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2008/2008-179.htm
Also see http://www.accountingweb.com/blogs/fei_financial_reporting_blog.html
XBRL Video
"'XBRL
in Plain English' on YouTube," SmartPros, May 23, 2008 --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x61948.xml
YouTube Link
--- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F1E-2LkhW8
June 3, 2008
reply from James Richards [jdrozwa@IINET.NET.AU]
Hi,
Charlie Hoffman has another
on his blog – http://xbrl.squarespace.com/journal/?currentPage=2 .
Cheers.
Jim Richards
Bob
Jensen's older videos on XBRL --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/
"SEC
unveils 'Financial Explorer' investor tool using XBRL," AccountingWeb,
February 20, 2008 ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=104665
Securities and Exchange
Commission Chairman Christopher Cox has announced the launch of the
"Financial Explorer" on the SEC Web site to help investors quickly
and easily analyze the financial results of public companies. Financial
Explorer paints the picture of corporate financial performance with diagrams
and charts, using financial information provided to the SEC as
"interactive data" in eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL).
At the click of a mouse,
Financial Explorer lets investors automatically generate financial ratios,
graphs, and charts
depicting important information from financial statements. Information
including earnings, expenses, cash flows, assets, and liabilities can be
analyzed and compared across competing public companies. The software takes the
work out of manipulating the data by entirely eliminating tasks such as copying
and pasting rows of revenues and expenses into a spreadsheet. That frees
investors to focus on their investments' financial results through visual
representations that make the numbers easier to understand. Investors can use
Financial Explorer by visiting www.sec.gov/xbrl .
"XBRL is fast becoming
the universal language for the exchange of business information and it is the
future of financial reporting," said Cox. "With Financial Explorer or
another XBRL viewer, investors will be able to quickly make sense of financial
statements. In the near future, potentially millions of people will be able to
analyze and compare financial statements and make better-informed investment
decisions. That's a big benefit to ordinary investors."
David Blaszkowsky, Director
of the SEC's Office of Interactive Disclosure, encouraged investors to try out
the new software. "Financial Explorer will help investors analyze
investment choices much quicker. I encourage both companies and investors to
visit the SEC Web site, try the software, and get a first-hand glimpse of the
future of financial analysis, especially for the retail investor."
Financial Explorer is open
source, meaning that its source code is free to the public, and technology and
financial experts can update and enhance the software. As interactive data
becomes more commonplace, investors, analysts, and others working in the
financial industry may develop hundreds of Web-based applications that help
investors garner insights about financial results through creative ways of
analyzing and presenting the information.
Continued in article
Jensen
Comment
The Financial Explorer link --- http://209.234.225.154/viewer/home/
Note the "Take a Tour" option.
Bob Jensen's
videos (created before the SEC created the Financial Explorer) are at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/
When I can find some time, I'll create a Financial Explorer update video.
XBRL Blogs
and Networks
Financial
Reporting Using XBRL (maintained by Charles Hoffman) --- http://xbrl.squarespace.com/journal/?currentPage=2
XBRL Canada
Blog (maintained by Jerry Trites) --- http://www.zorba.ca/xbrlblog.html
XBRL Networking
--- http://xbrlnetwork.ning.com/
December 8,
2007 message from Saeed Roohani [sroohani@COX.NET]
1-We now have: XBRL for
Dummies – A Reference for the Rest of Us, ISBN: 978-0-470-22874-6 Published by
Wiley. This is a quick course on XBRL without getting too technical.
2-US GAAP Taxonomy project
is completed for public review http://xbrl.us/USGAAPreview/Pages/default.aspx
Academics with any interest in financial accounting, auditing, or XBRL are
strongly encouraged to go to the web site and evaluate this product. The use of
archival data about public companies will be impacted by this US. GAAP
taxonomy, most likely we all have a dog in this fight. Although a lot of tools
and guidance provided by the website, you might need additional skills/training
for this evaluation. Charlie Hoffman charles.hoffman@ubmatrix.com , also father
of XBRL, has offered to provide such training for academics and I will be happy
to coordinate it; please let me know.
Saeed Roohani
Bryant University
January 14, 2008
message from Dennis Beresford [dberesfo@TERRY.UGA.EDU]
Here's a link to a very interesting recent speech by SEC Chairman
Chris Cox - http://www.sec.gov/news/speech/2008/spch011008cc.htm.
Among other things he says: "So to sum up, this
is what you need to know from the SEC's standpoint: IFRS is coming. XBRL is
coming. And mutual recognition is coming."
From this and many other recent activities at the SEC, FASB, Congress and
elsewhere, it appears that both IFRS and XBRL are nearer than some might have
imagined. And educators should be taking these developments into
consideration now, or may be left behind.
Denny Beresford
SEC releases new
XBRL analytical tool
XBRL US, Inc., the nonprofit consortium dedicated
to the adoption of XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language), a technology
standard for the reporting of financial and business information in the U.S.,
strongly supports the Securities and Exchange Commission's launch of an online,
interactive tool that allows investors to instantly extract, compare, and
analyze executive compensation for the largest 500 companies in the United
States . . . This tool relies on the power of XBRL for the compensation data
and underscores the flexibility and usefulness of "tagged" data. The
SEC announcement comes a year after it adopted stricter rules on executive pay
disclosure that now require more detail in annual shareholder proxy statements.
The new application uses XBRL data created by the SEC and allows investors and
researchers to immediately create reports showing salary, bonus, stock awards,
option awards, non-equity incentive plan compensation, change in pension value,
and other compensation figures for executives at the top 500 companies.
"SEC releases new XBRL analytical tool," AccountingWeb,
January 10, 2008 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/item/104442
Bob Jensen's video
demos of XBRL are at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/
XBRL Video
"'XBRL
in Plain English' on YouTube," SmartPros, May 23, 2008 --- http://accounting.smartpros.com/x61948.xml
Link
forwarded by Roger Debreceny on April 9, 2007 on posting by XBRL leader
Charlie Hoffman ---
http://www.actgov.org/actiac/documents/pdfs/XBRLWhitePaper.pdf
XBRL: You Can't Ignore It Anymore
The SEC has poured $54 million into a new
interactive reporting tool to replace the retiring Edgar. Now the Big Four say
it is time to scrap quarterly reports in favor of real-time (read: daily)
financial reporting. If the phrase "XBRL" put you to sleep in the
past, it's time to wake up. And as momentum for improving the format of data reporting
builds, the push for enriched information content is moving along, too. Indeed,
the big audit firms are calling on corporations to report scads of
non-financial data to buttress the financials.
"XBRL: You Can't Ignore It Anymore," CFO Magazine Special
Report, Various Dates in 2006 --- http://www.cfo.com/guides/guide.cfm/8310234?f=members_121406&x=1
THE INTERACTIVE DATA
MOVEMENT
Q&A: Microsoft's Laux
on Finance Reports The software giant's director of technical accounting and
reporting thinks that once CFOs clear the Sarbox 404 hurdle, they'll show more
enthusiasm for XBRL and the reporting of non-financial data.
Will the AICPA Take Over
XBRL Standards? Companies could be filing XBRL-ready financial statements as
soon as 2008. But some observers worry that the definitions corporations will
have to follow will be written almost entirely by accountants.
The Good and Bad About
XBRL's Future The setup costs for XBRL is relatively low, but without the
proper user tools, regulatory filings can turn into "gibberish."
XBRL Will Keep Investors
Wanting More The programming language will pique, not satiate, investors'
appetite for more information.
SEC Hires a Company It's
Investigating Hired on Monday to work on the commission's new filing system,
BearingPoint earlier reported that it would file its financials late—and that
it was under investigation by the SEC.
10-Ks, 8-Ks a Thing of the
Past? In announcing that the SEC's XBRL project will be done within a year,
Chairman Christopher Cox said investors will be able to assemble their own
financial data, rather than rely on current regulatory documents.
XBR-What? Even as SEC
chairman Cox champions "interactive data," few CFOs seem impressed.
Is that because too few of the benefits accrue to them?
Another XBRL Nudge from the
SEC The SEC issues a formal request to add an XBRL analysis tool to its online
Edgar system. The move increases pressure on companies to voluntarily adopt the
technology.
Will XBRL Improve Analyst
Coverage? If more companies filed financial documents using XBRL, analysts
would be able to spend less time on data collection and would be likely to
''expand buy- and sell-side coverage,'' according to one panelist at an SEC
roundtable.
GE, Pepsi Join SEC Data
Pilot More companies agree to provide the SEC with financial data in XBRL
format, a program strongly backed by Chairman Christopher Cox.
Ready or Not, XBRL Is
Coming The SEC and FASB are gearing up for XBRL, suggesting it's only a matter
of time before its use becomes mandatory.
Tagged, But Not It Yet A
small group of companies has signed up with the SEC to test Internet-tagging of
financial data. Will this latest effort finally launch the long-predicted XBRL
revolution?
XBRL: From Tags to Riches?
The SEC is offering limited liability relief, the ability to file using Form
8-K, the freedom to tag just a portion of data, and other incentives to
encourage companies to file financial data using XBRL.
What XBRL Means For You
XBRL promises to bring a little context to numbers. And yes, that's a good
thing.
THE SKINNY ON XBRL
For a more laid-back
approach to our coverage of interactive data, check out the blog posts below,
or click to go to the main blog page.
XBRL? No Thanks, Chaps
The Real-Time Reporting
Conundrum
IDA? EVA? XENA?
Cue EDGAR's Fat Lady
Tiny XBRL
XBRL: Is it a TWR of BABL?
A Question of Terms
Bob Jensen's threads on XBRL --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm
The XBRL U.S.
consortium completed its U.S.
GAAP taxonomy, a key step necessary for the full implementation
of interactive data technology for financial reporting. The Financial
Accounting Foundation and critical stakeholder groups including analysts,
public company preparers and software providers are reviewing the draft
taxonomy before it is released for public review, said the SEC, which has
contributed funding to the project. For more information, visit www.xbrl.org/us/taxonomies or www.sec.gov/spotlight/xbrl.htm. --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/nov2007/highlights.htm
From Smart Stops on the Web, Journal of
Accountancy, October 2007 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/oct2007/smart_stops.htm
FEDERAL FOCUS
www.sec.gov/spotlight.shtml
Visit this site for a rundown of hot topics on the SEC’s radar—including
internal control reporting divisions, XBRL initiatives and IFRS. You can access
transcripts and webcasts of roundtable discussions on mutual recognition, the
proxy process and hedge funds, as well as information on the SEC’s new Advisory
Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting (see “Seeking Clarity,” page 30). You also can revisit older topics
such as auditor independence and corporate officer statements that have been
retired to the “Archive” page (www.sec.gov/spotlight/spotarchive.htm).
Bob Jensen's
threads on XBRL are embedded in the file at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm
Bob Jensen's
XBRL video tutorials are at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/
XBRL and
the SEC in December 2007
"SEC
releases taxonomy for GAAP financial reports," AccountingWeb,
December 6, 2007 ---
The Securities and Exchange
Commission's Office of Interactive Disclosure is heralding the release for
public comment of computer labels that will help companies make their financial
disclosures more useful for investors. The labels are already supported by at
least nine software companies whose products will enable public companies to
make quarterly and annual financial reports available in interactive data form
instead of text form. Interactive data concepts allow companies to present
their financial information in an electronic format that investors, analysts,
and others can use to more easily locate and analyze desired information. The
interactive data is encoded in a format known as eXtensible Business Reporting
Language (XBRL), which allows companies to map their financial information to a
set of computer codes that represent U.S. GAAP accounting standards. This
standardized list of codes used to represent U.S. GAAP is known as a taxonomy.
The SEC's Office of
Interactive Disclosure, created in October to lead the transformation to
interactive financial reporting by public companies, encourages broad public
review of the taxonomy and the corresponding instructions about how to create a
financial statement in XBRL.
"We've been saying
that interactive data is on the brink of transforming the review and analysis
of financial information for the benefit of investors and public companies
alike," said David Blaszkowsky, Director of the SEC's Office of
Interactive Disclosure. "With the release of this taxonomy today,
investors can now begin to visually see the progress being made, and so will
every public company that uses GAAP. Interactive data is no longer merely an
up-and-comer, it's becoming reality. We encourage both users and preparers of
financial information to participate in this public review so we can advance
interactive data to be recognized as, not only amazing technology, but a
superior way of doing business and making faster, cheaper, and more informed
investment decisions."
The SEC launched its
interactive data filing initiative in April 2005 to make filings more
accessible and understandable to the common investor. A test group of public
companies have since been voluntarily submitting XBRL documents as exhibits to
periodic reports and Investment Company Act filings. Through feedback from
these voluntary XBRL filers and a global collaboration of technologists, the
XBRL US project team created tags for a financial reporting taxonomy that
covers every U.S. GAAP accounting concept — virtually every fact that a company
might want to report on its financial statements and in its footnotes.
The SEC will use the
initial financial statements prepared using the new taxonomy to help it update
its electronic filing system to seamlessly accept and render the filings.
"We have gone a long
way since we started this in 2005. The voluntary pilot program started out when
there was nothing like the fully-fledged taxonomies that we are going to
release to the public on Wednesday," SEC Chairman Christopher Cox told a
media briefing in Vancouver
earlier this week.
"That's really what
got us from a slow jog to right now, a full gallop," he said following a
presentation to the 16th annual XBRL International Conference.
A free taxonomy review tool
is publicly available on the Internet at usgaap.xbrl.us along with other information,
including the nine software companies whose products are compatible with the
new draft taxonomy. The public comment period ends on April 5, 2008.
Once the testing period
ends, regulators expect to be ready to propose that U.S. companies begin filing
financial reports in XBRL format.
"A lot is going to
depend on the acceptance phase that we are now entering for the U.S. GAAP
taxonomies," Cox told Reuters news.
"If that all works the
way it's supposed to then we'll have some opportunities to introduce it more
broadly. If there are suggestions from people who are using it that are going
to take time to meet, then that will influence our thinking."
Some U.S. companies, including General Electric,
Microsoft, and United Technologies Corp., are already using XBRL voluntarily,
and international acceptance has been strong, with several countries, including
Japan, China, and the Netherlands, embracing the format.
Informative podcasts
available
XBRL US, Inc., the
nonprofit consortium dedicated to the adoption of XBRL, initiated its first two
podcasts featuring important stakeholders. The programs featured Jeff
Diermeier, CFA, president and CEO of CFA Institute, and Barry Melancon,
president and CEO of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
Podcasts can be downloaded to a handheld device or simply listened to online at
http://xbrl.us.
The series of 10-minute
interviews will feature industry experts presenting their view on interactive
data or covering a specific topic related to XBRL. The series is designed to
address key stakeholder viewpoints but will also feature timely and sometimes
controversial topics related to the use of interactive data in different
reporting situations.
Diermeier kicked off the
webcast series, reflecting the fact that Wall Street is the ultimate
stakeholder in the XBRL movement. CFA Institute, a global professional
association that is well known for its administration of the Chartered
Financial Analyst(R) (CFA(R)) and Certificate in Investment Performance Measurement
(CIPM) curriculum and exam programs, recently became a member of XBRL US and has been
conducting a roadshow series to educate its members about interactive data. It
has also surveyed its members about their awareness
Continued in article
December 8,
2007 message from Roger Debreceny [Roger@DEBRECENY.COM]
XBRL International has held
its semi-annual meeting in Vancouver this week. Some key elements of the
meeting were:
·
As many on AECM will
know, the new (see what $5m will buy) US GAAP XBRL taxonomy is on its way. It
has moved from internal review within the XBRL community to public review. See
www.xbrl.us and
http://usgaap.xbrl.us/ for the draft taxonomy. You can sign up to review the
taxonomy, code financials etc. The quality of the taxonomy is central to the
adoption of XBRL by the SEC.
·
An interesting set of
ideas from Peter Wallison of the AEI on the role of XBRL in capital markets
presented as a keynote at the meeting is at http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.27191/pub_detail.asp
·
There are two new MP3
podcasts on XBRL at www.xbrl.us .. Mark Bolgiano,
CEO of XBRL US, interviews AICPA President Barry Melancon and CFA Institute
President Jeff Diermeier.
Later, all presentations
will be available at http://archive.xbrl.org/. Presentations from
earlier XBRL International conferences are available on the archive.
Roger
..................................................................
Roger Debreceny
Shidler College
Distinguished Professor of Accounting
School of Accountancy
Shidler College of Business
University of Hawai`i at
Mānoa
2404 Maile Way, Honolulu,
HI 96822, USA
roger@debreceny.com
rogersd@hawaii.edu
Office: +1 808 956 8545
Cell: +1 808 393 1352
www.debreceny.com
Bob
Jensen's video demos of XBRL are at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/
"Interactive
Data - Building XBRL into Accounting Information Systems," by Jerry
Trites --- http://www.cica.ca/index.cfm/ci_id/27401/la_id/1.htm
Question
How useful is XBRL for mutual funds?
From The
Wall Street Journal Accounting Weekly Review on August 31, 2007
|
Language
of Love for Mutual Funds: XBRL
by Daisy
Maxey
The Wall Street Journal
Aug 28, 2007
Page: C11
Click here to view the full article
on WSJ.com ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118825363850710278.html?mod=djem_jiewr_ac
TOPICS: Accounting, Accounting
Information Systems, Financial Statement Analysis, Securities and Exchange
Commission
SUMMARY: Maxey describes the
usefulness of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) for comparing
mutual funds' reported results. "In April 2005, public companies began
voluntarily submitting interactive-data documents as exhibits to reports and
other filings with the SEC. The mutual-fund submissions are an extension of
that program. "
CLASSROOM
APPLICATION: Reference in this review to a white paper from the SEC on XBRL
and the SEC's involvement with this system allows for discussion of the
system's use for all financial statements submitted to the SEC. Obtain access
to the white paper at http://www.edgar-online.com/?contactID=55822111
QUESTIONS:
1.) What is XBRL?
2.) How is the Securities and Exchange Commission introducing use of this
system by financial statement filers and, now, mutual funds? Hint: in
addition to the description in the article, you may find this information by
searching the SEC's web site (www.sec.gov) for XBRL. Provide a proper
citation of documents you use for this purpose. One document you may find is
the transcript of remarks at the 15th International XBRL Conference by
Commissioner Kathleen L. Casey in Munich,
Germany on
June 4, 2007 available at
http://www.sec.gov/news/speech/2007/spch060407klc.htm
3.) Why do you think companies volunteer to begin reporting under the XBRL
system? Why do you think the SEC is beginning this system with voluntary
reporting in this format?
4.) The SEC web site refers to an article in The Accounting Review
investigating financial statement users' behaviors in accessing financial
statement information. The location of the paper on the SEC's web site is
http://www.sec.gov/news/press/4-515/4515-6art.pdf Read the summary of the
paper. Draw an analogy from these research results to the impact of XBRL for
mutual fund investors.
SMALL GROUP
ASSIGNMENT:
Follow the directions in the article to access the SEC web site tool for
accessing interactive data. Select two companies in the same industry and
prepare a comparison report of income statement data. Download the data to
Excel and calculate a common-sized income statement (showing the top line of
the income statement, sales, as 100% and all other elements as percentages of
sales). Assess differences between the two companies. Identify other sources
of data for financial statement analysis (for example, Yahoo! Finance).
Compare and contrast the use of XBRL with other available sources of data.
What is the advantage of having interactive data available in the financial
statement filings themselves as opposed to the use of a system accessing
electronic data presented in a traditional format? What are potential
disadvantages - particularly with the current state of the system in relying
on companies voluntarily providing optional information in the XBRL tagged
format?
Reviewed By: Judy
Beckman, University
of Rhode Island
|
"Language
of Love for Mutual Funds: XBRL Computer Code Simplifies Investors' Search for
Data On Returns, Costs, Risks," by Daisy Maxey, The Wall Street Journal,
August 28, 2007; Page C11 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118825363850710278.html?mod=djem_jiewr_ac
Mutual-fund investors whose
eyes glaze over when they read the term "XBRL" may want to keep
reading: The computer language may soon make it easier to compare funds'
strategies, costs, risks and returns.
Mutual funds last week
began providing information related to their risks and returns to the
Securities and Exchange Commission using XBRL, a software language used to
label filings with standard codes. These codes make it simple to pull specific
bits of data out of long, hard-to-search filings. (XBRL stands for eXtensible
Business Reporting Language.)
Longer term, the effort may
spur online-data providers to develop tools for investors to easily analyze and
compare mutual funds, resulting in a more competitive investment-management
industry.
Years in the Making
In April 2005, public
companies began voluntarily submitting interactive-data documents as exhibits
to reports and other filings with the SEC. The mutual-fund submissions are an
extension of that program.
Among the first mutual
funds to participate in the program are Allegiant Advantage Fund, American
Funds' Europacific Growth Fund, Mulhenkamp Fund and Vanguard 500 Index Fund.
The coding pulls out data
on funds' investment objectives, strategies, risks, costs and historical
performance. "That's the kernel which we suspect most investors are
interested in," said John Heine, a spokesman for the SEC.
To get an idea of what may
soon be available, investors can see submissions from publicly traded companies
through an interactive viewer available through the SEC's public Web site
(www.sec.gov). Click on "interactive data," choose "Interactive
Financial Report Viewer," and then go to "XBRL Web application."
More Tweaks to Come
Risk and return information
on mutual funds can't be seen through the viewer, and there's no way to easily
compare funds yet, but the SEC is considering integrating the fund information
into a viewer.
"Millions of retail
investors rely on mutual funds to finance their retirement, health care,
education and other financial needs, so shopping for the right fund shouldn't
be a needlessly time-consuming and frustrating exercise," SEC Chairman
Christopher Cox said in a news release. With the new tools, "investors
will be able to comparison-shop among thousands of funds at the click of a
mouse. This is a potentially rich new source of investing information for retail
investors who need it most."
Jack Kunkle, an analyst
with Muhlenkamp & Co. in Wexford,
Pa., said he envisions many uses
for the newly coded data. For example, the firm's customer-service
representatives now research other mutual funds for their shareholders.
"Instead of having to
go through big, long documents, this can easily compare one fund to
another," he said.
Among the nation's biggest
mutual-fund companies, Vanguard, of Valley Forge, Pa., could make additional
submissions for funds as the SEC pilot program continues, but the firm has no
plans to do so now, said spokeswoman Amy Chain.
"We think it's a
powerful tool for mutual-fund investors. More than 80% of our client
interactions take place online," she said.
Fidelity Investments is
actively looking at the XBRL voluntary program, but Sophie Launay, a
spokeswoman for the Boston-based fund company, said "it's too early to
discuss specific plans."
Bob
Jensen's video tutorials on XBRL are at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/
Question
Is a major overhaul of accounting standards on the way?
Hint
There may no longer be the tried and untrusted earnings per share number to
report!
Comment
It would be interesting to see a documentation of the academic research, if
any, that the FASB relied upon to commence this blockbuster initiative. I
recommend that some astute researcher commence to probe into the thinking
behind this proposal.
"Profit
as We Know It Could Be Lost With New Accounting Statements," by David
Reilly, The Wall Street Journal, May 12, 2007; Page A1 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117893520139500814.html?mod=DAT
Pretty soon the bottom line
may not be, well, the bottom line.
In coming months,
accounting-rule makers are planning to unveil a draft plan to rework financial
statements, the bedrock data that millions of investors use every day when
deciding whether to buy or sell stocks, bonds and other financial instruments.
One possible result: the elimination of what today is known as net income or
net profit, the bottom-line figure showing what is left after expenses have
been met and taxes paid.
It is the item many
investors look to as a key gauge of corporate performance and one measure used
to determine executive compensation. In its place, investors might find a
number of profit figures that correspond to different corporate activities such
as business operations, financing and investing.
Another possible radical
change in the works: assets and liabilities may no longer be separate
categories on the balance sheet, or fall to the left and right side in the classic
format taught in introductory accounting classes.
ACCOUNTING OVERHAUL
Get a glimpse of what new
financial statements could look like, according to an early draft recently
provided by the Financial Accounting Standards Board to one of its advisory
groups.The overhaul could mark one of the most drastic changes to accounting
and financial reporting since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the
19th century, when companies began publishing financial information as they
sought outside capital. The move is being undertaken by accounting-rule makers
in the U.S.
and internationally, and ultimately could affect companies and investors around
the world.
The project is aimed at
providing investors with more telling information and has come about as rule
makers work to one day come up with a common, global set of accounting
standards. If adopted, the changes will likely force every accounting textbook
to be rewritten and anyone who uses accounting -- from clerks to chief
executives -- to relearn how to compile and analyze information that shows what
is happening in a business.
This is likely to come as a
shock, even if many investors and executives acknowledge that net income has
flaws. "If there was no bottom line, I'd want to have a sense of what
other indicators I ought to be looking at to get a sense of the comprehensive
health of the company," says Katrina Presti, a part-time independent
health-care contractor and stay-at-home mom who is part of a 12-woman
investment club in Pueblo, Colo. "Net income might be a false indicator,
but what would I look at if it goes away?"
The effort to redo
financial statements reflects changes in who uses them and for what purposes.
Financial statements were originally crafted with bankers and lenders in mind.
Their biggest question: Is the business solvent and what's left if it fails?
Stock investors care more about a business's current and future profits, so the
net-income line takes on added significance for them.
Indeed, that single profit
number, particularly when it is divided by the number of shares outstanding,
provides the most popular measure of a company's valuation: the
price-to-earnings ratio. A company that trades at $10 a share, and which has
net profit of $1 a share, has a P/E of 10.
But giving that much power
to one number has long been a recipe for fraud and stock-market excesses. Many
major accounting scandals earlier this decade centered on manipulation of net
income. The stock-market bubble of the 1990s was largely based on investors'
assumption that net profit for stocks would grow rapidly for years to come. And
the game of beating a quarterly earnings number became a distraction or worse
for companies' managers and investors. Obviously it isn't known whether the new
format would cut down on attempts to game the numbers, but companies would have
to give a more detailed breakdown of what is going on.
The goal of the
accounting-rule makers is to better reflect how businesses are actually run and
divert attention from the one number. "I know the world likes single
bottom-line numbers and all of that, but complicated businesses are hard to
translate into just one number," says Robert Herz, chairman of the
Financial Accounting Standards Board, the U.S. rule-making body that is one
of several groups working on the changes.
At the same time, public
companies today are more global than local, and as likely to be involved in
services or lines of business that involve intellectual property such as
software rather than the plants and equipment that defined the manufacturing
age. "The income statement today looks a lot like it did when I started
out in this profession," says William Parrett, the retiring CEO of
accounting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, who started as a junior accountant in
1967. "But the kind of information that goes into it is completely
different."
Along the way, figures such
as net income have become muddied. That is in part because more and more of the
items used to calculate net profit are based on management estimates, such as
the value of items that don't trade in active markets and the direction of
interest rates. Also, over the years rule makers agreed to corporate demands to
account for some things, such as day-to-day changes in the value of pension
plans or financial instruments used to protect against changes in interest
rates, in ways that keep them from causing swings in net income.
Rule makers hope
reformatting financial statements will address some of these issues, while
giving investors more information about what is happening in different parts of
a business to better assess its value. The project is being managed jointly by
the FASB in the U.S. and the
London-based International Accounting Standards Board, and involves accounting
bodies in Japan, other parts
of Asia and individual European nations.
The entire process of
adopting the revised approach could take a few years to play out, so much could
yet change. Plus, once rule makers adopt the changes, they would have to be
ratified by regulatory authorities, such as the Securities and Exchange
Commission in the U.S. and
the European Commission in Europe, before
public companies would be required to follow them.
As a first step, rule
makers expect later this year to publish a document outlining their preliminary
views on what new form financial statements might take. But already they have
given hints of what's in store. In March, the FASB provided draft, new
financial statements at the end of a 32-page handout for members of an advisory
group. (See an example.)
Although likely to change,
this preview showed an income statement that has separate segments for the
company's operating business, its financing activities, investing activities
and tax payments. Each area has an income subtotal for that particular segment.
There is also a "total
comprehensive income" category that is wider ranging than net profit as it
is known today, and so wouldn't be directly comparable. That is because this
total would likely include gains and losses now kept in other parts of the
financial statements. These include some currency fluctuations and changes in
the value of financial instruments used to hedge against other items.
Comprehensive income could
also eventually include short-term changes in the value of corporate pension
plans, which currently are smoothed out over a number of years. As a result,
comprehensive income could be a lot more difficult to predict and could be
volatile from quarter to quarter or year to year.
As for the balance sheet,
the new version would group assets and liabilities together according to
similar categories of operating, investing and financing activities, although
it does provide a section for shareholders equity. Currently, a balance sheet
is broken down between assets and liabilities, rather than by operating categories.
Such drastic change isn't
likely to happen without a fight. Efforts to bring now-excluded figures into
the income statement could prompt battles with companies that fear their profit
will be subject to big swings. Companies may also balk at the expense involved.
"The cost of this
change could be monumental," says Gary John Previts, an accounting
professor at Case Western Reserve University
in Cleveland.
"All the textbooks are going to have to change, every contract and every
bank arrangement will have to change." Investors in Europe and Asia, meanwhile, have opposed the idea of dropping net
profit as it appears today, David Tweedie, the IASB's chairman, said in an
interview earlier this year.
Analysts in the London office of UBS AG
recently published a report arguing this very point -- that even if net income
is a "simplistic measure," that doesn't mean it isn't a valid
"starting point in valuation" and that "its widespread use is
justification enough for its retention."
Such opposition doesn't surprise
many accounting experts. Net income is "the basis for bonuses and
judgments about what a company's stock is worth," says Stephen A. Zeff, an
accounting professor at Rice
University. "I just
don't know what the markets would do if companies stopped reporting a bottom
line somewhere." In the U.S.,
professional investors and analysts have taken a more nuanced view, perhaps
because the manipulation of numbers was more pronounced in U.S. markets.
That said, net profit has
been around for some time. The income statement in use today, along with the
balance sheet, generally dates to the 1940s when the SEC laid out regulations
on financial disclosure. But many companies have included net profit in one
form or another since the 1800s.
In its fourth annual report,
General Electric Co. provided investors with a consolidated balance sheet and
consolidated profit-and-loss account for the year ended Jan. 31, 1896. The
company, whose board at the time included Thomas Edison, generated "profit
of the year" -- what today would be called net income or net profit -- of
$1,388,967.46.
For the moment, net profit
will probably exist in some form, although its days are likely numbered.
"We've decided in the interim to keep a net-income subtotal, but that's
all up for discussion," the FASB's Mr. Herz says.
May 14, 2007
reply from Paul Polinski [paulp_is@YAHOO.COM]
Bob:
If XBRL is on its way to becoming mandatory in a couple of years, as Chairman
Cox seems to indicate, this will not really matter.
As you likely know, one of
the most important features of XBRL data is that it is
presentation-independent. Although filed XBRL statements will specify a default
rendering (display) format and set of measurements (which the FASB may mandate
through this project), the analysis tools already under development will allow
users to easily override this default. They may design whatever format, and
specify whatever measures, they wish to perform their analyses. They could even
choose to reformat the data into "legacy" financial statements.
The biggest impact the
FASB's project may ultimately have is as a normative statement about how data
across financial statements should be used.
May 15, 2007
reply from Zane Swanson [zswanson@EMPORIA.EDU]
Analysts currently reformat
financial statement information to identify value investment or arbitrage
opportunities. One advantage of XBRL is that it potentially can improve the
comparability between alternative company investments because everyone will use
the same common data dictionary (taxonomy). Another advantage is the
minimization (elimination) of rekeying data to do analyses which frees up
additional time to actually do evaluations. I would suggest the development of
presentation formats should focus on improving the ability of uninformed
investors to understand their investments ( a la the AICPA effort to improve
financial literacy) because then the market will broaden, become more efficient
and hopefully make better allocation of scare resources.
Zane Swanson
May 15, 2007
reply from James Richards [jdrozwa@IINET.NET.AU]
Possibly another advantage
of XBRL is that you can create any presentation format you want by creating
your own presentation and/or calculation linkbase(s). You do not have to use
the relationships provided by the taxonomy author; you can create one for your
own needs. What you cannot change is the underlying schema file where the concepts
are defined.
Jim Richards
December 10,
2006 message from Saeed Roohani [sroohani@COX.NET]
In his speech at the 14th
XBRL International Conference, Chairman Cox talked about Global XBRL Academic
Competition:
See below and the link for
your information.
And I should point out that
not only can XBRL help reduce errors in the first place, but it can also help
detect them after they occur. Here's an interesting example of how that might
work. Just this year, a group of students at Emporia
State University
in Kansas won the Sixth Global XBRL Academic
Competition at Bryant
University by creating a
software application that continuously identifies tagged transactions which
should come to the attention of internal or external auditors. It's not hard to
imagine that in the very near future, companies of all kinds will be able to
rely on interactive data to flag anomalous data and fix accounting errors in
real time
Speech by SEC Chairman: The
Promise of Interactive Data by Chairman Christopher Cox U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission 14th
International XBRL Conference Philadelphia, Pennsylvania December 5,
2006
http://www.sec.gov/news/speech/2006/spch120506cc.htm
Saeed Roohani
Bryant University
"AICPA
Brings XBRL Closer to Reporting Improvement Effort," AccountingWeb,
June 21, 2006 --- http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=102277
The American Institute of
Certified Public Accountants’ (AICPA) merger of the management of its XBRL
development and Enhanced Business Reporting (EBR) initiatives may be more than
just a reshuffling of operational hierarchy. It has set the table for two
formerly separate efforts to help each other accomplish their intertwined
missions, which both involve bringing business reporting into the 21st Century.
The AICPA has moved the
XBRL and EBR Consortium management efforts under a single assurance services
management team, and appointed Amy Pawlicki, an assurance and advisory services
director and its liaison to the EBR Consortium, to oversee the coordination of
EBR and XBRL activities, and be the management team’s liaison to the
institute’s Assurance Services Executive Committee.
The AICPA and several
organizations whose operations are connected to financial reporting in 2004
founded an EBR Consortium to promote a business reporting model that combines a
company’s current and past performance with an understanding of its future
prospects versus the current reporting model'sreliance mainly on past
performance records.
XBRL is a technology in
which key elements of electronically-formatted business reports are tagged so
that they can be immediately accessed and collated to meet the needs of the
reports’ preparers and end users. The AICPA in 1998 organized a consortium of
technology vendors and businesses that deal with financial reports to launch development
of XBRL, and the effort has since blossomed into a worldwide movement with
separate XBRL development consortia in the United States and more than a dozen
other countries, and an XBRL International group.
The combined management
appears to be a natural since the EBR Consortium and the XBRL development
effort share some of the same founding members, the AICPA, Microsoft Corp. and
PriceWaterhouse Coopers. And the business reporting company, PR Newswire is
among those active in both efforts.
Moreover, the merger
reflects the profession’s growing awareness that XBRL is needed to advance
EBR’s ultimate mission of greater transparency in financial reports, and to
meet current business realities. An Assurance Services Executive Committee
draft white paper on reporting and assurance notes the current reporting model
was adopted during the Industrial Age and is not designed “to complement the
vast array of new business models that companies now follow in the
Information/Knowledge Age.”
It further notes the
current model “is limited by its focus on static, paper-based, summary-level
reports, whereas technology has evolved” far beyond that. The paper makes a
strong case that XBRL is in fact meeting all the demands of the new economy,
such as making information available on demand, real-time and enabling users to
“drill-down into underlying concepts, data and relevant resources.”
The research paper predicts
that XBRL will someday become as ubiquitous in business reporting as bar coding
is in product distribution. Separately, Peter J. Wallison, resident fellow in
the American Enterprise Institute, writing in the "The New Republic"
in December 2004, said the capabilities of XBRL can indeed help the EBR
Consortium accomplish its mission.
Pawlicki says the combined
management will make it easier for team members to recognize areas where XBRL
and EBR overlap and move forward with development for both efforts. “We don’t
need to keep two separate teams up to date and the one team can see the whole landscape
and better respond.” she says.
Most immediately, Pawlicki
says the combination could assist in the development of XBRL taxonomies
(tagging systems) for Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) reporting
and for key annual report parts such as Management’s Discussion and Analysis
(MD&A).
Pawlicki will represent the
AICPA at the XBRL consortium in the United States, and Arleen Thomas,
senior vice president of member competency and development, will represent it
at the XBRL International group. They take over for the AICPA’s former XBRL
point person, Louis Matherne, who left the institute in April for the
Information Systems Audit and Control Association
Pawlicki is also charged
with making individual CPAs more aware of XBRL and how they can put it to use
in their practices and for their clients. “That is one of the most important
things I will do,” she says.
Still new to the position,
she says a formal communications strategy for XBRL has not yet been developed.
But she added that she expects XBRL to be featured more prominently at AICPA
member meetings. Improvement there should not be hard, since the technology has
been low-profile or invisible at most institute conferences and at state
society conferences.
However, XBRL took center
stage at the institute’s National Conference on Current SEC and PCAOB
Developments late last year when Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
Chairman Christopher Cox said that the technology “will shape the future” of
business reporting. and "will do for business reporting what bar coding
did for product distribution.”
XBRL has also been the
subject of banking industry conferences since last October when regulators, led
by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., began requiring banks to use XBRL in
filing their periodic call reports into a national repository.
Still, market acceptance of
XBRL is limited, which could be another issue for the AICPA’s EBR-XBRL
management team. As of late May the SEC reported that just 20 companies had
joined a voluntary XBRL reporting program it launched in January, and its first
such voluntary program, begun in April, 2005, attracted only nine takers.
"SEC
Chief Suggests Blogs for Disclosures," PhysOrg, November 7,
2006 --- http://physorg.com/news82126753.html
In the first official communication posted to a blog by a
chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Christopher Cox said he was
intrigued by the idea of letting companies use Weblogs to disseminate important
corporate information.
Cox has invited the chief executive of Sun Microsystems
Inc., avid blogger Jonathan Schwartz, to talk to the agency about the idea of
allowing companies to disclose significant financial information through blogs.
The SEC chief showed interest in Schwartz's recent request
for blogs to be used as a way to expand investors' access to information. His
response to Schwartz, posted on Sun's Web site on Friday, caught the attention
of the online world and even sparked envy from a Wall Street Journal blog.
A growing number of major companies now publish corporate
blogs or online diaries. The SEC position is that current regulations do allow
for blogs, like news releases, regulatory filings, Web sites and Webcasts, to
be used to disseminate companies' financial information, provided a particular
blog reaches a broad audience.
A 2000 rule known as Regulation FD, for Fair Disclosure,
ended a long-standing practice by forbidding companies from providing
significant information to stock analysts and other Wall Street insiders ahead
of the public. The rule requires the method or methods used to be
"reasonably designed to provide broad, non-exclusionary distribution of
the information to the public."
"The (SEC) encourages the use of Web sites as a
source of information to the market and investors, and we welcome your offer to
further discuss with us your views in this area," Cox told Schwartz in his
posting on the CEO's blog. (He also sent Schwartz a letter by mail.)
Said Cox: "Assuming that the (SEC) were to embrace
your suggestion that the 'widespread dissemination' requirement of Regulation
FD can be satisfied through Web disclosure, among the questions that would need
to be addressed is whether there exist effective means to guarantee that a
corporation uses its Web site in ways that assure broad non-exclusionary access
..."
Cox has pushed several technology initiatives meant to
give investors more useful and complete information about companies and mutual
funds. His novel way of responding to Schwartz provoked jealousy on the part of
The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog.
"We're jealous," lead writer Peter Lattman
huffed Monday on the blog. "SEC Chairman Christopher Cox posted a comment
on a blog. But not the Law Blog. ...
"Shameless plea to Chairman Cox: We've got a serious
case of the Monday morning blues and it would turn our day around if you posted
a comment on the Law Blog. Don't worry, we don't want your thoughts on Reg FD
or hedge funds. Keep it light: Tell us about the last movie you saw. Your
favorite book? Thanksgiving plans?"
In a Sept. 25 letter to Cox, Schwartz noted that Sun's Web
site, which gets an average of nearly a million user hits a day, includes the
blog that he writes as CEO and those of thousands of employees of the Silicon
Valley server and software maker.
"My blog is syndicated across the Internet by use of
RSS technology," Schwartz wrote. "Thus, its content is 'pushed' to
subscribers. This Web site is a tremendous vehicle for the broad delivery of
timely and robust information about our company. ...
"We encourage you to look to the Internet to achieve
the (SEC's) objectives of greater investor access to information," he told
Cox.
Schwartz's letter didn't specify how many people read his
blog, as opposed to the Web site in general, so more data would be needed to
determine whether it meets the criterion of broad distribution under the
regulation, in the SEC's view.
Schwartz, who recently started publishing his blog in
French and nine other languages, has said it attracts 50,000 viewers a month.
For him, he says, it has become "the single most effective vehicle to
communicate" with investors, journalists and analysts.
Thirty Fortune 500 companies are now publishing corporate
blogs, nearly double the number in December 2005, according to the Fortune 500
Blogging Wiki, a collaborative tracking site. Technology companies such as
Amazon.com Inc., Cisco Systems Inc. and Oracle Corp. were early adopters, but
senior executives at big industrial companies like Boeing Co. and General
Motors Corp. also have embraced the trend.
In its unfiltered form, blogging allows CEOs to bypass the
public relations department, journalists and industry analysts and speak directly
to the public. Few company blogs are written by the chief executives, however.
Jensen
Comment
No mention is made of XBRL, but this will one day be an opportunity for XBRL
tagged disclosures. The FASB is undertaking a study for development of XBRL tags
for qualitative disclosures.
The
Accountant’s Guide to XBRL
Among the
videotapes that I donated to the University of Mississippi accountancy archives
are tapes of some of the excellent XBRL updates over the years in CEP sessions
of the American Accounting Association that were conducted by Roger Debreceny,
Glen Gray, and Skip White.
June 21,
2006 message from Clinton
White [whitec@lerner.udel.edu]
Bob
The Accountant’s Guide to XBRL
Isbn: 0977952509
www.skipwhite.com
The Accountant’s Guide to XBRL is now ready for shipping
and I’m publishing it myself. It is based on the way I teach XBRL to my senior
Accounting and MIS majors at the University
of Delaware. It is priced
at $25.00 and can be purchased through my Web site www.skipwhite.com. It is
designed to be a supplemental text for any accounting course in which you want
to add a module on XBRL. I cannot give away free copies but if you adopt it for
your class I will gladly refund your purchase and shipping costs. In addition,
I am setting up a secure educator’s Web site with notes, exercise explanations,
solutions, additional exercises, and ppt slides.
Thanks and I look forward to hearing from you!
Skip
November 10,
2006 message from Saeed Roohani [sroohani@COX.NET]
This is a good demo to show
application of continuous auditing
http://www.emporia.edu/business/newsdetail.php?newsID=26
The demo was the prize
winner of 6th Global XBRL Academic Competition
2005-06 (www.XBRLeducation.com)
Other XBRL teaching
cases/projects:
South
America Unified Markets
http://www32.brinkster.com/xbrl2003/
user: SAUM
password : xbrl2003
InvestWise: Where
investment forecasts are just a click away!
http://personal.bgsu.edu/~ilyak/xbrl
password is xbrl
Credit Analyzer
http://kelley.iu.edu/Norne/ (ID: admin, PASSWORD:
xbrlpass)
Some related links:
http://www.kelley.iu.edu/sagp/news_items.cfm?newsid=15
http://www.iasb.org/xbrl/xbrl_team/profiles_where_are_they_now.html
http://www.lerner.udel.edu/accounting/FacultyPages/Geerts.HTML
http://www.rafware.it/ias/index.php?id=2489
=====================
Saeed Roohani
Bryant University
January
18, 2006 XBRL Updates sent by Roger Debreceny [roger@DEBRECENY.COM]
The XBRL US meeting is currently on in San Jose. The Chairman of the SEC spoke by
video at the meeting. His remarks are at http://www.sec.gov/news/speech/spch011806cc.htm with the video at http://www.sec.gov/news/speech.shtml . There is much of interest in the speech that focuses on
two important issues: resourcing taxonomy development ("... the
development of taxonomies lacks resources. Believe it or not, the awesome
global challenge of fashioning a new way for billions of people to exchange
financial data is currently dependent on the success of one solitary man who
labors in anonymity at XBRL-US: Brad Homer. Alone, except for volunteer help,
he is writing the taxonomies upon which the entire interactive data enterprise
will necessarily rely.") and mutual funds ("Almost immediately, I
expect to see interactive data play a leading role in helping consumers analyze
and compare mutual funds. The taxonomy development that is needed to make this
a reality is well within our reach.")
Another relevant news item is at: http://tinyurl.com/d3yqx
Roger D
-- Roger Debreceny School of Accountancy College of
Business Administration University of Hawai'i at Manoa 2404 Maile Way Honolulu,
HI 96822, USA Office phone: +1 (808) 956 8545 Cell phone: +1 (808) 393 1352
Fax: +1 (808) 956 9888 roger(at)debreceny.com rogersd(at)hawaii.edu
www.debreceny.com
December 6,
2005 message from Dennis Beresford [dberesfo@terry.uga.edu]
National Conference on
Current SEC and PCAOB Developments. His talk is available at: http://www.sec.gov/news/speech/spch120505cc.htm
He had three main messages:
1. Accounting rules need to
be simplified. "The accounting scandals that our nation and the world have
now mostly weathered were made possible in part by the sheer complexity of the
rules." "The sheer accretion of detail has, in time, led to one of
the system's weaknesses - its extreme complexity. Convolution is now reducing
its usefulness."
2. The concentration of
auditing services in the Big 4 "quadropoly" is bad for the securities
markets. The SEC will try to do more to encourage the use of medium size and
smaller firms that receive good inspection reports from the PCAOB.
3. The SEC will continue to push XBRL. "The interactive
data that this initiative will create will lead to vast improvements in the
quality, timeliness, and usefulness of information that investors get about the
companies they're investing in."
A very interesting talk -
one that seems to promise a high level of cooperation with the accounting
profession.
Denny
Skate to where the puck is going, not to where it is.
Wayne Gretsky as quoted by Jerry Trites at http://www.zorba.ca/
The above quotation
is very important in financial reporting, because XBRL is where the puck is
going.
October 2,
2006 message from Gerald Trites [gtrites@ZORBA.CA]
A new Blog for XBRL Canada is available
at the following link: http://www.zorba.ca/xbrlblog.html. The blog is intended to provide a timely record of events
relating to XBRL, particularly in Canada, and also other events of
general interest. It also is a forum to enable members to bring events to
the attention of others.
-------------------------
Gerald D Trites, FCA, CA*CISA/IT
Ph: 416-602-3931
Web Site: www.zorba.ca
E-Business Blog: www.zorba.ca/blog.html
XBRL Blog: www.zorba.ca/xbrlblog.html
Bob Jensen’s
tutorials on XBRL are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm
I want to thank Rivet Software for sending me a copy of Drag and Tag. I
haven't really learned how to use it yet, but I discovered that it puts a
toolbar in your Excel spreadsheets such that you can import financial
statements published in Excel (which some companies now provide online) and then
proceed to add XBRL meta-tags under a chosen GAAP taxonomy such as
International GAAP or U.S. GAAP.
Two Tutorial Videos (plus my older video) for Excel
XBRL is no
longer something we only play with in academe. It is now available to
investors around the world, although it may take a while for some companies to
add the XBRL tags to their financial statements. Some things that are now
being done in XBRL such as time graphs and ratio graphs can be done with things
other than XBRL. What XBRL does, however, is make it possible to:
(1) Compare
different companies in a Web browser
(2) Perform customized analyses if the XBRL statements are downloaded into
Excel
(3) Conduct easy searches that do not yield thousands of unwanted and
extraneous hits
Bob
Jensen's New Video Tutorial on XBRL (about 30 minutes)
It's the XBRLdemos2005.wmv file at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/
But first read the following and watch the KOSDAQ video before watching the
above video.
Question
What are the two most significant events in the history of accounting,
financial reporting, and financial statement analysis?
Answers
Double Entry Bookkeeping and XBRL
The origins
of double entry bookkeeping are unknown. It goes back over 100 years
before Luca
Pacioli made it famous by algebraically
describing it in the world's first algebra book called Summa written in
1494. Pacioli's basic equation A=L+E simply shows how recorded asset
values in total equal the double-entry sum of creditor liabilities plus owner
equities in those assets. For over 500 years accounting disputes mainly
lie in defining the A, L, and E concepts and measuring them in financial
statements. Pacioli gave us the algebra without the crucial and
operational definitions of terms. Bob Jensen's brief summary of the
history of accounting is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm
XBRL stands
for eXtensible Business Reporting Language in XML that can now be interpreted
by every Web browser such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer. In the
future, virtually every all academic disciplines such as Chemistry, Physics,
and History will probably develop their own taxonomies for XML reporting on the
Web. Hence, we one day may have XCHEM, XPHYS,
and XHIST eXtensible reporting languages.
Whereas the
famous HTML tags on data are not extensible and are more or less fixed in scope
and time, XML extensible meta-tags will become the world's most popular way of
creating customized "meta-tags" that attach to virtually every piece
of Web data and describe attributes of each piece of data. The history of
data tags and meta-tags is briefly outlined at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm
I also highly recommend the XBRL history and news site at XBRL headquarters at http://www.xbrl.org/Home/
Also see http://www.w3.org/
I like to
think of non-extensible tags that are pre-printed for the world to use. In the case of HTML, these are largely tags
for screen formatting and hyperlinking.
For example, when I add HTML tags to the number 212, the tags tell the
browser how that number should appear on the screen. I could even make it link to some other Web
page or position on this Web page. But
the HTML tag alone cannot tell me the meaning of 212. To tag the meaning of 212, I have to have
extensible tags that let me (or us) add customized tags that add meaning to the
number 212 itself in an intended context.
The development of a standard set of such tags in a given discipline is
called taxonomy building. For over a decade,
an XBRL standards group has been developing an XBRL taxonomy such that I can
tag the number 212 to convey that it is a $212 million Allowance for Doubtful
Accounts.
XBRL is a
taxonomy for XML meta-tags to be placed on virtually every number in a set of
financial statements. For over a decade, efforts have been made by huge
companies and accounting firms to develop standardized XBRL tags for key
taxonomies in accounting. These taxonomies may vary as to a particular
set of accounting generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) such as
International GAAP or US GAAP. Once a company or user selects which GAAP
taxonomy to use, it's financial statements can be "marked up" with
XBRL meta-tags that facilitate comparative financial statement analysis.
Users may also take any set of financial statements and add tags for a chosen
set of GAAP tags. For example, see Drag and Tag from Rivet Corporation
--- http://www.rivetsoftware.com/
Also see http://www.xbrl.org/eu/CEBS-3/Rivet_Industry
Day_Brussels_14 Sept 2005.pdf
Because
adding XBRL meta-tags to a given set of financial statements is time consuming,
most large companies are in the process of adding these tags to their own
financial data so that investors will not have to do their own tagging.
The major stock exchanges of the world are now urging companies to send in
their financial reports marked up in XBRL. Soon they will require all
listed companies to submit XBRL-tagged financial statements.
Bob
Jensen's Old XBRL Video Tutorial called XBRLdemos.wmv
About four years ago (I can't remember exactly when) I prepared a XBRL tutorial
on how to use XBRL in financial statement analysis. The tutorial itself
was actually developed by NASDAQ, Microsoft, and PwC in a NMP
partnership. NASDAQ selected 20 companies and marked up their financial
statements in XBRL. Microsoft wrote a fancy Excel program to analyze
those financial statements in Excel. PwC served up the data on the
Web. This NMP tutorial was intended to have a short life since the plan
was eventually to use XBRL directly in Web browsers without having to use
Excel. Indeed, PwC no longer serves up this tutorial. Bob Jensen
probably has the only recorded history of this NMP tutorial on video in the
file XBRLdemos.wfm at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/
Bob
Jensen's New 2005 XBRL Video Tutorial called XBRLdemos2005.wmf
XBRL is now marked up on many financial statements on the Web and can be
used for financial statement analysis in Web browsers. I found a set of
such statements for various (Star) companies on the Korean KOSDAQ stock
exchange homepage.
Before
looking at my new video, I want you to first view the KOSDAQ Camtasia video at http://www.ubmatrix.com/solutions/WebHelp/KOSDAQDemo.html
After viewing
this video, you can then go to my new Camtasia 2005 video XBRLdemos2005.wmf
file at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/
My new video
is mainly a tutorial about how I learned to use the XBRL financial statements
made available by KOSDAQ for actual use by investors in companies listed on the
KOSDAQ stock exchange.
In
particular, my new video shows how to perform the following steps at the KOSDAQ
site.
|
First
Watch
the http://www.ubmatrix.com/solutions/WebHelp/KOSDAQDemo.html
Second
Watch
my XBRLdemos2005.wmv file at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/
The KOSDAQ homepage is at http://www.ubmatrix.com/home/default.asp
Go to http://km.krx.co.kr/
You do not have to install the Korean language pack
Note that it
may take some time for the upper menu to appear
Click on the
English button in the upper right corner after the menu appears
Third
Go directly to http://english.kosdaq.com/
Click on the
"XBRL Service" on the right side of the screen
Click on a
company's logo (ignore any pop ups to install a language pack)
If you do
not see a graph on the left side of a company's report,
click on the button/instruction below the graph's border
After you
see a graph,
click on the various financial statement line items to the right of the graph
(Your mouse pointer will now be a small bar graph)
Go to the bottom of the page and
click on "Ratios"
If your
pointer is still a small graph,
click on the ratios that you want to see in the graph
Go to the bottom of the page and
click on "Comparison"
Options for
comparisons are given (they are also demonstrated in my video)
Go to the bottom of the page and
read about the Excel Analyzer
See
what you can download if you really get interested in the analysis options
|
October 30,
2005 reply from Deborah Johnson [Finance@WeFightFraud.com]
I followed the instructions
you plan to give your students for Monday and found a few bugs you might want
to know about.
The Demos link at
XBRL.org is not on the home page. They need to know that this site
requires them to navigate to "Showcase" to find the Demo.
http://km.krx.co.kr/ selected English and then XBRL Services, then chose
the company. The graph is only available if you agree to download and install
additional software on your PC. If they do not have administrator rights, this
is not going to be an option for your students. (say on college lab and
classroom computers).
The company I selected, LG
Micron, had an obvious defect in the financial data being presented for this
demonstration. XBRL is clearly not going to minimize any human mistakes, and
the printed financials will still have to be carefully scrutinized by
management and the auditors. Do the math on the Trade Receivables at Net.
Demerits for any student who doesn't find the error. If you go to the bottom of
the table and select "Get these financials in XBRL" you may get an
XML Parsing Error. This is probably a higher version of XMl required, and again
the student would need administrator rights to upgrade the software or install
patches and plug ins.
Regards,
Deborah Johnson
October 30,
2005 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Deborah,
I agree with all your points and thank you for
providing some clarifications. With respect to needing administrative
rights to view the graphs (say on college lab computers and on classroom
computers), it behooves faculty to ask administrators to install the software
that can be downloaded free by clicking below the graph frame for any company
in the demo.
If students do not have administrative rights on a
college lab or classroom computer, I guess this makes my video tutorial even
more valuable since students can see what will happen if they try this on their
own computers where they automatically have administrative rights.
Thanks,
Bob
Speech by SEC Chairman:
Remarks at the 12th XBRL International Conference
by Chairman Christopher Cox
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Tokyo, Japan November 7, 2005
http://www.sec.gov/news/speech/spch110705cc.htm
At the SEC, our XBRL
Voluntary Program was launched earlier this year as a tentative first step. The
program was designed to encourage all of the participants to help us assess the
potential for using interactive data both within and outside the Commission.
For our registrants, it's
an opportunity to explore the costs and benefits of using interactive data.
They're helping us understand the impact of using XBRL on their financial
reporting systems, and on their internal financial controls and processes.
We're also learning how XBRL can help companies communicate with their
shareholders and the markets generally.
In the months ahead, I
expect that investors and analysts will continue to pilot the use of
interactive data applications. That will help us assess how this new flexible
format might help them to improve their own analyses and decisions.
For software providers and
other te