XBRL now required for all US listed companies

As of last month, the SEC’s XBRL mandate now requires that all companies with a 12/31 fiscal year-end date are required to submit XBRL exhibits with their second quarter 10-Q. While all Large Accelerated Filers (LAF) companies were required to submit XBRL exhibits after June 15, 2010, all remaining filers, including smaller reporting companies, are now also required to begin submitting these exhibits.

XBRL is a new markup language that uses tags (similar to XML) to identify the nature of content. XBRL is especially designed to deal with complex financial reporting, with the purpose of allowing investors to easily compare financial information between different companies for improved decision making.

All public companies listed on US exchanges must make their XBRL documents available online (if they have a website) within 24 hours of filing their 10-Q. The documents consist of 6 individual files, which can be placed in a single .zip archive. They need to be available for easy download, and must remain accessible for 12 months from the date of filing.

There are still a number of problems with the XBRL language structure. It is complex and even the SEC has expressed disappointment with the inadequacy. About 350 extensions were added recently for the most commonly used types of expenses on financial statements, such as sales and marketing. The total number of tags is now up to a staggering 900. Work is continuing on extensions to the detailed tagging of the footnotes to financial statements.

The Adwiz has worked with XBRL files and is familiar with the legislation and the process of making them available. There are a number of ways you can get the XBRL documents formatted through third-party vendors.

If you need to update your website to comply with these new requirements, just contact George Pytlik.