XBRL stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language. First passed in 2009, XBRL is a global electronic information format designed to transmit and store business information in a machine readable format. XBRL is also referred to as “interactive data” by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). Companies that use XBRL assign unique, electronically readable tags to all individual disclosure items within business reports. These tags are part of taxonomies developed by market constituents and are publicly available and license free. Taxonomies consist of financial concept definitions in which each business concept is defined and assigned a relationship to other concepts.

The idea behind XBRL is simple. Historically business reports treated financial information as blocks of text like a printed document or a web page. Blocks of text cannot be read by computers. But with XBRL, identifying tags provide each individual item of data with electronic content markers.

The SEC now mandates XBRL for all publicly traded companies. XBRL is required to be applied to companies:

• 10K (annual financial statements)
• 10Q (Quarterly financial statements)
• Registration statements
• 8K (filing of important investor information)
• 20F certain foreign private issuers to provide information
• 40F Registrations and Annual Report for Canadian Securities.

This course reviews the basic concepts of XBRL, what it is, why it is required by the SEC and important facts regarding terminology and implementation. The course also introduces the requirements of Inline XBRL and the phase in dates for compliance.