The 34% of nonprofessional investors who chose spreadsheets over XBRL-enabled technology said they preferred it because of prior experience they had using that technology. No one in the study chose document exchange software, such as PDFs, to complete the task. These findings have implications for the technology choice literature, regulators mandating or considering mandating XBRL-based reporting, and XBRL-enabled technology adoption.
To learn more, read the June 2011 SSRN research article, XBRL-Enabled, Excel or PDF? The Effects of Exclusive Technology Choice on the Analysis of Financial Information, by Diane Janvrin of Iowa State University, Robert Pinsker of Florida Atlantic University, and Maureen Francis Mascha of University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.
XBRL stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language. It is one of a family of "XML" languages which is becoming a standard means of communicating information between businesses and on the Internet. XBRL is a language for the electronic communication of business and financial data which is revolutionizing business reporting around the world. It provides major benefits in the preparation, analysis and communication of business information. It offers cost savings, greater efficiency and improved accuracy and reliability to all those involved in supplying or using financial data.
XBRL is being developed by an international non-profit consortium of over 600 major companies, organizations and government agencies. It is an open standard, free of licence fees. It is already being put to practical use in a number of countries and implementations of XBRL are growing rapidly around the world. The idea behind XBRL is simple. Instead of treating financial information as a block of text - as in a standard Internet page or a printed document - it provides an identifying tag for each individual item of data. This is computer readable. For example, company net profit has its own unique tag. The introduction of XBRL tags enables automated processing of business information by computer software, cutting out laborious and costly processes of manual re-entry and comparison. Computers can treat XBRL data "intelligently": they can recognize the information in a XBRL document, select it, analyse it, store it, exchange it with other computers and present it automatically in a variety of ways for users. XBRL greatly increases the speed of handling of financial data, reduces the chance of error and permits automatic checking of information.
The XBRL International website provides further information about the nature, uses and benefits of XBRL. It explains how individuals and companies can join the effort to move forward and make use of the language.
