XBRL Revisited: Grasp the Fundamentals to See How Businesses Use XBRL Today

Use of XBRL is gathering momentum. In September 2004, investors, analysts, public companies and other securities market participants--including CPAs--took note of the SEC's announcement it will permit public companies to submit their mandatory filings in XBRL format. This step by the SEC is only the latest to demonstrate the steady acceptance of the extensible business reporting language since XBRL International Inc., a nonprofit business consortium that includes the AICPA, introduced it in 1999. More than 250 of the world's leading organizations--including Morgan Stanley, Microsoft Corp., major accounting firms and accounting institutes--have embraced XBRL and supported its adoption. XBRL BASICS Several earlier articles (see "Prior JofA Coverage of XBRL," page 65) contained a wealth of XBRL-related information and resources readers can tap to refresh their knowledge of the fundamentals and/or to build a foundation for under standing intermediate and advanced aspects of XBRL--such as instance documents--discussed in this and subsequent articles in this series. In addition, exhibit 1, page 65, explains the elements that make up XBRL and shows how they relate. XBRL'S BUILDING BLOCKS To appreciate how XBRL works, CPAs need to understand the concept of the instance document (see exhibit 2, page 65), which describes a financial data element, such as cash, and contains * References to the XML specification and XML schema, or database structure. * References to the XBRL taxonomy and any additional taxonomies that may be required to describe all the XBRL tags used in a specific instance document. * Links to * References. Documentation of the data elements the instance document describes. * Definitions. The location on a balance sheet where the data elements reside. * Calculations and formulas. Instructions on how the data elements should be calculated in relation to other such elements described in the instance document. * Presentation. Details on any descriptive labels that should be applied to the data elements, including the language--for example, German--in which they should be reported. * Contexts. Other information--for example, the type of currency, accounting period covered or other identifying facts--necessary to put the data elements in proper context. CREATE ONCE, USE REPEATEDLY The information contained in an XBRL instance document is endlessly reusable. Each document has all the data necessary to perform an analysis, prepare a report, conduct an audit test and/or send information to software that will use it for management reporting or any other business purpose. With every data element fully described in terms of its definition, format, location, calculation and labeling, XBRL-formatted information can be combined easily, without rekeying or reformatting, for use with a variety of software or hardware. XBRL thereby provides information that's up-to-date, accurate and easy to distribute. Exhibit 1: An Overview of XBRL Specification: Defines the technical standard for the composition of XBRL taxonomies. It's the set of rules that permits the expression of business reporting data in a format that complies with XML, the extensible markup language, of which XBRL is a subset. Taxonomy: Defines a set of data elements in a given business reporting context, such as U. …