Why is a establishing a comprehensive, consistent
XBRL controls process important?
XBRL financial data is published information, just like the traditional printed statements you submit to the SEC in ASCII or HTML, and is viewed by the SEC as subject to Disclosure Controls and Procedures.
Does your XBRL data communicate what you intended? Have you applied the same level of diligence in preparing the XBRL data to tell your story as you do with the traditional financial reporting process?
Thousands of companies now report their financial statements in XBRL - data now available to your shareholders, media and other consumers. In a few months, the SEC's limited liability provision on XBRL data will be eliminated for all large public companies, and by June 2013, for every public company.
Your company's XBRL data is more valuable than ever before.
You owe it to yourself, your shareholders and your management to perform a thorough, repeatable data quality check on your XBRL financials every time.
Establishing Your Data Quality Review:
XBRL Consistency Suite
We've uncovered over 300,000 errors related to the use of the US GAAP Taxonomy through our continuous evaluation of XBRL SEC submissions. With additional input from public companies, XBRL providers and data users, we've developed and maintain a set of over 12,000 automated rules to help public companies identify and catch errors in their XBRL filings. The rules help public companies fortify their XBRL reporting process and take control over the data made public.
With a subscription, you can run these checks against your XBRL document before SEC submission to identify common data quality issues like incorrect signs, missing concepts or concepts used inconsistently with the structure of the taxonomy. The rules suggest resolutions to ensure the data communicates the story you intended to tell. SEC staff observations on XBRL raise many of the same issues.
Left unchanged, these errors can result in inaccurate data and inconsistencies
versus the HTML filing.
The XBRL Consistency Suite also includes:
- Access to an XBRL database of SEC-submitted filings, to identify and analyze concepts used and extensions created by peers.
- A tool to find definition changes and deprecated items within the concepts you used in your last XBRL submission as you transition to a new release of the US GAAP Taxonomy (e.g., from 2011 to 2012).