XBRL
What is XBRL?
XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) provides a common way for various systems to exchange specific financial information and provides a means to separate data from formatting.
One of the main goals of XBRL is to facilitate the comparison of financial information across companies and across industries. XBRL must conform to the underlying accounting rules and reporting formats of the specific companies and industries creating the XBRL instance document(s). XBRL helps show where differences are and allows analysts and investors to spend more time focused on extracting real meaning from the information.
The final XBRL files (instance documents) are attached to the standard EDGARized file as exhibits 101. There are 6 XBRL output files that we’ll attach to the standard HTML EDGAR documents upon filing.
What is the process?
Balance Sheets, Income statements, etc. have descriptive rows (“stub” or 1st column) that usually are pretty consistent quarter to quarter. Those line items need to be mapped or coded to the GAAP/XBRL taxonomy (library of terms). We have to take each line item and match it up to a line item in the XBRL taxonomy. There are over 10,000 concepts to choose from and Publicease will make this process as simple as possible. There are many line items that are easy – Cash, Accounts Receivable, etc. However, there are always many line items that have multiple concepts that could apply. Our job at Publicease is to make this process as painless as possible and to use our accounting knowledge to help get this done. Upon doing the initial mapping, Publicease will provide documentation as to what concepts were picked and what concepts need more clarification. If necessary, we will also do online meetings where you the client can see what is available to choose.
This process must be done by accounting type persons. There are accounting concepts that must be understood and there must be direct communication with the CFO or accounting group of the company in order for the correct concepts to be chosen. Publicease has a dedicated team of accounting persons who understand this process and understand financials so that the dialog is intelligent and the process goes smoothly. This is nothing that a word processor or edgarizer should be doing. This process will take at least a week or two of dedicated time.
ALL WORK WILL BE DONE IN THE UNITED STATES. NO work is ever sent out of the country by Publicease whether it be EDGAR, typesetting or XBRL. We firmly believe in giving our work to our citizens and we are loyal to our employees. For XBRL, we MUST communicate and there can be no language dialects that could possibly cause any misunderstanding.
Our plan is to map the financials today with previously filed documents. Upon receiving the current 10-Q, we’ll verify the stub column to make sure no changes from the prior quarter, update the numbers and will copy and paste in the notes to their mapped spots.
Our EDGAR department will not be impacted by XBRL since we have different people working on the two products. Therefore, we will continue to provide the excellent turnaround times on EDGAR conversion as normal.
For year two, we will need extra time to map the footnotes since those will have to be detail tagged meaning all the tables in the notes will have to be mapped just like the financials.
Please call us to discuss. 760-942-0157
