What is XBRL used for?
XBRL is used to digitally publish financial statements and other relevant accounting disclosures of companies of all makes and sizes, both public and private. An XBRL-based financial statement contains the information found in traditional financial statements (such as the Balance Sheet, Income Statement, Cash Flow and Statement of Stockholders Equity) in a format that can more easily be “recognized” and “understood” by computers and permits interactivity of reports. In a sense, an XBRL–based financial statement can be thought of as a digitally enhanced version of the financial statement that can be drilled down where related information is also available and not hidden in a myriad of notes. From the creation process, XBRL documents can be prepared efficiently, exchanged reliably, and published more easily. On the analytics side, XBRL enables a dramatic improvement in the processing of financial reports by allowing the information to be analyzed more quickly.
