- XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is reinventing how business data is transmitted and used. It allows data to be tagged and exchanged electronically. - The article walks through tagging a sample company's income statement using XBRL tagging software. It explains each step, from downloading taxonomies to validating the tagged data. - XBRL will become widely used for submitting financial and other data to regulators, banks, and other agencies by both large and small businesses and practitioners. It provides benefits of standardized, electronic data exchange.

1. Learn liow tolranslate
your income ^atement
format.
by Mary H. Phillips,
lammy E. Bahmariziari
and Robert G. Colvar>
X
BRL (extensible Business Reporting Language) is reinventing how PURPOSE
we transmit and use data in business. A number of companies The purpose of this article is to give
are already submitting reports to the SEC through the voluntary CPAs unfamiliar with XBRL an oppor-
XBRL program. However, XBRL is not just for SEC companies: Small tunity to see that assigning XBRL tags to
financial statements does not require
businesses and practitioners alike could soon be using XBRL to sub-
specialized expertise, but rather is
mit information to bankers, the IRS, and other agencies. In fact, XBRL
something that any CPA can do with the
will become a part of every CPAs practice, both large and small.
help of software tools and a little prac-
tice. The article explains step by step
XBRL ts a language for electronic com- RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
how to tag a simple income statement
munication of business data. Eacb item In 2006 the SEC awarded a contract to
for a sample company. The authors se-
(depreciation expense, for example) is XBRL US to develop taxonomies, which
lected Rivet Software's Dragon Tag to
tagged with information abouL various at- are dictionaries for tagged data, for U.S. fi-
create their document because it is cur-
tributes, sucb as calendar year, audit- nancial reponing. A draft of the new XBRL
rently the most comtnon tool used by is-
ed/unaudited status, currency, etc. US GAAP Taxonomies was released to the
suers participating in the SEC's
XBRL-tagged data can be read by any soft- public on Dec. 5, 2007. Comments are
voluntary filing program (see Exhibit 1).
ware that includes an XBRL processor and due by April 4, 2008.
A number of other XBRL tagging tools
thus can be easily transferred between The banldng industry has successfully
are commercially available. The authors
computers. To create XBRL documents, used XBRL for its FDIC call reports since
recommend that users carefully consid-
you do not need to take an XML com- the first quarter of 2005. ln addition, XBRL
er more than one tool in light of their
puter programming course. Software is is already in use internationally For ex-
specific needs.
available to tag data for clients, submit ample, China requires XBRL filings for its
tagged data to various recipients, and re- public companies, and XBRL is being used Step One: Download the taxonomies.
ceive and analyze tagged data from other in public reporting in Japan, Spain, the A taxonomy is a dictionary o tags tised in
sources. Netherlands, the U.K., and other countries. the markup process. For demonstration
34 Journal of Accountancy Februar)'2008

2. TECHNOLOGY/BUSINESS & INDUSTRY
purposes, go to the new US GAAP Taxonomies that are currently rt!,,.-i - quot;1 X
undergoing public review at hltp://xbrl.us/usgaapreview/Pages/ -X
derault.aspx and select quot;Download Taxonomies.quot; Download ihe 1 F16 - ^
zip lile containing ihc taxonomies, and save it on your hard drive, Fi D B
since this will be used in setting up the entity's profile in Step Sample Companjf
Income Siatement
Three. 3 For the Period Ended Dscambet 31. 3CD7
4
5 RsvenuBB 6000
Exhibit 1 XBRL Software Tools^ S COGS
1
3000
7 .Gross Profit 2000
600
B Salanes
9 Depfeciaiion 2D0
SEC XBRL Voluntary Program Statistics 10 ncome tram Conlinuing Op9rations berore Taxes 1200
Tagging Software Used: 11 Taxes 360
640
U ncome from Continuing Operations
Product Number of tJsers Percentage
-40
13 Loss an Disconlmuad Operations
85
Dragon Tag 38.1%
eao
14 Nel income
1
59
EDGAR Online I-Metrix 26.6% IS
30
CoreFIIJng Ltd. 16_ ___ '__
13.5%
24
Fujitsu Interstage XWand 10.8% «•«' isafa'QiiHiiiHi^'iE
11
TagEzee 4.9%
5
XiRUTE 2.2% Step Three: Set up the entity profile, ln ihis step you define
4
Not Listed 1.8% the entity for which you are reporting. Enter a unique ID for the
2
Confluence Quick Tag 0.9% company, such as a tax ID or ticker symbol, Eor public compa-
1
EDGARizer 0.4%
nies, a common identifier is the companys Central Index Key
1
Microsoft FrontPage 0.4%
(CIK) code used in SEC filings. In the quot;Address/URLquot; field, enter
1
UBniatrix 0.4%
Total Filings in the
223
Voluntary Program 100.0%
,,
Souice: Authors' analysis of submis5tons in ihe XBHL Voluntary Program on EDGAR
d
at Ihe SEC as ot September 2007, www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/xbrf.hlml. PI
^r^-^^r,.
quot;For the most compieie, up-to-date list ol available tools, visit www.xbr1.org/tools.
MMTaoilw
Step Two: Open Dragon Tag and the file you wish to tag. LoMcn
J
In Dragon Tag, choose quot;Start Excel with Dragon Tag Add-in.quot;
•
If the Rivei menu option is not visible in Excel, go lo Add-ins
and select Rivet Software. Open the Excel file you wish to tag.
In our demonstration, we are using Office 2007 and Dragon Urguiflo: IvHIS
Tii; 2006. However, the process using Office 2003 and earli-
quot;quot;quot; ' quot;
er 'ersions of Dragon Tag is very similar. For our example, we
have prepared a short income statement to be tagged (see
screenshot at top of next column). ElvoOM 1
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
• XBRL is reinventing how we ness data. Each item is tagged has successfully used XBRL for light of their specific needs.
transmit and use data in busi- with information regarding vari- its FDIC call reports since the
ness. XBRL IS nol jusl for SEC ous attributes. XBRL-tagged first quarier of 2005. XBRL is al- Mary E. Phillips. CPA. Ph.D..
companies; Small businesses data can be read by any software ready in use internationally. Tammy E. Bahmanziah, Ph.D.,
and practitioners alike could that includes an XBRL processor • This article explains step by
and Robert G. Cofvard. CPA.
soon be using XBRL to submit and thus can be easily trans- step how to tag a simple
Ph.D., CFP, are on the accounting
information to bankers, the IRS, ferred between computers, income statement for a sample
faculty ot Middle Tennessee State
and other agencies. XBRL will • A draft of the new XBRL US company. A number of other
University. Their e-mail addresses
become a part of every CPA's GAAP Taxonomies was re- XBRL tagging tools are commer-
practice. are mephilli@mtsu.edu,
leased to the public on Dec. 5, ciafly available. The authors
• XBRL is a language for elec- 2007. Comments are due by Apnl recommend that users carefully tbahmanz@mtsu.edu and
tronic communication of busi- 4, 2008. The banking industry consider more than one tool in tCGlvard@mtsu.edu, respectively.
Febmar)' 2008 Journal of Accountancy 35

3. TECHNOLOGY/BUSINESS & INDUSTRY
an address that will help idenlify your unique ID (typically and drop the hopper into the highlighted cells. Marked-up items
www.sec.gov if the entity is a publicly traded company), but the are shaded blue by default, bul you can exercise the option to
URL must be an approved authoritative body or ihe Web address use other colors for marked-up items and for different validaiion
for the entiLy (see screenshot on previous page). resuhs (Slep Five).
Select the U.S. doUar as the default currency. Next, you must Next select quot;Reporting Elementsquot; from the bottom left side of
select the default taxonomy. Choose quot;Browsequot; and locate the tax- the screen. Choose the income statement and expand the sections
onomy you downloaded in Step One. Click on the file and unzip to see all line items (see screenshot below). Identify the correct tag
il. Next choose the quot;Indquot; folder, the quot;CIquot; folder, and finally quot;us- from the taxonomy, and drag and drop it on the appropriate cell
gaap-ci-stm-dis-all-2007-12-3I .xsd.quot; There are many different in the spreadsheet. To confirai tliat you have marked indiidual
industry taxonomies from which to choose, but we chose Com- items correctly. choi)sc quot;Markup Dataquot; aiid quot;Markup Review.quot;
mercial and Industrial (quot;CIquot;) for our demonstration. The re-
mainder of the fields (quot;Language.quot; quot;Label Rolequot; and quot;View Typequot;)
will be completed automatically once you enter the default tax-
onomy. porting Eia<ntntt>
Step Four: Mark up the data. To mark up data efficiently, il
is recommended ihat you set up a hopper to contain all the com-
mon elements for the data items. A hopper is a time-saving tech-
nique which applies more than one setting to a data item at one
time. For instance, you do not want to enter the calendar year
for each item individually To set up a hopper for your reporting
entity, choose quot;Hoppersquot; at the bottom left side of the screen. Then
right click on quot;My Hoppersquot; and select quot;Add Hopper.quot; Next, click
the scenario (quot;Audited,quot; quot;Unauditedquot; or quot;Proformaquot;), the calen-
dar period and the units in which your data is reported. The pre-
Ul-
cision factor determines the number of digits for your data, and ^ FLaDBBiQ(bita«L
you may choose thousands or millions for the scale factor. For
instance, if numbers are entered in thousands and you select the
scale as thousands, three zeroes will be added to each number 9 HLK^UTII
in. the marked-up data (see screenshot below). Notice: Other tag-
ging tools may handle precision and scale differently.
When you have completed marking up all the data items in
the income statement on the spreadsheet, you should create a
•'Markup Reportquot; and review it for any errors (see screenshot
below). II needed, you can use the quot;Restorequot; option to go back
to various points in the process and redo problem areas.
-Jj, I . . . . . . . . L . . - . ^ .
jsMau-i
faf'
Creating a hopper increases the efficiency and accuracy in Step Five: Validate. Validation is completed in two steps: (I)
marking up data. To apply the hopper, highlight the cells in the validation of the markup and (2) validation of calculations. When
worksheet to which you want the hopper applied, and then drag validating calculations, there are two options: Enhanced Valida-
36 Journal of Accountancy Februar)- 2008

4. TECHNOLOGY/BUSINESS & INDUSTRY
Bonus Content on the Web I Advanced |
Sal a ebon cntsria
For user implementation statistics, a glossary of XBRL
Salacted Markups: All Exc*I warkbaak rn«iiiup(
terms and additional exhibits, visit the online version of
this article at www.journalofaccountancy.com.
(• Taionomiej
C Tim« Penodf
tion and Strict XBRL Validation. If you choose Enhanced Vali- S«HctAII I OanUrt flU
dation, you will have errors if only the summary (parent) elements Marge with t i i i t i n g xbUL documant
are tagged and the taxonomy's detail (child) elements are not pres-
ent in the statement you are tagging. Strict XBRL Validation al- Which documant Cakst prionti In a ccnttict'
lows you to omit some of the child elements. Notice that for items
labeled quot;income/lossquot; in the taxonomy, you must enter a nega- Export Actionc
XBRL Prtvlan. | HHab Pirviaw | SavB File | Send To
tive lor loss items (see screenshots below).
• MMwEmn
You have now created an quot;instance document,quot; which is a doc-
iDutMn
timent containing lagged data for an individual company If you
Dmttn (vvtldWonvnK hwnd m Ott o m M teuHM.
- - - -
wish to see how the recipient of your instance document will view
your income statement. Rivet Software offers a free viewing tool
called Dragon View. The SEC also has an XBRL viewer (created by
Rivet Software) on its Web site (www.sec.gov/spotUght/xbrt/
xbrlwebapp.htm) so the public can view XBRL files submitted to
the SEC as pan of its voluntary' filing program. The SEC is also
Clw making the source code for this iewer available lo the puhlic.
l «iDH<ilMlnH«piHllOMH«TM>U]
Within Dragon View, you can export the instance document
to Excel, and the data is instantly ready for analysis. •
I
AICPA RESOURCES
Step Six: Export. Once the data has passed validation, you JofA article
are ready to export the data as an XBRL file. Select quot;Oxport XBRLquot; -ROI on XBRL,quot; June 2007, page 32
from the dropdown menu. You may filter files for export by work-
Web site
sheet for a particular client, by files using a panicular taxonomy, Information Technology Center, http://infotech.aicpa.org/
or by files Irom a panicular time period (see screenshot at top of Resources/XBRL
next column).
OTHER RESOURCES
Befotr saving the file, there are two options for previewing: quot;XBRL
• XBRL US, http://xbrl.us
Previewquot; and quot;Web Preview.quot; The final screenshot has an example
• XBRL International, www.xbri.org
of the XBRL Preview. It shows the tagged data in XBRL format.
Fcbaiary 2008 Journal of Accountancy- 37