13th December 2009
This week we highlight the development of on-line services at HMRC. The regulator is leading the way with iXBRL a variant of XBRL supported by Corefiling an acknowledged innovator and software developer in the this space. The story is important because, depending on its success, the technology may point the way forward for other regulators around the world. Many consider XBRL to be a relatively complicated variant of the XML language, not helped of course by the sheer complexity of IFRS, US GAAP and local GAAP that it is designed to deliver in electronic format. As such it is difficult to glean any meaning from native XBRL code which is designed to be read by machines, as opposed to financial statements designed to be read by humans. This is where iXBRL comes in because it combines machine and human readable expressions of XBRL in a single document, providing users with the assurance that what they read in a set of accounts is underpinned by accurate XBRL tags. Users can simply toggle between one ‘universe’ and another to view the XBRL code or tags as necessary. It is a welcome development that delivers what the regulators need whilst demystifying the process of generating XBRL compliant filings.
