Full Form of XBRL
eXtensible Business Reporting Language
XBRL Full Form is eXtensible Business Reporting Language. XBRL is an openly available, global standard facilitating business information. It enables an expression having a semantic meaning, which is usually needed in business reporting. Examples of technologies using XBRL include XML Schema, XPath, Namespaces, and XLink. One of the many uses of XBRL is defining and exchanging financial information like a financial statement. Specifications relating to XBRL are developed by XBRL International, Inc. XBRL is a standard for conducting communication of business information among business systems. The Metadata which is set out in Taxonomies defines these communications.
These taxonomies take into account individual reporting concepts, along with the relationships between these concepts and semantic meanings. Lately, the HM Revenue and Customs (Abbreviated as HMRC) of the United Kingdom, Companies House in Singapore and the Securities and Exchange Commission (abbreviated as SEC) in the United States of America have begun mandating the companies to XBRL and other regulators from different jurisdictions have started following the example. XBRL was officially adopted by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (Abbreviated as MCA) of India for the purposes of filing costing and financial information with the Union Government.
In the year 2009, the North Carolina State University’s Department of Accounting College of Management conducted a study to evaluate the accuracy of XBRL filings for a set of 22 companies that participated in the voluntary filing program organized by SEC in the year 2006. Results showed multiple errors and most of them were flagged as serious. However, another study showed contrary results, stating that the companies are improving and are undergoing a learning curve with the use of XBRL. Thus, there is no consensus as far as the efficiency of XBRL is concerned.