David McCann, CFO.com | US
June 26, 2009

Compliance and Transparency

Filers have a number of options in meeting compliance to the XBRL mandate. They can do the filing in house or they can outsource it. The in house approach has the advantage of full control.

However, few businesses have expertise in SEC filings, much less XBRL. With outsourcing, you review reports, but you still have no control over what is actually represented in the instance documents and their extensions that will be sent to the SEC and there is minimal audit ability or SOX compliance management. Perhaps the best approach is a hybrid of the two. Perform the work in house with the consultation of a filing agent who has expertise in SEC and XBRL filings.

Financial transparency does not come without a price. Accuracy is only one of many subjects that need to be addressed with XBRL filings. How does the filer verify that what is described in the instance document and extension match what he/she thinks it does? How does the filer validate that the filing matches the paper/html filing? Are the extended labels correct? Is the filing properly mapped to respective dimension segments?

Not specifying a dimension segment will result in a mapping to a dimension default. This is not is not necessarily what is desired. For more complex reports, such as the statement of shareholders equity it would be syntactically acceptable, but would represent incorrect information in the filing.

What procedures and verification would an internal auditor be required to follow in order to minimize liability? How does the filing meet with SOX compliance?

XBRL is still in the birth stages of development. These are questions that must be address for it to be successful. Many preparers are not equipped to deal with these issues. This will change over time.

Transparency and its many authentication issues are yet to be taken under consideration. There are many pioneers. Filers must ask the right questions and seek solutions as they move into the XBRL filing process.

Snappy Reports XBRL

Posted by Peter Boritz | Jun 30, 2009 6:59 PM ET