XBRL US, a non-profit advancing open standards for XML business reporting in the US, today announced the launch of XBRL Consistency Suite, a set of online XBRL tools that help public companies identify inconsistencies in XBRL documents related to the use of the XBRL US GAAP Taxonomy.
In the over 1,400 XBRL financial statements that have been submitted to date, thousands of errors have been identified, including incorrect use of signs, missing XBRL-tagged elements, and tags that should not have been reported, among others.
The XBRL Consistency Suit performs over 6,000 tests against a company's XBRL document and produces a report that shows taxonomy-specific errors that have been made. Companies, or their service providers, should run the tool on their XBRL-formatted financials before they submit them to regulators and investors as a final step in the XBRL creation process. It also includes access to a database of XBRL documents submitted to the SEC, updated regularly.
Subscribers can perform basic analytics on the database to see what concepts are being used by their peers and what extensions are being created by searching on the full set of filings, or searching by industry or company. Pre-created extensions reflect new accounting standards and industry changes. XBRL Consistency Suite was developed by XBRL US Labs, the research and development arm of XBRL US.
"Creating XBRL-formatted financial statements requires a good understanding of how the XBRL US GAAP Taxonomy is structured. Consistency Checks lets us test our assumptions and make corrections to errors that can be easily avoided, before we submit the XBRL document to the SEC," said Matt Birney, Manager, IFRS Policy and Implementation, United Technologies Corporation, "And the company analytics give us real insights into industry best practices about how our peers tag their financials."
"Public companies have a lot of decisions to make when using the XBRL US GAAP Taxonomy," said Campbell Pryde, Chief Standards Officer, XBRL US, "They should not be penalized for mistakes that can be easily corrected. The XBRL Consistency Suite gives companies the tools they need to correct inaccuracies. Our goal is to help companies and industries establish a common core secore set of best practices so that investors and regulators get the information they need."