Edgar Online launches XBRL processing services

EDGAR Online President and CEO Susan Strausberg said, "We are leveraging the proprietary processes and techniques that we have developed while converting seven years and thirty quarters of U.S. fundamental data into XBRL format. This allows us to meet the needs of filing agents, regulators and exchanges within the U.S. market and internationally."

Strausberg continued, "Our services enable more organizations to see the benefits of XBRL without reengineering current workflows - which can be a costly endeavor. The creation of valid XBRL documents is a complex process and EDGAR Online brings unique expertise to the task, as we are the only organization that currently offers 30 fiscal quarters of standardized XBRL-tagged financial information to the U.S. market place."

In early December 2005, Gartner Research published a report entitled "EDGAR Online Provides New Investment Analysis Capabilities With XBRL-Tagged Data." The author stated, "Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) can improve the quality and efficiency of investment analysis. What has been missing is XBRL-tagged data for analysis."

Although XBRL filings with the SEC are currently voluntary, recent comments by SEC Chairman Christopher Cox indicate that XBRL could play a major role in the modernization of SEC systems. At a December, 2005 meeting hosted by the AICPA, Cox called the use of XBRL "an extraordinarily important initiative" that will shape the future of financial reporting. He also called it one of his top priorities.

Cox said that the interactive data XBRL creates "will lead to vast improvements in the quality, timeliness and usefulness of information that investors get about the companies they're investing in." He also stated "XBRL will do for business reporting what bar coding did for product distribution."