Institutional investors are finding XBRL to be valuable from the standpoint of creating taxonomies that give them greater insights into the performance of the firms they hold significant stock share positions in. In addition, investment analysts with leading Wall Street firms are using XBRL as a means to define entirely new and more detailed analysis of financial statements and key ratios as well. Given the fact that XBRL treats financial information as a referenced by an XML-compatible tag, each financial ratio, item on a financial statement and significant event as defined by the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act are all tagged. This significantly improves reporting timeliness and has led to the SEC stating that the future of financial reporting will be in real-time (Tribunella, Tribunella, 71).
The Connection between XBRL and Real-Time Reporting
With XBRL,...
No longer are corporations limited in the timeframes they deliver their financial results in; they can deliver them periodically and in real-time, averting the bottleneck of periodic reporting requirements the smaller corporations have to contend with today. The SEC and backers of real-time reporting argue this approach will ensure greater accuracy and compliance to the SOX standards and reporting requirements. The ability of XBRL to be used for managing and defining taxonomies in real-time is also a major advantage of this approach. Finally institutional investors who track financial performance of the companies they own large stock positions in favor this approach as well as they can better manage their investments. The benefits of XBRL for real-time reporting are beginning to force the issue of financial
