EDGAReView

It’s filing season and quarterly reports are flowing into the SEC in the newly mandated XBRL format, which is computer readable. How is it going? No major complaints, though a couple of issues have understandably surfaced for companies filing for the first time in this format. One has to do with how the XBRL computer code gets aesthetically rendered into human-readable web pages.

Companies are required to post their XBRL files on their corporate websites for the public. The problem companies are discovering is that various web browsers and the various XBRL viewers don’t all render the information the exact same way. The information is accurate, but can be inconsistent in what and how it is displayed.

The issue prompted the SEC and XBRL US organization lat week to host an ad hoc online discussion for concerned IR personnel, moderated by EDGAR Online’s CEO Philip Moyer. The event is archived here.

Graphic rendering of XBRL is a completely separate issue from the one XBRL was designed to solve, but with the first wave of XBRL files appearing on company websites, the need for better rendering has become a big concern. No one wants investors looking at poorly designed or incomplete documentation.

Fortunately, the rendering of the XBRL computer code will not affect shareholders. The SEC may someday only require the XBRL format, but for now, companies submit their financials in dual formats: the XBRL version for computer consumption, and the conventional HTML (and PDFs) for human viewing.

But the issue of human-readable XBRL files is very important for any XBRL application analysts may use. It’s an issue that we are very familiar with at EDGAR Online, since we spend about half the company’s total time on making sure that we render XBRL tagged data fully and clearly in our online analytical tools such as I-Metrix and EDGAR Pro — in the way we humans have come to expect with web-based information. That means visual clarity and easy readability.

Things that don’t matter to computers make a world of difference to people, such as how text and columns line up, boldface headers, readable fonts and type sizes, colors, graphs, charts, with all the information included and footnotes where humans expect to see them.

The SEC and XBRL community was aware this issue would come up, so the SEC had prepared a viewer on its own website where XBRL filings can be read in plain English (and the translation checked for accuracy by the reporting company). But it’s ugly.

We agree with the SEC that the marketplace will quickly resolve the issue, and we expect to see a wide variety of specialized web applications soon that render, use, or create XBRL financial reports and analyses.