Reuters releases first XBRL results
XBRL, the revolutionary internet financial reporting language, has scored its first European success with the release of Reuters' third-quarter results on the web.
The news and information group became the first listed company in Europe to make its financial results available on the internet using Extensible Business Reporting Language, a web format based on XML that allows users to easily extract financial information.
David Grigson, Reuters chief financial officer, said: ‘XML is key to distributing information in the internet age and the developing XBRL standard will greatly increase the power of financial reporting.’
Though still being tested, XBRL will give the financial community a standard way of digitally publishing, extracting and exchanging company financial reports and associated information.
It is being developed by a consortium of accounting standards bodies, accountancy firms, technology companies and financial information providers.
Anne Molyneux, technical director at the ICAEW, said: ‘This first publication of results in the UK using XBRL is an important step forward in XBRL development – it marks the start of a programme of broad testing over the coming months which will lead to publication of a UK version.’
XBRL works by coding each element of business reporting in plain language so just one item, or a group of data, can be tagged and subsequently retrieved by anyone with internet access.
Jargon busterXBRL (extensible business reporting mark up language)
New business reporting language for the internet designed specifically for financial statements and wider business communications. It codes each element of business reporting in plain language so just one item, or a group of data, can be tagged and subsequently retrieved.
XML (Extensible Markup Language)
An internet language that separates content from appearance. It allows designers to create customised tags, and share documents between different platforms and computer languages.Links