XBRL

XBRL, or eXtensible Business Reporting Language, is an open, XML-based standard for tagging financial and business information to enable digital, machine-readable reporting. It uses taxonomies to define concepts such as revenue, expenses, and assets, and specifies relationships among them, allowing data to be automatically extracted, compared, and analyzed across filings and jurisdictions.

Core concepts include the taxonomy, which acts as a dictionary of concepts; the instance document, which carries the actual reported facts tagged to taxonomy concepts; and linkbases, which express relationships such as presentation, calculation, and labeling. Inline XBRL (iXBRL) combines human-readable HTML with embedded tags to support both viewing and automated processing.

Architecture and workflow involve preparers mapping financial statements to taxonomy concepts, creating instance documents or iXBRL filings, and regulators or data aggregators validating and ingesting the data. Taxonomies are jurisdiction-specific or industry-specific, for example the US GAAP taxonomy or the IFRS taxonomy maintained by relevant authorities.

Governance and adoption are led by XBRL International, with national member organizations such as XBRL US and XBRL Europe. Regulators in many jurisdictions mandate or encourage XBRL-enabled regulatory reporting, particularly for publicly traded companies, enabling more efficient analysis by investors, regulators, and other stakeholders.

Benefits of XBRL include improved data quality, consistency, and speed of data retrieval, enabling automated processing and cross-company comparisons. Challenges include the cost and effort of tagging, ongoing taxonomy maintenance and updates, and the need for governance to ensure accuracy and interoperability across periods and jurisdictions.