When the SEC needs a flexible, rule-based rendering engine for interactive data, who do they call?
In July 2008, the SEC put out a “request for proposal” (RFP) to solicit software vendor’s help to create a “rendering engine” that can present the XBRL-based financial statements in an easy to read, attractive format. As stated in the RFP, “The commission proposal views interactive data as an important way to increase access to information in the financial marketplace. The ability to accurately generate human-readable XBRL documents from raw XBRL content in EDGAR submission is central to this work.”
Forgive me for bragging a little here, during the last 18 months, Rivet has successfully developed, deployed and supported the two SEC Viewer Prototype systems that were visited by over 150,000 visitors from all over the world! For the past four years, the Rivet team helped many companies prepare their VFP filings for the SEC. During these engagements, and through supporting the two SEC XBRL prototype viewers, we have learned a great deal about how users prefer to view financial and mutual fund information. Clearly, to visualize the data in a familiar, friendly format is a “must have” requirement for SEC filers and investors.
We believe that we are best qualified to create the important “rendering engine” for the SEC, and fortunately, the SEC shared the same view. The project started in October 2008 with an extremely aggressive schedule to meet. We understood that the success of this project would be an important factor in determining if the SEC can pass the historic mandate requiring the filing of financial data in XBRL interactive format. Rivet was ready for the challenges.
It’s all about looks, isn’t it?
The most challenging part of this project was the testing of 400+ SEC filings to date; the astonishing “creativity” of every filer uncovered lots of unexpected variations which resulted in issues that had to be addressed. Many adjustments have been made to the code to deal with the variability and complexity of the filings. This doesn’t reflect on the quality of the software, but rather on the fact that no amount of reasonable design can automatically anticipate the seemingly infinite number of ways filers can complicate an instance document. Data accuracy is without a doubt the most critical factor for a preparer, but in the end, one of the most important questions everyone asked is how does the financial statement look?
As a software vendor that specialized in all aspects of XBRL, we had the advantage of looking at the rendering issues from both sides.
On one hand, we understand the SEC’s desire to make the “rendered” financial statements look and feel like the published financials, and have worked closely with the SEC in developing the rendering rules and creating instructions to help preparers achieve the desired rendering results.
On the other hand, we understand the importance of making our “tagging” products (Dragon Tag and CrossTag) seamlessly incorporate the “rules”. If you were using one of our tagging products, it’s easy to make changes to support the intricate rules proposed by the SEC — creating rich, HTML-formatted footnotes, create complicated equity statements easily, and identify where to add “underlines”, or reverse signs for display in the reports, just to name a few. Most importantly, when a preparer finished the markups in our tagging product, he/she can easily “preview” the rendered report exactly the same as what would be rendered on the SEC website.
A happy ending – for the SEC and our customers
The SEC has passed the historic mandate requiring the filing of financial data in XBRL interactive format with large companies being required to file as early as June 15, 2009! The successful delivery of the rendering engine is surely one of the reasons the SEC has made the courageous decision. We are proud that Rivet was chosen to work on the project, and are excited that what we learned from working closely with the SEC can benefit our current and future customers.
Tags: Customer, Projects, Rendering Engine, SEC
