March 31st, 2010 by Charlie Hymer, CPA - Senior Account Executive
I recently posted the blog, XBRL Accountants in the Hot Seat and thought that I should spend a little more time on the “going” concern of XBRL vendors. With the upcoming detail tagging mandate for Wave 1 filers and the Wave 2 mandate hitting at the same time, XBRL vendors will be working hard to ensure timely and accurate filings using software that scales to detail tagging. This Wave 1 and 2 double whammy will separate the XBRL experts from the wannabes. Now is a good time to evaluate your XBRL vendor/printer to ensure your filing will not get lost in the mix. But how do you do your due diligence? What should you expect from your provider? This is not a quantifiable question or answer, unfortunately. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Accountant, CPA, Detail Tagging, Outsource, Printers
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March 31st, 2010 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
Standard Business Reporting (SBR) comes into effect in Australia from July 2010, but there are some differences in the way that the Australian Government is moving forward with XBRL-based financial reporting compared to both the USA and the UK. Read the rest of this entry »
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March 29th, 2010 by Charlie Hymer, CPA - Senior Account Executive
With detail tagging just around the corner for Wave 1 filers, the initial filing for Wave 2 this year, and Wave 3 filers starting to get on board, it is critical that accountants continue their education on XBRL and their current vendor.
Yes, I represent one of these vendors, Rivet Software. Yes, I do have a bias. But I am a Certified Public Accountant (CPA-13440) and have a strong loyalty to my fellow accountants. We are always under constant scrutiny and are asked to do more with less. We are once again in the hot seat with XBRL. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Accountant, CPA, Detail Tagging, Outsource, Printers
Posted in Solutions, XBRL | View Comments
March 25th, 2010 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
Many people have highlighted XBRL as a key part of the ‘financial’ semantic web but the fact that this is starting to hit mainstream thought is evidenced from this quote from the introduction to David Siegel’s new book: Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform your Business – one of the few to approach the semantic web from a business perspective…
Data will be interoperable. We won’t have to translate from one system to another. As an example, Edgar.gov will soon become a cloud-based hub for XBRL data from companies reporting results. Since everyone uses the same standards, all the software will be able to tie into the original sources of data and use it in the way that’s most meaningful to the subscriber.
So if you want to improve your pulling power (i.e. learn more about the semantic web) I suggest you take a look at Siegel’s book.
Posted in Communication, XBRL | View Comments
March 25th, 2010 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
Here at Rivet we are always thinking of new ways to better service our customers particularly when they are up against it – frantically tagging their financial statements to comply with S.E.C. deadlines. We know that in situations like this, customers need the fastest possible response from our highly qualified staff of technical wizards and professional CPAs. That’s why we were thrilled when the Martin Aircraft Company announced the first commercially available jetpacks. Read the rest of this entry »
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March 25th, 2010 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
Financial data democratization is one of the long-touted anticipated benefits of XBRL but is there any evidence that this has any foundation in reality? Well apparently there is. The Hitachi XBRL blog reports that recent research has established a link between the use of XBRL reporting and a reduction in ‘information asymmetry where a select few investors have better access to information’. At least it seems to suggest this in the case of the Korean stock market. This research is a good start to ‘proving’ that XBRL can assist with democratizing financial data. That’s good news because let’s face it, we’re way past the time when we want to rely too much on the guys with the red suspenders/braces, black Porsches and big green bonuses to figure out all this stuff for us.
Posted in Communication, XBRL | View Comments
March 24th, 2010 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
In these tough economic times, we all want to land a dream job right? So stimulated by the excellent advice in Making Your Mark: 5 Ways to Impress Financial Recruiters I have come up with 5 Ways Not to Impress Financial Recruiters in the same categories to make doubly sure you can’t fail to get that gig of your dreams as an Excel-jockey at a leading taxidermist.
Read the rest of this entry »
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March 24th, 2010 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
One way to learn more about inline XBRL or iXBRL is to use the recently updated add-on for the Firefox browser to load up an iXBRL file (the kind that is used, for example, in the UK to file HMRC returns). The iXBRL add-on inserts a whole raft of iXBRL rendering and analysis capability, plus documentation if you wish, right inside your browser. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: iXBRL
Posted in XBRL | View Comments
March 17th, 2010 by Greg Rohan - Chief of Staff
After recently attending a South by Southwest panel “Data is Money: How Geeks are Changing Finance”, I realized there was a high level of groupthink in regards to how technology and XBRL can empower investors to make better financial decisions. From the panel, questions from the attending audience, and the twitter comments (#datamoney) posted during the session, it was clear to me that XBRL is often dismissed or misunderstood as a potential solution for current issues regarding data transparency. A few key points were raised by the panelists in this discussion in regards to this new mandate that need to be clarified and, in my opinion, discussed Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: SxSW, Transparency
Posted in Analytics, Investors, Taxonomies | View Comments
March 15th, 2010 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
We’re proud to have played a part in the Microfinance Information eXchange’s (MIX) project to embrace XBRL to deliver a better understanding of global microfinancing trends through comparative reporting and benchmarking. The MIX XBRL Case Study provides an interesting walk-thru of both the challenges and benefits of XBRL adoption. In order to minimize some of those challenges and realize some of the benefits, MIX turned to software from Rivet:
We made a strategic decision at the start of this development to license off-the-shelf software whenever possible and to avoid custom development. We anticipate that increased global adoption of XBRL will lead to market competition and more and better software solutions over time. To that end, we licensed two products from Rivet Software: CrossTag, for creation of XBRL documents using the MIX Microfinance Taxonomy, and the Rivet XBRL Loader, to ‘shred’ XBRL documents for aggregation.
We chose these applications because of their relative user-friendliness and because they enable us to maintain a modular solution which we could upgrade over time (rather than an end-to-end solution).
You can find out more about the information that XBRL is helping MIX to deliver at mixmarket.org.
Tags: MIX
Posted in Communication, XBRL | View Comments
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