The XBRL ‘journey’ of comply, control, communicate has been kind of a mantra here at Rivet for some time. So it’s good to know that others like KPMG are coming around to the same view. A recent article for Finance Director Europe quoted KPMG partner Bivek Sharma as saying:

We needed a service offering to help our clients comply (with XBRL) at first, but then also to help them with changing their internal reporting systems. Start with compliance as step one, but then look at what else you can do with XBRL.

We agree. Compliance is the first and somewhat painful step. But then the real benefits can start to kick in: Improved internal control followed by more transparent stakeholder communication. We’ll get there in the end (fade in Glen Campbell singing “The road is long. With many a winding turn…” etc.)

The University of Birmingham (UK not Alabama) is offering a self-funded PhD with the research theme: A critical assessment of the the impact of XBRL on corporate reporting. This could be your chance to sponsor your own XBRL PhD assuming you don’t feel that the lack of official funding somehow equates with a lack of interest in the results. Personally, I don’t have that much faith in XBRL-related PhD research given that this work XBRL Citation Analysis: A decade of Progress and Puzzle, omits some of the earliest published references to XBRL (or XFRML as it was then) including this landmark work written in 1999 in a converted pigsty and now available on Bonanzle for just $3.

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 »

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.

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As Eric Cohen rightly pointed out on Twitter, although there’s no mention of XBRL in the press release, the news that the US SEC and the UK FSA have agreed to identify a common, coherent set of data to collect from hedge fund advisers/managers to help the SEC and FSA identify risks to their regulatory objectives and mandates is surely indicative of yet another candidate for an XBRL taxonomy to add to the growing, global financial information ecosystem.

The good news is that our Crossfire financial reporting solutions are ready to leverage any new taxonomy to help realize the latent value of XBRL-tagged data.

A very useful analysis of the recent SEC filing round – The results are in on first XBRL filing in Compliance Week includes this quote:

Another criticism: the rendering of XBRL-tagged statements—that is, how they appear to investors when viewed in XBRL reader programs, such as the one on the SEC’s Website. “Companies are hung up on the fact that it doesn’t look exactly like the PDF version of their financials,” says Gary Purnhagen, an XBRL consultant in New York.

Now whether that’s true or not, it highlights one of the contentious issues with ‘interactive data’: Read the rest of this entry »