Who Would Use XBRL and Why

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Corporations

Since XBRL was designed to handle corporate financial information, it logically follows that corporations would be one of the primary users. These days most major corporations provide some sort of company financial information via the Internet. Both the corporations providing this information and the investors who are receiving it need an easy way to do so. XBRL provides a method via which financial information can be delivered to end users quickly and easily.

The main benefit to the corporation is that the information can be entered once and maintained in a standard format. Required forms and documents can then be automatically generated from the XBRL formatted document. This prevents the duplication of financial data and thereby helps prevent errors and inconsistencies.

 

Investors, Accountants, and Other Users of Corporate Financial Data

Having a standardized and machine-readable format is invaluable to consumers of corporate financial information. XBRL provides just such a format. Without it, consumers of the data would be stuck trying to negotiate a format for a data feed with each corporation they wished to receive data from or would be forced to manually enter data obtained from a non-machine-readable source. In addition to the lessening the time and expense involved with either of the alternatives, XBRL also helps prevent the errors they can cause. By having a standardized format, developers can share code designed to read XBRL or purchase tools with XBRL support built in. On top of preventing errors, being able to use previously tested XBRL tools also increases productivity and brings the data to those who might otherwise not have the time, money, know-how to retrieve it on their own.