Components of a Financial Data Standard

Campbell Pryde, President and CEO, XBRL US

UPC codes. Shipping containers. Most people understand that the introduction of these kinds of standards revolutionized an existing process, making it better, faster, cheaper, by establishing a single method of doing something that is used by many. UPC codes made it possible to track purchasing habits worldwide. Shipping containers dramatically reduced the cost and time involved in shipping goods cross-country. Financial data standards can be similarly revolutionary – reducing processing costs, enabling automation and greater timeliness, providing for validation checks to improve accuracy.

How to cut $billions out of government spending

The Australian government and business saves $1.1 billion every year thanks to a program introduced seven years ago that brought financial data standards into the business to government reporting process. Translated to the American economy, which has a GDP 10 times the size of Australia, the adoption of the right format, information and identifiers – a financial data standard – has the potential to create $11 billion in savings across the US economy.

Pension fund reporting – a process ripe for standardization

Every once in awhile a data collection process comes along that is ripe for standardization – the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Form 5500 Annual Report for pension fund data is one such system. The DOL’s Employee Benefits Securities Administration (EBSA) published proposal to modernize the data collection process of the annual report and corresponding schedules, with an eye towards giving data users the ability to perform better analysis of individual plans, multi-plan comparisons and trends; aid the agencies efforts at enforcement and at monitoring compliance issues; assist auditors; and provide new research opportunities.

Inline XBRL is not just for financial statements – make way for corporate actions.

Inline XBRL could just tip the scale towards the adoption of standards in corporate actions.