Issuers encouraged to use the rules to identify and resolve data quality errors in financials
XBRL US announced that it had published the second set of approved rules and guidance developed by the Data Quality Committee (DQC), which are now freely available for issuers to use to identify and correct errors in their filings. The effective date when software and service providers are expected to have incorporated the rules into their tools is January 1, 2017. The DQC, which is funded through the Center for Data Quality, is responsible for developing guidance and validation rules that can prevent or detect inconsistencies or errors in XBRL data filed with the SEC and focuses on data quality issues that adversely affect data analysis.
A total of twelve rules have been published which cover over 3,000 individual US GAAP concepts. The rules help SEC filers identify and address potential problem areas such as negative value errors, incorrect element relationships, the use of deprecated elements that are no longer supported, the inappropriate use of axes and members combinations, and erroneous use of dates. These are common problems for filers and correcting these errors can significantly improve the quality of a company’s filing. The Data Quality Committee conducted a study based on the first set of rules which demonstrated that companies that used the rules were able to correct errors and improve the quality of their financials through a 64% reduction in errors (See study results).
“With these additional rules just published, we expect the error reduction to be even higher for those companies that adhere to the Data Quality Rules”, said Campbell Pryde, President and CEO of XBRL US, “The rules are freely available and can be run through the XBRL US web site or through any number of XBRL software tools on the market.”
The Data Quality Committee has also recently published a 3rd set of proposed rules which have been released are out for public review and comment. SEC filers, data and XBRL software and service providers are encouraged to review the proposed rules and provide input.
Members of the XBRL US Center for Data Quality include Altova, the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), Certent, DataTracks, DisclosureNet, Merrill Corporation, P3 Data Systems, Vintage, a division of PR Newswire, and Workiva. For more information on the XBRL US Data Quality Committee and the Center for Data Quality, go to: http://xbrl.us/data-quality
Related resources:
- Review the final rule set
- See XBRL offerings certified to work with the Data Quality Rules
- Participate in the Public Review until December 13, 2016
- Check your company filing with Data Quality Rules for free
