August 2015 Newsletter

On August 19, the SEC Chair Mary Jo White, in a letter to Senators Mark Warner and Mike Crapo, reiterated SEC support for inline XBRL and noted that the Commission is developing recommendations for SEC consideration to allow filers to submit XBRL data inline as part of their filing, rather than filing XBRL as an exhibit. The statement was in response to a letter from the Senators of July 21 which requested an update on the consideration of inline XBRL as a means to continue the SEC’s work to modernize corporate disclosure. This is good news for public companies, as a single filing can be less costly and time-intensive; and good news for the XBRL community, confirming the value of structured, open data standards.

The Data Transparency Coalition has written a good analysis of the situation which you can find here: http://www.datacoalition.org/sec-commits-to-human-and-machine-readable-format-that-could-fix-agencys-open-data-problems/ and has posted the individual letters.

Read the letter from Chair White: http://www.datacoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/WARNER-XBRL-ES153568-Response-1.pdf

Read the letter from Senators Crapo and Warner: http://www.datacoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Warner-Crapo-letter-on-XBRL.pdf

The SEC issued a press release announcing that the Commission was considering a rule proposal requiring companies to adopt clawback policies on executive compensation. The company’s compensation recovery policy would be required to be filed as an exhibit to their Exchange Act annual report in XBRL format.

Read SEC release http://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2015-136.html

XBRL US submitted a comment letter on August 11 responding to the SEC’s request for comment on their Investment Company Reporting Modernization proposal which would replace certain investment company reports and would require the use of structured data to improve access to data for investors. The proposal recommends XML versus XBRL; XBRL US’ letter explains why XBRL is the more appropriate standard for financial data reporting.

Read letter here: http://xbrl.us/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/XBRL-US-Letter-on-SEC-Investment-Co-Modernization-File-No.-S7-08-15.pdf.

Read SEC proposal here: https://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/2015/33-9776.pdf

XBRL US and an alliance of five companies – Merrill Corporation, RDG Filings, RR Donnelley, Vintage (a Division of PR Newswire), and Workiva Inc. – announced the joint formation of the XBRL US Center for Data Quality to improve the utility of XBRL. Through the Center, a Committee has been established to develop freely available rules and guidance for public companies.

Read about the Center http://xbrl.us/data-quality/center/

XBRL US announced the start of the first public exposure period for rules developed by the Data Quality Committee. The Committee 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. The public exposure period ends September 14. Public company preparers, corporate data intermediaries and users are invited to review and comment on rules.

Participate in the Public Review http://publicreview.xbrl.us

Representatives from U.S. Treasury, the Small Business Administration, the FDIC, the Maryland Association of CPAs and other data standards experts spoke on the first of a 3-part webinar series to provide practical implementation guidance and real world examples on how the DATA Act will be implemented.

Listen to the replay http://xbrl.us/events/data-act-webinar-for-government-agencies/

Regional XBRL workshops are underway this year with a May event that was held in New York and the next workshop scheduled for San Francisco, October 1-2. Each workshop features an intensive review of best practice topics covering calculations, signage, required values, dimensions and more, in an exercise-driven format with classroom discussion. Instructors in San Francisco include representatives from Deloitte, the FASB, KPMG and PwC.

Learn more and register for San Francisco http://xbrl.us/workshop
Sign up to get news about the Atlanta workshop workshop@xbrl.us

XBRL International announced top-name keynotes including Kenneth Goldman, CFO of Yahoo!, Adam Farkas, Executive Director, European Banking Authority and Rob Kuipers, National Director, Dutch SBR Program. The conference will be held at the Scandic Copenhagen and will be covering important topics such as CRD IV, Solvency II and Standard Business Reporting.

Learn more: http://conference.xbrl.org

Certent is holding regional training sessions with CPE in Minneapolis on August 26 and Denver on August 28 covering taxonomy changes and other XBRL topics.

Learn more http://xbrl.us/home/category/member/certent/

Workiva is holding their annual user conference at the Hyatt Regency Orlando, Sept.14–17, bringing together Wdesk users, reporting professionals, and industry thought leaders for networking, best practice sharing, and industry discussions.

Learn more http://xbrl.us/events/4th-annual-workivatec-user-conference/