First wave of mandated XBRL filings arrive at the SEC

It’s filing season and quarterly reports are flowing into the SEC in the newly mandated XBRL format, which is computer readable. How is it going? No major complaints, though a couple of issues have understandably surfaced for companies filing for the first time in this format. One has to do with how the XBRL computer code gets aesthetically rendered into human-readable web pages. So much attention has been focused on how to create XBRL data that the issue of how to render it for human consumption has been overlooked by most companies.

Companies are required to also post their XBRL files on their corporate websites for the public. The problem companies are discovering is that various web browsers and the various XBRL viewers don’t all render the information the exact same way. The information is accurate, but can be inconsistent in what and how it is displayed.

Read more here.