Demonstrating Retrieval of Financial Information in XBRL

Abstract

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has
upgraded the existing system of Electronic Data Gathering,
Analysis, and Retrieval (EDGAR), to Interactive Data
Electronic Applications (IDEA) platform, using eXtensible
Business Reporting Language (XBRL). In January 2009, the
SEC issued its final mandate for XBRL adoption and the
conversion target dates for all firms. This conversion
enables users to retrieve listed companies’ financial
statement information at two levels, document and the data
element, compared to the document level alone under the
existing system of EDGAR. Beneficial to all users, this
change is particularly important to resource-strapped
entities such as small businesses, and universities. The
result is user friendly for students researching information.
With simply the industry standard tool of Microsoft Excel,
without expensive proprietary XBRL modules, detailed
information is now available, quickly, efficiently and at
minimum cost. This paper explains the basic concept of
XBRL and demonstrates the ease of the retrieval process in
Microsoft Excel.