IASCF and European Central Banks showcase their XBRL project

9 November 2005

The European Committee of Central Balance Sheet Data Offices (ECCBSO) and the International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation (IASCF) XBRL Team are pleased to announce the release of their website showcasing their joint XBRL project.

The ECCBSO was set up in 1987 on the initiative of notable European central banks (including Austria, Germany, France, Portugal, Spain, Belgium and Centrale dei Bilanci of Italy) and the European Commission.

The ECCBSO Third Working Group has developed a reduced standard format in MS Excel, based on IFRS. This format was developed as a standard IFRS-based questionnaire representing the minimum set of items that can be collected as the common information available to Central Balance Sheet Data Offices. The format was developed with the ultimate aim of reducing the reporting burden on European Entities.

To see a full description of the project which created 39 instances from the real company data of European corporations (using an extension to the IFRS-GP taxonomy), please see: http://www.xbrl-ifrs.org/eccbso/.

The Showcase website documents all the steps in the process of developing the standard format, extending the IFRS taxonomy, creating the instances and analysing the captured data. It provides a detailed explanation of the challenges faced and an objective assessment of whether XBRL is suitable for the ECCBSO purposes.

We recommend the site to anyone contemplating the task of instance creation using XBRL and MS Excel.

Many thanks to the Central Banks who make up the CBSO Working Group III, the IASCF XBRL team and to the software vendors -- DecisionSoft, UBmatrix, Fujitsu and Rivet Software for the use of their tools.

Manuel Ortega

Head of Central Balance Sheet Data Office Division

Chairman of III Working Group of the ECCBSO

President of Strategic Commission of XBRL Spain

Josef Macdonald

IASCF XBRL Practice Fellow

Chairman IFRS Taxonomy Working Group

Chairman XBRL International Domain Working Group

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