XBRL releases Global Common Data (GCD) taxonomies to represent standard business reporting information

31 October 2005

XBRL International has released the Global Common Data (GCD) taxonomy set as a Public Working Draft.  The GCD taxonomies represent a range of information commonly used in business reporting.  This includes entity information (such as names, identifying codes, operational and legal status, contacts, websites, officers, third party agents ), instance doc information (version, unique identifiers, authors, contacts, revision history), reporting periods (including standard financial reporting dates) and general purpose information (including countries, languages, exchanges, currencies and ways of representing addresses and phone numbers).  

The GCD taxonomy set is expected to be an important building block in many jurisdictional and other taxonomies.  It has been granted Acknowledged status by XBRL International, confirming its compliance with the latest XBRL Specification. 

An entry for the GCD taxonomy which gives access to its full set of files is on the XBRL International Acknowledged taxonomy page at http://www.xbrl.org/FRTAcknowledged/.   A schematic overview gives links to the main GCD components, an explanatory document provides essential reading for prospective users and reviewers, while a zip file contains the full set of taxonomy files plus the explanatory document and an Excel versions. 

A number of countries are proposing to use the GCD in their jurisdictional taxonomies, which will provide examples of its use.  Feedback on the GCD is welcome.  XBRL members may provide this direct to the International Domain e-Group.  Non-members should send comments to domain@xbrl.org.

Announced by

Peter Calvert

XBRL International

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