Recipe for XBRL Success in the UK
XBRL UK has two new resources for anyone looking to better understand how XBRL has been used to such great effect in the UK. With some 1.9 million companies filling accounts and tax returns in XBRL each year, the UK XBRL programme is extremely successful, and it has been done in a way that is both very cost effective for filers and beneficial to those interested in utilising structured corporate data for analysis.
As we have highlighted in the past, Companies House is now publishing data in XBRL free-of-charge for investors and the public. This white paper describes the main features of the UK XBRL programmes and the key factors behind their success. There is also a primer on Inline XBRL that provides a simple explanation of how it works, its benefits and its use in practice. iXBRL, as it’s also known, is the XBRL modular specification underpinning the UK effort. It is now also in use in Japan, Denmark and Australia and is now also under consideration by the US SEC. It allows XBRL tags to be wrapped around facts within ordinary web pages, aiding human and computer reading.
