EXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL).

[Mr. M. GOVINDARAJAN]

                        Ministry of Corporate Affairs (‘MCA’ for short) put open to public for comments on Exposure Draft on XBRL taxonomy for Commercial Industrial (C&I) entitles by 30^th April, 2011.   The MCA received comments and based on the comments MCA finalized the Taxonomy and Business Rules for Commercial and Industrial entities for filing their Balance sheet and Profit and Loss Account.    MCA has mandated certain class of companies to file balance sheets and profit and loss account along with Directors’ and Auditors’ Report for the year 2010-11 onwards by using XBRL taxonomy.

                        The following companies are required to file the Financial Statements in XBRL form from the year 2010-11:

• All companies listed in India and their Indian subsidiaries;
• All companies having a paid up capital of Rs.5 crore and above;
• All companies having turnover of Rs.100 crore and above.

However banking companies, insurance companies, power companies and Non Banking Financial Corporation (NBFCs) are exempted for the time being.

                        The taxonomy and business rules, validity tools etc., are required for preparation of the above documents in XBRL format as per the existing Schedule VI and Accounting Standards notified under the Companies (Accounting Standards) Rules, 2006.  MCA portal is having filing module from July 2011. 

                        Additional fee exemption is also granted to the companies who are required to file financial statements in XBRL form.   The companies whose balance sheets are adopted in AGM held before 30.09.2011 are permitted to file up to 30.09.2011 without any additional filing fee.   However, where companies hold the Annual General Meeting in the month of September 2011, they will file the balance sheet within 30 days from the date of adoption in the General Meeting as per Section 220 of the Companies Act.

                        What is XBRL?  It is the language for the electronic communication of business and financial data, which is open and revolutionizing business reporting around the world.  In a very simplistic term, it can be compared to a bar code.  Each item of data is provided with an identification code or’ tag’, unlike a standard internet page or a printed document where this is treated as a ‘block of text’.   Tagging allows data to be treated ‘intelligently’.  It is developed through a process of collaboration between accountants and technologists from all over the world form XBRL International having more than 650 members.

                        This software offers major benefits at all stages of business reporting and analysis.  This is much beneficial to the company in automation, cost saving, faster and more reliable and accurate handling of data, improved analysis and in better quality of information and decision making.   It is a flexible language intending to support all current aspects of reporting in different countries and industries.  It can be adjusted to meet particular business requirements even at the individual organization level.

                        It eliminates the manual transfer of data thereby reducing the possibility of error.  Data can be reused in this system.   It saves time and increases productivity.   Information can be accessed and collected from any point and across the globe with relative ease.   The data can be validated for consistency and inter relationships between various data elements.   It allows for increased transparency of financial information to stake holders at a granular level.  Once data is gathered in XBRL, different types of reports using varying subsets of the data can be produced with minimum effort.   A company finance division could quickly and reliably generate internal management reports, financial statements for publication, tax and other regulatory filings, as well as credit reports of lenders. 

                        Taxonomy may be industry specific or company specific.   The taxonomies are basically binding over the regulatory needs and principles, which should be followed by all companies.  

                        The following are some of the ways to create financial statements in XBRL:

• XBRL aware accounting software products are becoming available which will support the export of data in XBRL form.   These tools allow users to map charts of accounts and other structures to XBRL tags;
• Statements can be mapped in to XBRL using XBRL software tools designed for this purpose;
• Data from accounting databases can be extracted in XBRL format.  It is not strictly necessary for an accounting software vendor to use XBRL; third party products can achieve the transformation of the data to XBRL;
• Applications can transform in particular formats into XBRL.   The route which an individual company may take will depend on its requirements and accounting software and systems it currently uses, among other factors.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India has developed the taxonomy for general purpose financial statements for commercial and industrial sector.  SEBI has introduced Clause 52 in the listing agreement in which listed companies are required to file information only through CFDS (Corporate Filing and Dissemination System), an XBRL enabled common platform.  Introducing XBRL based processes and applications can have significant effect and benefits and can directly impact the way companies manage their business.