XBRL or extensible Business Reporting Language is a globally accepted data standard for financial reporting and enables automatic movement of data from one incompatible system to the next, reducing the drudgery of preparing business reports. In the past, businesses created the information once and then reported it many times over, however, with XBRL based reporting, once the information is standardised at the data level it can then be reused an infinite amount of times for business reporting.

Deloitte shares the vision of the Federal Government’s Standard Business Reporting that business and government need to become more efficient in dealing with replicated information.

XBRL applications will deliver one set of accurate information which can be cut and diced according to business and government reporting needs.  This will lead to reduced effort, lower preparation costs and improved interaction with government.

Deloitte has conducted prototype testing of XBRL based solutions to prepare financial reports for a number of middle market clients. The results have shown that huge cost savings will occur for businesses, regulators and government by eliminating the repetition when reporting the same information more than once. XBRL can revolutionise the way the financial reporting community uses financial information.

The Deloitte pilot is a practical demonstration of the type of improvements that will be possible from Standard Business Reporting - announced by the Treasurer in August 2007. We are using the standard and developing a suite of applications which businesses can use in future to share business and financial related information with regulators, banks and other organisations.

The initial prototype testing of XBRL applications by Deloitte indicated processing time for the preparation of financial reports and regulatory returns could be reduced by up to 70%. Deloitte is an Australian leader in successfully applying this standard for financial reporting by developing tools to produce financial reports.