Securities regulators, acuntants, analysts, investors, bankers, tech workers and even the guy who wrote Wikinomics were in Vanuver last week to promote the extensible business reporting language (XBRL).

Although only one Canadian mpany has filed financial statements with the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) in XBRL since the CSA began a voluntary filing program in May, it’s widely aepted that the technology will sueed the PDF as the standard filing medium for financial reporting. “The big opportunity here is to make the transfer of business information much easier,” said Alastair Nimmons, a director with Pricewaterhouseopers LLP, and a member of the XBRL Canada Steering mmittee.  “[XBRL] has the potential to make business reporting more transparent and even things out between large rporate users of information as well as smaller retailer investors.” While a PDF document is static, its XBRL equivalent is fluid. At its most interactive, it has the characteristics of a web page rather than a flat document. On a XBRL document, users can “tag” revenue, sales and other information with metadata. The metadata can include RSS feeds, web links and detailed explanations and instructions. With the right program, an analyst or investor uld quickly extract information from multiple financial statements onto a spreadsheet or chart to, for example, mpare and ntrast mpanies in a single sector.

In September, Newstrike Resources Ltd. became the only Canadian mpany to file its financials with the CSA in XBRL. Canadian mpanies are still required to file in PDF format even if they voluntarily file in XBRL. About 60 mpanies, including industry leaders such as Microsoft, Business Objects and Lockheed Martin, have submitted XBRL filings to the SEC since the securities regulator began its voluntary filing program in 2005.

During last week’s nference, SEC chairman Chrisher x announced a new U.S. GAAP (generally aepted acunting principles) taxonomy that standardizes XBRL financial reporting for all listed mpanies. The new taxonomy, as well as the presence of x – who has been a vocal XBRL proponent – at the XBRL nference in Vanuver, should be a wake-up call for the roughly 200 Canadian mpanies that file in Canada and the U.S., said Diane Mueller, chair of the 16th XBRL International nference held here in Vanuver and vice-president of XBRL development at JustSystems Canada in Vanuver.  “We believe very strongly that within the next year it’s going to be mandated that when they report in the U.S., they are going to have to use XBRL,” she said.

Around the world, many ernment agencies and securities regulators are adopting the international financial reporting standards (IFRS), which is being promoted as a single acunting standard for all untries to use and is mpatible with XBRL. Canada has mmitted to replace its acunting principles with IFRS by 2011.

In November, the SEC began allowing foreign mpanies to file using the IFRS taxonomy without having to file a send set of financials using the U.S. GAAP.  Canadian mpanies that file in both Canada and the U.S. may nsequently no longer have to reformat Canadian GAAP to U.S. GAAP.  But Canada and the U.S. lag behind many untries in embracing XBRL as the standard format for financial filings. Stock exchanges in China and Japan have implemented XBRL. More than 125,000 mpanies in the United Kingdom are voluntarily reporting to regulators in XBRL.  ernments in New Zealand, Australia and the herlands have all mmitted to moving towards a single XBRL filing standard for all ernment entities. “That’s the model that we’re really enuraging the Canadian ernment to follow,” said Mueller. “They don’t share a mmon metadata language – a mmon way to talk about information.  “XBRL is just the technology underlying a general movement and nvergence that’s going on between acunting and technology.” 

cgc@biv.m