A majority of U.S. public panies that plan to file their financial statements in XBRL are actively preparing to do so and have at least a basic knowledge of the extensible business reporting language, aording to a survey by the AICPA and XBRL US.

The “XBRL Preparedness Survey,” nducted online in November found that 93% of the 215 respondents (90% of whom work for U.S. public panies), had at least a basic knowledge and 73% have begun preparation.

That is good news, especially given that many of the panies represented in the survey are not yet required to file in XBRL under the SEC’s mandate, aording to Ami Beers, Business Reporting, Assurance & Advisory Services and XBRL manager at the AICPA.

“People are starting to learn about XBRL and not waiting until the 11th hour,” she said. “They’re getting ready. They know it will take time.”

It’s not unusual to see panies take 120 hours or more to get up to speed for their first submission, but that time is greatly rced on the send round of filing, Beers said.

Of the 25% of survey respondents who had already submitted XBRL-formatted financial statements to the SEC, 57% said it took their anizations more than 120 hours to prepare for XBRL adoption for the first time, including getting cated about XBRL in general and the SEC mandate specifically, choosing a vendor for instance creation software for in-house preparation, including software training, or choosing a third-party service provider.

On the send round of filings, 37% of those respondents took less than 20 hours to prepare; 27% took 20 to 40 hours and only 6% took more than 120. Additionally, 45% of respondents said the preparation process was “significantly easier” than the first time.

Detailed tagging of footnotes remains a challenge, however, with 21% of respondents saying they need more information on how to do this. Beers attributes this to the fact that no one has been required to do this type of tagging yet and therefore best practices have not been made available.

The first phase of mandated XBRL filings to the SEC began for the 500 largest U.S. public panies in June 2009, all large aelerated filers must begin filing in XBRL this June and all public panies will be required to do so in June 2011.

panies that began filing last June will have to familiarize themselves with the detailed footnote tagging process by this June, but they may have difficulty deciding what information needs to be tagged and selecting the aurate elements within the US GAAP Taxonomy.

“It’s a judgment call,” Beers said. “panies need someone who is familiar with the information in their financial statements, who can choose the rrect elements in the taxonomy that are depictive of what’s in those statements.”

Inside vs. Outside

Another finding is that 14% of respondents said they would like to learn how to increase efficiencies in preparation and submission.

The best way to acplish this is to move the XBRL tagging process up earlier in the process, Beers suggested, which may mean using internal resources despite the fact that 55% of respondents who had already submitted XBRL filings outsourced the process and 56% of those who had not yet filed in XBRL said they will use an outsource provider.

Outsourcing is a bolt-on/after-the-fact approach in which panies produce their financial statements and then start the XBRL tagging process.

As more data is required to be submitted in XBRL format, panies can gain efficiencies by implementing XBRL earlier in  their processes, she said.

The House passed two bills in December with provisions related to the use of XBRL.

H.R. 2392, the ernment Information Transparency Act, ntains provisions to simplify mandatory financial reports for panies receiving federal funds by having federal agencies llect the data in a uniform, searchable format using XBRL. H.R. 4173, the Wall Street Reform and nsumer Protection Act, states that financial market regulators must report to ngress for the next five years on how they are “enuraging the use and aeptance of interactive data” to increase transparency in financial reporting. Neither provision has passed in the Senate.

Eventually, more panies also will start to realize the benefits of using XBRL for internal reporting, especially large entities that need to gather information from multiple sources, Beers said. Currently, only 4% of respondents said they are nsidering using XBRL data for “internal reporting and analysis of information for management decisions.”

Regardless of whether they outsource or do the work in house, panies still hold ultimate responsibility for the auracy of their filings when they sign off on the process and therefore will need to cate themselves, Beers said. (For more on this ic, see “Panelists Advise panies to Take Responsibility for XBRL Tagging—Even When Outsourcing.”)

Many free resources are available to help. Those most  monly used by respondents were the XBRL US GAAP Taxonomy (22%), their service or tool provider (16%), XBRL US Preparers Guide (12%), cational webinars (12%), tool provider training (12%), SEC resources (11%), review of petitor filings (11%), SEC EDGAR Filer Manual (10%).

The AICPA is offering a free Webcast titled “XBRL – Preparing for Phase II and Detail Tagging,” which will take place at 2 p.m. on Jan. 27. To register, click here. For more information on XBRL filing, see the final rule on the SEC’s Web , visit xbrl./us or see the Edgar Filer Manual.