Another year ends, another decade begins. And in our inaugural post on the Last Mile of Finance Blog, we’d like to add yet another “top 10″ list into the mix.

The first round of XBRL-based financial filings has already begun. The largest public companies filed their first financial statements in June of 2009. Many more will follow this June, and by June of 2011 all public companies will be required to tag their financial reports with XBRL meta-data prior to filing with the SEC.

If your finance department is tasked with achieving XBRL compliance, there are some things you can do to streamline the process and ensure a successful Year 1 or Year 2 filing.

1.         Get Educated

If you’re just bringing XBRL in-house for the first time, get professional help. There are a variety of free resources online – including the XBRL US Preparer’s Guide (although dated, it still offers a great starting point), and the XBRL US Educational Filer Series – that can get your team headed in the right direction. But you’ll need someone with credentials and past compliance experience to tell you what you need to know – and what you don’t.

2.         Start Early

For first-time filers, begin now. You should be prepared to perform an XBRL dry run by mid-April, testing your team’s capabilities and validating both your mapping and extension taxonomy. The SEC has posted a helpful list of their own observations, after reviewing the first year of filings, here.

3.         Create a Cross-Functional Compliance Team

Individuals from finance, IT, and your compliance department should be represented on a cross-functional team tasked with identifying and evaluating software vendors, documenting and streamlining the report creating and tagging process, and performing the initial mapping and identification of extensions.

4.         Recycle

For your initial XBRL planning, start with a 10-K. The goal should be to create a re-usable mapping and extension taxonomy that can be re-used from period to period and beyond. In the second year of compliance, the number of items to be tagged can increase exponentially: from an average of 300 to somewhere around 3,000 tags required. But if your initial extension taxonomy is developed correctly, the effort in year two should compare to (or possibly decrease from) the initial filing.

5.         Embrace an Iterative “Map-Extend-Tag-Validate” Cycle

The sooner you can validate your mapping and extension taxonomies, the better. Start with a small part of your financial statement (the face of your financials, for example), and work out from there. Remember to first map to the existing US GAAP taxonomy, extend only where needed, and test your assumptions by tagging a disclosure. Validate early and often. Perform this cycle iteratively, one disclosure at a time.

6.         Embrace A Supply Chain Approach To Compliance

If SOX compliance taught us one thing, it is that the most successful implementations of XBRL compliance will have benefits extending beyond the Office of Finance. By embracing a supply-chain approach to XBRL compliance, your business can begin to gain actionable decision-support information that should make you more competitive in the marketplace. Start at the end – tagging your financial statements with XBRL – then follow the sources of pain and integrate XBRL into pre-reporting processes such as the financial close. The data you mine will make your business more nimble, and the time you save will go straight to the bottom line.

7.         Take the Embedded (not the Bolt-On) Approach to Compliance

There are basically two types of XBRL software vendors: “Bolt-On” solutions which allow your finance team to tag the final financial statement after it is produced, and “Embedded” solutions. Embedded tools like Trintech’s Unity Xtensible Financial Reporting solution provide workflow and process management features that allow the formatting, mapping and review/approval workflow to be automated using business rules. So your team can “tag once” and “publish often” – eliminating the manual and repetitive re-tagging efforts required with a Bolt-On tool.

8.         Assign A Point Person

You should have a point person responsible for keeping up-to-date on XBRL compliance issues after your first filing. XBRL is an evolving and dynamic language, and the capabilities and issues involved change frequently.

9.         Join A Club

There are several well-respected organizations committed to overseeing the development of the XBRL standard and communicating its benefits to the global financial community. Trintech has representatives on two of these committees – XBRL US and XBRL International.

10.      Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff

XBRL is new. You’ll be tempted to try and bite off more than you can – or need – to chew in your first year of compliance. The SEC is allowing businesses to ease into compliance in a phased manner over two years, and there are software vendors and consultants out there to help you get the lay of the land.

The new year brings new challenges … and new opportunities. Your XBRL compliance project will offer both – and the results will be worth it.