Too few finance professionals have sufficient knowledge of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) – a tool designed for the digital mmunication and presentation of financial and business data – which is why FEE (The Federation of European Acuntants) and two of its member bodies, AA (the Association of Chartered Certified Acuntants) and Royal NIVRA (Koninklijk Nederlands Instituut van Registeracuntants), recently anised a roundtable to raise awareness of XBRL.

The roundtable entitled “XBRL - the impact on acuntants and auditors” built on a recently published FEE policy statement. The FEE Policy Statement briefly explains XBRL, outlines its benefits and what auditors, acuntants and other stakeholders will need to do in order to make a suess of XBRL and ntribute to the current simplification exercise. FEE has monitored the developments regarding XBRL for some time and this policy statement is FEE’s first initiative in respect of XBRL.

The well attended Roundtable focused on enhancing the awareness of acuntants, auditors and other stakeholders on the use of XBRL in the financial reporting chain. The key note speaker, Jon Rowden, Pricewaterhouseopers XBRL Assurance Leader, Chairman ICAEW XBRL Group and Member IAASB XBRL Task Force and the other speakers all made extremely valuable ntributions debating about the next steps for XBRL and their impact on financial reporting and auditing. FEE therefore looks forward to ntinue to perform more detailed work in the area of XBRL in the future, for instance in relation to the expectation gap that may exist in respect of assurance on XBRL generated data.

XBRL has been developed to allow users throughout the world to easily aess timely aurate and relevant financial information from both world-wide and local anisations. However, although internal use and basic forms of digital reporting are mmonly aepted - with most people having knowledge of PDF and HTML documents -  very few practitioners seem to be fully aware of the benefits of XBRL, acrding to a study  produced by AA entitled XBRL: the Views of Stakeholders.

Speaking at the event on 26 February 2010 Philip Johnson, FEE Deputy-President and Chair of the FEE XBRL Task Force, pointed out that "the business case for XBRL should be made more effectively since it has the potential to be extremely beneficial to numerous stakeholders”.

The European mmission published in February 2009 a nsultation Paper on Review of the Acunting Directives: Cutting Acunting Burden for Small Business / Review of the Acunting Directives, which is supportive of an “only once” filing system facilitated by e-ernment portals and enurages Member States to develop this further.

This is an enuraging step, supported by a European Parliament’s resolution issued in September 2009 calling for the delivery of mmon reporting standards using a multi purpose format such as XBRL. It is hoped that the new EU Institutions will pursue these efforts.

“XBRL has the potential to rce sts of filing, to facilitate the re-use of electronic data stored, as well as to speed up the preparation and increase the auracy, integrity and reliability of data”, stated Jan Pasmooij, Manager ICT Knowledge Center at NIVRA and Chairman of XBRL Europe and herlands. Jan Pasmooij added that “it is time for Small and Medium sized Practitioners to get ready and understand the need to invest in XBRL”.

This was echoed by Aziz Tayyebi, AA’s Financial Reporting Officer, who mmented after the event that “it is important for Europe to take a more harmonised stance regarding XBRL". "While some European untries have taken an active approach to XBRL reporting requirements, it is important for the European capital markets as a whole not to be left behind, and to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the next generation of financial reporting technology, by promoting a European regulatory framework, similar to the requirements currently put in place in the US by the Securities and Exchange mmission" Tayyebi ncluded.

Participants agreed that the main obstacle to widespread use of XBRL lies in the lack of knowledge of the technology as well as the time necessary to learn its functioning and the resources within practitioners’ anisations to undertake its implementation.

Christine Helliar, -author of the AA study, stressed that the “International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) should mplete its XBRL project and issue an ISA as soon as possible, to provide guidance on what auditors should be required to do for XBRL filings to give users nfidence in the data”.