xbrl for indian companies

What is XBRL?

Currently, financial statements or other information prepared in
Word, Excel or HTML formats can be read but not
automatically analyzed or processed according to the user’s
needs. For example, the word “Revenue” appears in many
places in the financial statements, but if the reader wants to
have all “Revenue” references and related information collated
in one place, they would need to do so manually. This is
because information is not machine-readable and needs to be
copy/pasted or keyed-in before it is used for analysis/decisionmaking
purposes.
XBRL enables source data to be tagged electronically, making
the data machine-readable. Thus, the user’s computer can
automatically extract the information without the need for
copy-pasting or keying-in. XBRL enables tagging of numbers,
quantitative data and textual information.
The benefits of XBRL go beyond compliance since any data
collation process can be streamlined using electronic tags.

Implications for Indian companies
Companies need to quickly gear-up to this new reporting
challenge and also to gain benefits from the broader business
uses of XBRL. Some of the key challenges that companies
might encounter as they adopt XBRL reporting are:
• Requirement of training staff to understand XBRL and how
it needs to be implemented including matters like timely
tagging and validation processes.
• The software tool to be used for the purpose of tagging.
• The first-time efforts involved in tagging and resolving
errors identified by validation checks.
• Smooth and timely closure of reporting within the

prescribed timelines.