About
The XBRL Language
XBRL (extensible Business Reporting Language) is the open international standard for digital business reporting that has been especially developed to support the communication and exchange of information and data (both financial and non-financial) between the different parties, users, and stakeholder in the economy. XBRL provides a language in which reporting terms can be authoritatively defined. Those terms can then be used to uniquely represent the contents of financial statements or other kinds of compliance, performance and business reports. XBRL relies on the use of the concept of tagging of reporting elements (taxonomies) to reflect the existing descriptions and relationships between the different reporting elements. XBRL provides the readers and users with comprehensible and easily readable material, that both a person and computer can understand, such that whenever these elements are referred to, they render specific expressions of semantics and relations pertaining to the reported elements. Information in reports prepared using the XBRL standard is interchangeable between different information systems in entirely different organisations. Moreover, XBRL is an XML based language (extensible markup language), and is considered a standard language stemming from the global agreement to unify its concepts and terminology under the purview of XBRL International. XBRL is in use across the world for the fast, accurate and effective exchange and distribution of financial statements, regulatory filings, compliance reports and a host of other vital business information.
XBRL International
XBRL International is a non-profit global consortium that manages and promotes the technical specifications that allow the digital preparation, exchange and consumption of financial, performance and compliance reports. The organization consists of a consortium of nearly 650 entities and organizations from both the public (government) and private sectors from all around the world. These entities and organizations collaborate together to benefit from and improve the XBRL language as a global business standard language, primarily to promote and enhance the efficiency of the reporting and data exchange process in the financial markets. This in turn will help improve the accountability and transparency of business performance globally, and will improve the accuracy of financial data and information accessible to the investors and stakeholders in time.
The Capital Markets Authority is the first regulator in the State of Kuwait to become a member of XBRL International.
Main Features
- Provides high flexibility in the exchange of various financial and non-financial data & information
- Relies on standardizing the reporting elements by coding the various relationships, descriptions and definitions identified for the different reporting elements, ensuring that the taxonomy sets is comprehensible and readable for both the reader and computers in a clear and easy manner
- Provides the ability to create new reporting elements and classifications to fulfil the requirements of regulators and related stakeholders, which reflects the flexibility associated with this business language
- Provides the ability to conduct the required comparisons, studies, and analysis, in an efficient electronic way by various regulatory authorities as well as consumers of such information
- Ensures timely dissemination and sharing of the filed data and information to all stakeholders and interested parties, while ensuring high levels of credibility and reliability on such shared data and information
Who Else Uses XBRL?
The Countries highlighted in blue are adopting XBRL reporting language