The Office of Interactive Disclosure

What is Interactive Data?

Many believe that interactive data represents the future of financial reporting for filers, analysts, and investors. Using the power of Internet-based technology, interactive data promises real, tangible benefits for both public companies and investors. In the world of financial reporting, "interactive data" is made possible through the computer language, XBRL, or eXtensible Business Reporting Language. XBRL is currently in partial or full use in more than 13 countries around the world.

XBRL Benefits for Investors

Through an XBRL viewer, XBRL offers near real-time access to financial reports, in many cases within minutes of public companies filing them with the SEC. Currently, investors who seek specific information from a company's financial reports must comb through blocks of text to locate the information that they need. With XBRL, investors can create their own customized reports, automatically generating financial ratios, graphs, and charts depicting important information from financial statements. Information including earnings, expenses, cash flows, assets, and liabilities can be analyzed and compared across competing public companies. This should enhance the ability of investors to make informed investment decisions.

Moreover, interactive data software like XBRL can take much of the work out of manipulating financial data by eliminating cumbersome tasks such as copying and pasting rows of revenues and expenses into a spreadsheet. This can free investors to focus more of their energy on their investments' financial results through visual representations that make the numbers easier to understand.

Benefits for Public Companies

Public companies currently file financial statements with the SEC in either ASCII or HTML. These types of filings produce data, but do not offer the flexibility to view, compare, or manipulate data in a graphical fashion as is offered in XBRL. Using interactive data technology, XBRL could enable public companies to shift resources away from cumbersome manual reporting to an automated approach that saves time and money and produces more standardized, accurate results.

http://www.sec.gov/about/offices/oid.shtml