The SEC is committed, more than ever, to making information broadly accessible and easier for investors to understand. XBRL is a standards-based method with which users can prepare, publish (in a variety of formats), exchange and analyze financial statements and the information they contain.

What is XBRL?

XBRL complements XML, which is the universal format for data on the Web that uses tags (identifiers) to describe and deliver data from an application. XBRL allows accountants and other financial professionals and regulatory organizations to identify — by a tag — items unique to business information, such as financial statements. Once an item or piece of financial information is tagged, it can be used consistently throughout various and diverse reports that contain that particular item or piece of financial information. That's because the item can easily be read by other applications.

For example, by identifying (tagging) financial data with XBRL one time in, say, an Excel spreadsheet, users can digitally publish and/or reliably import this information to a balance sheet, income statement, statement of stockholders' equity, statement of cash flow, and so forth), or for use on other compliance, marketing, or communications purposes.

How does XBRL affect the financial community?

It gives the financial community a standards-based method to prepare, publish in a variety of formats, exchange and analyze financial statements of both public and private concerns and the information they contain – across all software formats and technologies, including the Internet.

It improves and speeds up access to financial information without requiring a change to existing accounting standards or the disclosure of any additional information.

It leverages the efficiencies of the Internet as today's primary source of financial information (with more than 80 per cent of major US public companies providing some kind of financial disclosure on their websites) and makes searches more accurate and relevant.

It provides accurate and reliable information to assist investors and those in the financial services industry in making informed decisions, by allowing financial information to be available freely, quickly, consistently and transparently on the Internet.

It enhances distribution of information without losing data integrity, since XBRL allows the same financial information to be "reused" for different purposes.

What are the key benefits of XBRL?

Reliability. Since financial data is tagged just once, the quality and integrity of the data is increased. There is little margin for error across financial statements and other uses because, once tagged, information that is transferred to another financial statement does not change. There is no need to enter financial information more than once, reducing the risk of data entry error.

Flexibility. XBRL provides a framework that may be used by all companies, but which is flexible enough to be customized for industry needs as well as an organization's internal needs. Information can be used and received in a format preferred by the user.

Efficiency. Because the information is tagged once and only once, documents can be prepared more time-and-cost efficiently, financial information retrieved and shared more quickly and easily, and published online or sent to a financial printer, or uploaded faster.

Cost Reduction. The efficiency of XBRL reduces the cost of analyzing and reporting business information, which reduces the cost, and increases the speed, of preparing and distributing statements and other information – in addition to the cost of errors in financial data.

What is RR Donnelley doing about XBRL, and how does one convert to or adapt this e-language for financial statements?

All indications are that XBRL could well be the wave of the future of e-communicating financial information — whether to government agencies or the public, onto websites, or digitally to printers for hard-copy printing and distribution.

As a state-of-the-art communications solutions organization, RR Donnelley takes pride in staying on top of the latest technology that can produce our clients' financial documents more efficiently, effectively and economically. That's why we are members of the XBRL consortium, formed to promote and further refine XBRL.

Specially designed software will allow XBRL to be adapted to financial data. Many RR Donnelley communications solutions — including our composition system — are already XML-based. Because XBRL is a subset of XML, adapting XBRL is a matter of RR Donnelley professionals collaborating with our clients to XBRL-tag their data.