XBRL For Dummies by Charles Hoffman

Author:Charles Hoffman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Published: 2010-03-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Evaluating Different Approaches to Implementing XBRL

In This Chapter

Implementing XBRL using different strategies

Discovering the right approach for you

Examining the realities that drive your decision

You already know what XBRL is. (If you don’t, see Chapter 1.) You know you want to do something, but you’re not sure what. You could use some clarification on your options for making use of XBRL. Guess what: You’re in the right place.

This chapter covers the different approaches to implementing XBRL so that you can look at your specific environment and pick the approach that is right for you. We inventory the various approaches, breaking them into categories. We explain each approach and tell you their pros and cons. We don’t tell you which approach is best for you: That decision is your job.

There is no right or wrong answer to implementing, or not implementing, XBRL. There are only mismatches between your desired result and the path you take. In this chapter, we help you understand the different paths and what is at the end of these paths. That way, you can decide what’s right for you and your organization.

The Many Ways to Implement XBRL

We take all the different approaches to implementing XBRL and group them into categories. Here are the fundamental approaches that you can generally employ to implement XBRL:

Do nothing. Taking no action is, of course, an action.

Outsource the task of generating XBRL to an XBRL service provider.

Bolt on the ability to generate or receive XBRL to an existing process.

Purchase XBRL-supporting software that you can use with an existing or new process.

Integrate XBRL into your existing business systems.

Create entirely new systems to fully leverage what XBRL has to offer, unconstrained by legacy systems.

You most likely have a lot of different systems, and you’ll therefore probably be taking a lot of different approaches. Using only a one-size-fits-all general approach is unlikely to be right for every department, business system, and process of an organization. Each unique situation typically calls for a different approach. (We don’t talk about software applications here. Chapter 14 has information on vendors who can help fulfill your needs from a software or services perspective.)

Do nothing

Doing nothing is always a potential option. If you’re mandated by someone else to provide them with XBRL-formatted information, it’s hard to get around that. In that case, doing nothing may not be a viable option. But if someone else isn’t requiring you to implement XBRL, you may be able to just do nothing. Of course, doing nothing is easy, but you may miss the boat and be left in the wake by your competitors who are leveraging what XBRL has to offer.

Doing nothing does have its costs. If you took Economics 101, you may remember the concept of opportunity losses. If your competition gains efficiencies from XBRL and you don’t, it may have an impact on you.

Outsource

Another approach to meeting a requirement to provide XBRL is to outsource the whole deal. This approach is similar to the bolt-on approach (see the next section) in that the approach supplements an existing process.

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