XBRL stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language.
It is being developed by an international non-profit consortium
of approximately 250 major companies, organisations and government agencies
as an open standard, free of licence fees.
Steering committee member organisations include Microsoft,
ACCPAC, Oracle, Deloitte & Touche, IBM, Hyperion, and the American Institute
of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).
The goal of the steering committee is to create a standard
specification for the automation of business information requirements, such
as preparing, sharing, and analysing financial reports and audit schedules.
The use of XBRL for creating financial statements will
do away with manual, repetitive, and error-prone duplication of statements
for different uses such as print and Web by automating data extraction.
