Extensible Business Reporting Language : The Future of E-Commerce-Driven Accounting

XBRL, short for eXtensible Business Reporting Language, is a framework based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language) that would be freely licensed and facilitate the automatic exchange and reliable extraction of financial information among various software applications anywhere in the world. This new business reporting language should enable companies and individuals to use financial information in a much swifter and more flexible way. This article discusses the implications of this new standard on accountants, investors, analysts, risk mangers, bankers, and the financial services industry