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If it isn't part of an accountant's vocabulary yet, XBRL (extensible business reporting language) is sure to be soon. The FDIC requires banks to file their quarterly call reports using XBRL-compliant documents. The sec encourages registrants to report their financial information using XBRL and is updating its EDGAR system to handle XBRL filings and to support "interactive" data access and analysis.
Creating XBRL documents can be tedious and error-prone if done manually. Fortunately, software tools are continually being developed and improved to help make the creation of valid XBRL documents easier. For a list of available XBRL software, visit XBRL International at www.xbrl.orgnOols/.
Rivet Software, Inc.'s Dragon Tag and Dragon View (www.rivetsoftware.com) are a simple solution for tagging existing financial information. Dragon Tag and Dragon View are both add-in packages for Microsoft Excel and Word. Dragon Tag facilitates tagging financial information to create XBRL instance documents, review the results, validate the XBRL instance documents, and render them as webpages. Dragon View allows viewing of XBRL instance documents without knowledge of XBRL. (All XBRL documents are referred to as "instance" documents because they are an instance of the documents defined in the XBRL specification.) The AICPA started promoting Dragon Tag and Dragon View in 2006.
This article demonstrates the use of Dragon Tag to prepare a valid XBRL partial balance sheet for commercial and industrial companies following U.S. GAAP. Users can download a 30-day free copy (the regular cost is $995 per user) of Rivet Dragon Tag follow the exercise in this article, and create a partial balance sheet. (Note that coauthor Lois S. Mahoney uses her name for the example.)
Downloads
The first step is to go to Rivet Software's site, www.rivet software.com, and download Dragon Tag 2006 (30-day free trial), along with the installation instructions. Once you install the software, click on "Start Excel with Dragon Tag Add-in" and the Dragon Tag toolbar will appear in Excel.
The next step is downloading U.S. GAAP taxonomy for commercial and industrial companies (USGCI). The USGCI taxonomy is a suite of files that defines the agreed-upon, standard account tags (names) to be used for reporting information in computerized financial statements and the ways in which accounts are grouped together for subtotals, totals, and presentation. These files need...