If XBRL is going to evolve to the financial reporting standard of the future, the accounting profession is going to have to step up its communication efforts on the tagging language, according to a survey of CFOs and controllers by global CPA firm Grant Thornton. According to the GT poll, roughly 85 percent of the survey participants indicated that the profession was not effectively communicating the benefits of using XBRL or Extensible Business Reporting Language for either internal or external financial reporting.
In fact, less than two thirds of those surveyed, or 59 percent, indicated they were even aware of XBRL. However, just over 50 percent said that, with the continued focus on XBRL by the Securities and Exchange Commission, they believed that it would eventually become the mandatory format for SEC filings.
