On June 15, 2020, the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s Inline XBRL or iXBRL mandate was extended to financial reports and cover pages of accelerated filers, or companies with a public float of $75 mln-$700 mln. This was the second phase of the mandate’s coverage.
In the first phase, large accelerated filers, or companies with a public float of $700 mln or more, adopted the iXBRL format in making their financial reports from June 15, 2019. Another set of companies, the small reporting non-accelerated filers, will adopt the iXBRL format in the third phase on June 15, 2021.
Among mutual funds, those with assets under management exceeding $1 bln will start filing in the iXBRL format from September 17, 2020, while those with assets lesser than $1 bln will do so from September 17, 2021.
Entities in each of these groupings, however, have the option of voluntarily doing their filings in the iXBRL format even before their phase-in date.
Why iXBRL: A Recap
Inline XBRL is an improvement on the XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) format for reporting financial information. The main difference between the formats is in the number of documents a filer needs to submit to the regulatory authority.
The Inline XBRL format consists of a single document with human-readable and machine-readable layers, with the EDGAR HTML document in this case coming with embedded XBRL tags. The XBRL format, meanwhile, requires a filer to submit a separate document that is machine-readable only, which means there is more work involved in filing in the XBRL format than in the case of iXBRL.
One of the main benefits of a single-tagged document is that fewer errors would creep in during its preparation. Also, iXBRL may prompt an increase in the use of XBRL data in general because of the ease of analysis it provides.
Transition in the times of Covid
Making a transition is hard at the best of times. With the additional challenges that the Covid crisis has introduced, including the sudden need to work and collaborate remotely understanding and coming to terms with a new process for compliance make a shift even harder.
IRIS CARBON® makes this transition easier. A cloud-based solution, it facilitates easy collaboration between various stakeholders in the financial reporting process. With everyone on one single platform and always on the latest version of the document, all stakeholders are in sync. The process of working together is simple and transparent, and there is no stress of sending emails back and forth, keeping track of those emails, worrying about where the document is at or losing important information.
IRIS CARBON® supports both XBRL and iXBRL and many clients have made a very smooth transition to the new compliance format, with our expert teams facilitating the shift in a seamless manner.
IRIS is a pioneer in the XBRL reporting space with a global footprint in over 35 countries, and the name IRIS inspires trust amongst both regulators and filers. Our solutions have benefitted more than 1.5 mln filers across the globe since the year 2005. We have been working with filers in the US markets since the start of the SEC XBRL mandate, and IRIS CARBON®, our cloud-based collaborative solution for issuers, consistently tops XBRL quality assessments put out by independent third-party reviews.
