The accelerating move towards financial reporting standards helps businesses to benchmark, analyse and scrutinise their financial performance, as well as providing equal transparency to stakeholders and regulators. These are critical in risk avoidance and fraud prevention. iXBRL provides the foundation for the next generation of interoperable accounting and performance reporting systems. It makes information accessible across organisational boundaries and will drive efficiency and transparency into reporting - well beyond the regulatory and compliance mandates being used by agencies such as HMRC.
This standard brings accounting to the web in a new and straightforward way: business people can read performance and financial reports on web pages; computer systems can consume the same data straight out of the same web pages. Both can then re-use and add value to that information - rapidly, accurately and with full fidelity to the original data source.