CFOs have never been enthusiastic about the Securities and Exchange Commission's data-tagging movement, and the regulator's mandate hasn't changed their indifference.
For a while, XBRL (an acronym for extensible business reporting language) seemed like just another accounting initiative that was years away from happening. In 2006, when then-SEC chairman Christopher Cox championed his pet project for data-tagging all financial statements -- which presumably will make it easier for investors to compare companies' financial data -- many CFOs didn't pay attention. And the regulator struggled to get early adopters to test the technology.
Apparently, not much has changed, despite a looming deadline. Even though the SEC gave up on just talking about XBRL and decided last year to mandate its use by all public companies by 2011, there are still businesses that are not on board. With one year to go, half of public companies have no plans under way for using XBRL, according to a Grant Thornton survey released on Thursday.
According to the survey of 230 public-company CFOs, 62% of their companies are currently not reporting their financials under XBRL. And of those companies, 75 don't have a way of meeting the mandate at the present time. The "L" in XBRL, it seems, also stands for "lax." |
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