Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL)

Definition - What does Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) mean?

Extensible business reporting language (XBRL) is an open and free programming language providing an international platform for exchanging business transactions and processing data.

Being market-driven, XBRL functions and resources are designed to suit developing market and business needs. They also allow information modeling for the expression of all terms or semantics used for business reporting. XBRL is XML-based and uses related technology, such as XML Schema and Namespaces, to clarify semantic meanings.

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Techopedia explains Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL)

XBRL is used to define and facilitate the exchange of sensitive and confidential financial information such as financial statements. XBRL International develops and publishes free XBRL specifications.

XBRL is based on standards connecting business terminals and allowing for the exchange of business information. The XBRL structure metadata setout defines the business communication process in detail. Metadata interprets every business report definition and relationship. Every XBRL instance contains information exchanged between two or more terminals running business-related applications.

Pioneer XBRL developers dealt with many regulations mandated by the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Committee of European Banking Supervisors (CEBS).

Since then stock exchanges, securities, bank regulators, business registrars, revenue reporters, national statistical agencies and tax-filing firms have used XBRL. And business functions of these applications are common between many countries.