XBRL Computer readable data
What is XBRL?
XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is an XML-based open data standard for financial reporting overseen by XBRL International. It was devised in 1998 as a way of transferring financial information between electronic systems. It allows information modelling and the expression of semantic meaning commonly required in business reporting.
The purpose of XBRL is to represent each piece of data as a separate entity with its own data tag. Large groups of data can also be classed with unique tags. This enables computer programmes to cleanly mine, sort, and analyse data to generate a variety of outputs. The standard nature of the tags means that it is possible to analyse multiple documents from multiple sources across different languages.
iXBRL Human readable equivalent
What is iXBRL?
XBRL has helped organisations like the HMRC to substantially improve their ability to analyse information but on its own it is only possible for users to read documents by interpreting the XBRL tags. It is therefore only machine readable. iXBRL (inline eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is both machine and human readable. iXBRL, a hybrid that combines XBRL data tags with HTML formatting, enables HMRC’s inspectors to view in a web browser exactly what the company has filed.