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Deloitte and XBRL
Deloitte recognizes and supports eXtensible Business Reporting Language (hereafter: XBRL) as a data standard for managing and reporting financial and business information. XBRL makes business information more interactive and liquid -- hence, the interest of the capital markets and regulators. It also makes information more manageable, in such a way that companies can use it to create efficiencies and bring innovation in business reporting applications. Thus, while adoption of XBRL will be initially driven largely by regulatory action and in response to mandates, Deloitte believes that it will evolve beyond compliance to more value-add uses. We see potential for clients to use XBRL to drive efficiencies and innovation in areas such as business process improvement, finance transformation, governance, risk and compliance systems, adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards, and automating internal controls reporting.
What is XBRL?
In XBRL, every financial data element has its own identifying tag that is machine readable. Therefore, instead of having the data reported in text format, it is stored as a tag (comparable to barcodes). These tags can be read by information systems and processed for storages, analyses and presentation in a variety of ways. The rich and powerful structure of XBRL allows efficient handling of business data by computer software. In this way the exchange and analysis of both internal as well as external information becomes an easier task.
An XBRL business report is composed of a taxonomy “document” and an “instance document”. Technically speaking, metadata is attached to the data, which is contained in the XBRL instance document, and provides context for a data item so that the item can be properly understood across different applications and platforms. But what is metadata? All the financial information is “tagged” with specific definitions, also known as metadata. This looks like every single number of financial information has a kind of barcode, providing financial information context and meaning related to the taxonomy. An XBRL business report is a hybrid between these two documents. An XBRL instance document contains the actual data and facts. While the taxonomy contains the main instructions of how the data is structured.
Deloitte Annual report 2008/2009 in XBRL
Deloitte Holding B.V. is a Dutch company, required to file their financial statement according to Title 9, Book 2 of the Netherlands Civil Code. In addition to our formal traditional financial statement, we have prepared the consolidated financial statement in XBRL using the 2009 version of the Dutch Taxonomy. Specifically, we have used the Chamber of Commerce reports Balance Sheet model B, Profit and Loss statement model E and the Indirect Cash Flow statement (rpt-kvk-balansb-wve-kasstroomi-2008.xsd). The XBRL instance document contains a reference to this taxonomy. As not all data items in the printed version of the annual report 2009 are covered by the 2009 version of the Dutch Taxonomy, the instance document contains footnotes that explain specific fact values where applicable.
Assurance report on the XBRL financial report
Our accountants have reviewed the XBRL instance document and issued an assurance report which can be downloaded from this site.
More information
For more information about this standard, and more information about how to use and process XBRL, contact Deloitte or visit one of the following websites:
http://www.sbr-nl.nl/ http://www.xbrl.org/
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