XBRL TECHNOLOGIES FOR DECISION MAKING IN ACCOUNTING INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Abstract

XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is a language for the electronic communication of business and financial data based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language). Compared with paper based or other previous ad-hoc EDI (Electronic Data Interchange)
technologies, XBRL provides major benefits in the preparation, analysis and communication of business information. Those benefits include cost savings, greater efficiency, accuracy and reliability to all activities involved in supplying or using financial data. This paper provides an overview of XBRL technologies and how it is applied to decision making in several financial areas. It also covers some possible extensions with the semantic Web and Web services as future challenges.