XBRL Frequently Asked Questions

XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) is a freely available electronic language for business reporting. It is an XML–based framework that provides the financial community a standards-based method to prepare, publish, reliably extract, and automatically exchange financial statements.

Electronic availability of financial information and transparency of data is key in today's investor and analyst community. XBRL addresses the way financial data is communicated by using XML, a globally recognized standard for transmitting data. By putting financial data in an open, agreed upon standard format, XBRL is helping to revolutionize access to financial information over the Internet.

XBRL does not establish new accounting standards, nor does it require additional disclosure from companies to outside audiences. XBRL focuses on enhancing the usability of financial information by means of a digital language of business which enables financial information to be available freely and transparently by the Internet. XBRL not only accommodates accounting standards and policies in place today but is also flexible enough to accommodate future accounting standards and direction.

XBRL is used to digitally publish financial statements and other relevant accounting disclosures of companies of all makes and sizes, both public and private. An XBRL-based financial statement contains the information found in traditional financial statements (such as the Balance Sheet, Income Statement, Cash Flow and Statement of Stockholders Equity) in a format that can more easily be recognized and understood by computers. From the creation process, XBRL documents can be prepared efficiently, exchanged reliably, and published more easily. On the analytics side, XBRL enables a dramatic improvement in the processing of financial reports by allowing the information to be analyzed more quickly.

Microsoft publishes select financial data in XBRL format including core financial statements such as the Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Statement of Cash Flow, Statement of Stockholders Equity, and Business Division/Segment Revenue (Earnings Report only) in XBRL for each of its Earnings Reports, Form 10-Q and Form 10-K filings. In addition, Microsoft also publishes the footnotes to the financial statements and its Management’s Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) in XBRL for its Form 10-Q and Form 10-K filings.

XBRL brings standardization to today's business reporting supply chain. At its highest level, XBRL improves the efficiency of communication to investors, as well as the aggregation and analysis of business report information, such as financial statements. XBRL provides an electronic dictionary of terms that enable the tagging of business report information, which can then be transferred across disparate systems for use in activities such as analysis. It allows participants in the business reporting supply chain to spend less time doing data entry and cleansing, and more time on value-added activities like data analysis.

The following table summarizes how XBRL will affect the various consumers of financial data:

Additional XBRL benefits include:

XBRL increases the re-usability of financial statement information. Instead of creating multiple report outputs for multiple purposes, a single XBRL document can be created that addresses most needs. This reduces the number of total reports that need to be created and also reduces the re-keying of financial data for analytical and other purposes. As a result, this helps reduce manual errors and gives Microsoft better ability to proof and control its financial data. Externally, investors will have better access to financial results because XBRL facilitates effective and timely analysis of that information. As a leader in financial reporting and in technology, filing Form 10-Q and 10-K XBRL financial statements to the SEC is one way of demonstrating the belief that XML–based standards, like XBRL, will play an important role in changing how companies share and leverage financial information.

By making Microsoft’s financial information publicly available in XBRL, it also provides a sample for both internal and external software developers as they move forward in creating XML and XBRL driven tools. Making the Microsoft financial statement information available in XBRL format enables any user, anywhere in the world, on any device, to perform reviews and analyses of the data via the Internet.

XBRL is an industry standard being developed by XBRL International (xbrl.org). XBRL International is made up of over 200 global companies, including the world’s largest accounting, technology, regulatory, and financial services organizations.

Microsoft is one of the 13 charter members of XBRL International, attending the first official face-to-face meeting in October 1999. Microsoft's involvement in XBRL International includes contributing time and resources from both a technical and domain-specific focus to help in the advancement and adoption of XBRL. Within Microsoft, the Microsoft Business Solutions division offers support for XBRL within the Navision® and FRx® Software products, while Microsoft Office 2003 System product offers an XBRL add-in. XBRL, however, is not a Microsoft standard; instead, it is created and maintained by a consortium of companies and, as such, will remain an open standard language based on XML that can be incorporated into accounting and analytical software tools and applications the world over.

Other companies participating in this committee include:

For a comprehensive list of all companies participating in XBRL, please go the XBRL International Web site.

In simple terms, HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is a system of marking up a document so it can be published on the World Wide Web. Documents prepared in HTML contain reference graphics and formatting tags. Put another way, HTML is a series of predefined tags that primarily focus on describing how content appears on the Web. For example, HTML describes the font, font size, and color of the text in this paragraph should be when viewed by a Web browser. HTML allowed the Internet to evolve from a text-based collection of data to the multimedia World Wide Web of today. HTML offers content but no real context. XML (Extensible Markup Language) is the universal format for data on the Web that uses tags to give context and structure to content. XML is a standards language that was ratified in February 1998 and is maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). XML does not replace HTML. Rather, XML is a complimentary format that is platform independent, allowing XML data to be rendered on any device, such as a computer, cell phone, personal digital assistant (PDA) or tablet device. XML allows developers to easily describe and deliver rich, structured data from any application in a standard, consistent way. Whereas HTML offers a fixed and predefined number of tags, XML neither defines nor limits tags. Instead, XML provides a framework for defining tags (i.e., taxonomy) and the relationship between them (i.e., schema). Finally, XBRL is an XML–based schema that focuses specifically on business reporting. XBRL is a complement to XML, allowing accountants and regulatory agencies to identify items that are unique to a given business reporting environment. The schema of XBRL defines how to create XBRL documents and XBRL taxonomies (or dictionaries) such as United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). These dictionaries provide a set of business reporting tags or terms that allow users to identify business information in a consistent format. XBRL is also extensible in that users are able to create their own XBRL dictionaries that define and describe tags unique to a given environment. An example of this type of dictionary is the Microsoft custom taxonomy, which can be found on the download page. By putting business report information in an XBRL format, software applications that support XBRL can read the underlying data more efficiently than today’s traditional paper–, HTML–, or PDF–based report formats.