Going Public? Seeking Investors? Getting Acquired? What you need to know about XBRL Taxonomy & Intacct


XBRL (“eXtensibile Business Reporting Language”) and Financial Reporting Taxonomy have been under significant evolution for several years to match policy with the accounting discipline’s data-centric practices.

XBRL is the digital business reporting language in which reporting elements are “barcoded” to ease data flow and tracking. XBRL’s intent is to increase comparability for audit, tax, investment, regulatory decision-making, and analytic purposes.

Though not universally applied globally or required for non-public companies, it is one of the many policy instances that may take part in the convergence of FASB and IASB in the future. Suppose your business is on the trajectory of going public down the line or seeking investors. In that case, you may need assistance in the transition period to meet the requirements. Withum’s Management Consulting Services team can identify the people, process, and technology necessary to bridge the current state’s gap to the desired future state. This approach establishes the operations and procedures that will stabilize and position your company for success and resilience during the storm of transition.

Because XBRL is under constant evolution, system adaptability and a system that can accommodate these standards will ensure your focus is on the data analysis instead of the administrative burden of transformation. XBRL’s evolution is fueled by varying inputs from industries, business sizes, locations, regulators, and auditors who are all affected in conflicting ways and consequently have conflicting interests resulting in both capricious periods of changes well as stalemates in the progression of the language development and standardization.

With a system like Sage Intacct deployed to solve these challenges, a business owner can then set their sights on the organization’s financial and operational excellence strategies. The ideal of the cloud-based ERP system is to produce external-facing reports according to regulations while maintaining an internal reporting structure that makes sense for your decision-makers.

Reporting in GAAP and XBRL are two different formats that directly impact a company’s compliance processes. Intacct’s built-in reporting capabilities can help track the differences between GAAP and XBRL. By incorporating a system that produces reports in XBRL format, your company benefits from benchmarking more easily and accurately against competitors.

An ERP system is the bridge to fill in any operational, regulatory and technology gaps to lead you into a smooth IPO, acquisition or investment experience.

Author: Kim Gordon | [email protected]

Reach out to us to learn more about Intacct’s capabilities.

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