One of the cover stories on the new, April Journal of Accountancy carries the blurb: “Six Reasons to Love XBRL.” The article is actually part of continuing coverage by the American Institute of Public Accountants
(AICPA).  The AICPA’s commitment to making CPAs increasingly aware of XBRL
is a good thing if you are interested in seeing more and more ability to do
intelligent processing of financial documents. 

One unfortunate thing about the article, though, is that the six reasons to
love XBRL are all focused primarily on its use outside the company–after
you have produced financial statements in XBRL.  As I have noted
before, some of the really interesting applications–applications that could
be used as part of an internal control framework–happen only if you begin using
it inside the company and earlier in the process.

I think we’ll get there. 

By the way, there is a conference on
XBRL coming up in Boston later this month that you might be interested in if
you are wanting to learn more about XBRL and its applications.