Creating XBRL Instance Documents with Rivet’s Dragon Tag® Software

Abstract

This fictitious case study provides students with an opportunity to create XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) formatted financial statements, known as instance documents. Using Rivet’s Dragon Tag’s® software, students complete two guided exercises. The first exercise converts an income statement to an instance document while the second exercise relates to a balance sheet. XBRL is a language developed to tag (mark-up) financial statement data using a common taxonomy, or dictionary of tags, to make data interactive. The resulting instance documents are both human and computer readable. The benefits of XBRL include faster and more accurate closing processes, faster distribution of interactive financial information to external users, and enhanced auditing tools that support data mining. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has mandated that all publicly traded companies must submit financial statement data using XBRL for fiscal years ending after June 15, 2011 (SEC 2009).