On October 18^th, 2010 the national consortium for XML business reporting standards announced the creation of 16-member Best Practice Committee as part of XBRL US' focus on data quality, an initiative that seeks to establish standards around the use of XBRL for specific reporting domains to enable greater consistency and accuracy in XBRL data. The committee is charged with identifying and reaching agreement on best practices in the creation of XBRL-formatted financial statements from public companies reporting to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Elmer Huh, Director, Duff & Phelps Securities, LLC - Financial Advisory and Investment Banking, a member of the committee said, "The kind of guidance the Best Practice Committee provides will help ensure we truly capitalize on XBRL's capabilities. "Establishing rules on how to use XBRL for US GAAP reporting is critical," said Louis Matherne, Chief of Taxonomy Development, FASB. "Developing clear, useable taxonomies and collaboratively building guidelines is critical to establishing workable market standards.

Currently only 1,440 companies are reporting to the SEC using XBRL. The SEC estimates approximately 15,000 companies are traded publically; leaving over 90% of publically traded companies not reporting in XBRL. June 2011 sets a new deadline where these companies must be reporting to the SEC in XBRL format.

Microsoft FRx has the ability to create XBRL compliant documents. There is no need to implement a new solution to manage this new reporting requirement. In fact you can convert existing FRx reports to XBRL in just a few steps. Creating XBRL compliant output is one of the topics covered in the Microsoft FRx Essentials 2 training course. Other topics include Cash Flow reports, Worksheet linking, Allocations and Multi-Company Consolidations.