Weekly Dynamic: FRx and XBRL

The question comes up of whether FRx will handle XBRL. The answer is yes and no. The XBRL specifications, tags and taxonomies have evolved since the first specification and FRx has not evolved as quickly because of the ultimate move from FRx to Management Reporter. Consequently it's important to understand what FRx will and won't do with respect to XBRL reporting.

• FRx only supports monetary items, not decimal, ratio/percentage or text data
• FRx doesn't support footnotes
• FRx doesn't provide a way to enter the entity scheme and identifier required in an instance document. Generic information is created and needs to be manually changed.
• FRx generates an instance document for each unit of the reporting tree. This may or may not ultimately be what a company needs.
• FRx does not support CALC columns with XBRL output. Only GL and Forecaster columns will export.

[H.T. to Greg Byer of MS for clarifying these points in a partner newsgroup post.]

It’s an XBRL World

CPA Success has a broad look at the state of financial markup language XBRL.

XBRL US GAAP 2009 Taxonomies Now Available

For the XBRL geeks in the Dynamics GP world (that would be folks still using FRx and not Management Reporter since MR doesn’t support XBRL yet, doh!) the 2009 US GAAP taxonomies are now available at http://xbrl.us/Pages/US-GAAP.aspx. Don’t everybody rush over there at once. No pushing and shoving

SEC Mandates XBRL - Warm Up Your FRx

Warm up your FRx skills. The SEC has now mandated the use of XBRL for financial reporting. For large filers, this begins with financial statements ending on or after June 15, 2009. Smaller filers get more time but you'll still have to do it. FRx Buzz has info on how to implement XBRL within FRx.

XBRL Really Going Mainstream Now

With the impending move to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in the US, the Wall Street Bail out, new hedge fund Ponzi schemes and everything else, XBRL is getting a fresh look.

Billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is now pushing XBRL as well. For Dynamics GP users, FRx can output XBRL, PerformancePoint currently cannot, but it's planned for a later release. If you want more XBRL info for FRx, I recommend spending some time with FRxBuzz.

The Performance Point March Continues

In case you've missed it (the posting dates are a little funny on the release) Microsoft has announced that there will be no new sales of Enterprise Reporting starting on August 1 of 2008. Existing customers can purchase the product through January 1, 2010.

Also, existing ER customers (similar to existing Proclarity customers) who are current on their enhancement plans can migrate to Performance Point at no additional cost.

This is a little disconnect here. Performance Point is a nice 1.0 product but we know from FRxBuzz that there are lots of holes in it (the lack of XBRL being a big one). Performance Point 2.0 has been delayed to correspond with the Office release schedule. I hope MS doesn't screw up the release timing on this one and I hope that Perf Point 2.0 fulfills everyone's expectations. Otherwise this has the potential to get messy.

XBRL on MSDynamicsWorld

Mariano Gomez has a nice article on Microsoft Dynamics GP and XBRL up at MSDynamicsWorld.com. Mariano also mentions the use of Analytical Accounting as part of the XBRL process. I don't have the confidence in Analytical Accounting that he does, mainly because we've been burned too many times by corruption and other problems with AA. You don't need AA for XBRL in FRx.

Don't let the fact that we disagree over a small part of this deter you from looking at XBRL. Also don't think that just because you're a private company you'll be exempt. Banks and other institutions have pushed SOX style requirements down to private companies as well. With the current banking mess, I see banks looking at XBRL as a way to streamline getting loan compliance data to reduce some of their backend headcount. This means XBRL will be coming to you too.

The XBRL Train is Rolling

The June 2008 issue of CFO magazine has an article titled "Suddenly, It's Here". SEC mandated XBRL that is. I mentioned back in April that this was rumored and now it's come to pass. From the article, companies with $5 Billion or more in market cap will have to file in XBRL format for late 2008 fiscal periods. Those statements will be made public in 2009.
For the small and mid cap filers out there who just breathed a sigh of relief, suck it back in, you only get an extra year. International companies filing using IFRS get one extra year.
There are plenty of small and mid cap public companies that use Microsoft Dynamics GP. The good news is that FRx has had the ability to produce XBRL statements for years. The bad news, is that you're probably not already using this functionality.
On the Performance Point side, I hope that this speeds up the introduction of XBRL functionality to the Management Reporter portion of Performance Point.
So if you fall into this XBRL deficient group, dust off your FRx skills or call your partner for help because the the XBRL train is rolling and you don't want to get stuck on the tracks.

XBRL, FRx & Performance Point

AccMan is reporting that it's increasingly likely that XBRL (the xml based financial statement/reporting language) is going to be mandated by the SEC for all large cap filers after years of "encouragement". (That would be "encouragement" Chicago mafia style for those of you still on your first cup of coffee.)

I know most of the Dynamics GP group doesn't fall into the large cap filer group but expect a trickle down to small public filers over the next several years if it happens. I can also see institutions mandating XBRL for private companies to streamline line things like loan covenant enforcement. We've this type of trickle down with Sarbanes-Oxley, so I expect it with XBRL too.

I still find it odd that FRx supports XBRL, and has for some time, but the first version of Performance Point Management Reporter doesn't. It's slated for the next release of PPMR but I got the impression that even that was iffy. It's time to step it up PPMR!