ASIC has introduced an improved way of communicating financial information to investors and other users of financial reports.

Companies can now prepare and lodge human readable digital financial reports with ASIC using inline XBRL (iXBRL), removing the need for separate lodgement of a PDF-format or paper financial report.

ASIC Commissioner John Price said, ‘This new form of digital financial reporting will assist companies in dealing with the complexity of financial reporting and allow users to better navigate financial reports.’

Digital financial reports using iXBRL

• will be human readable, using most popular web browsers and will appear similar to PDF or paper financial reports
• allow the use of hyperlinks to better structure the information and allow users to more easily navigate financial reports; and
• tag financial information with a common set of identifiers to facilitate analysis by computers and ready comparison across companies and over time.

Further guidance on digital financial reporting is available from the Standard Business Reporting website at http://www.sbr.gov.au/software-developers/developer-tools/asic/asic-financial-report-finrpt

Background

Since July 2010, companies have been able to voluntarily lodge financial report information with ASIC using XBRL.  Any company that opted to lodge information using XBRL was also required to lodge a human readable financial report in PDF format or on paper. This is because the XBRL information, while being consumable by computers for analysis purposes, could not be viewed in a human readable form.

As a result of the introduction of inline XBRL, companies that lodge digital financial reports using iXBRL will no longer be required to lodge a PDF or paper financial report.