The SEC hasn't yet demanded that companies file financial reports electronically, but proposals to make information available more quickly to the regulator may make it unavoidable.

The Extensible Business Reporting Language, an open specification that uses XML-based data tags to describe financial data in business reports and databases, is gaining credibility as a standard for companies to electronically supply consistent financial statements to regulatory authorities. The Australian Prudential Regulatory Agency uses xBRL to support the delivery of financial information in all software formats from 11,000 superfunds, insurers, and banks. Singapore is about to mandate that companies file to its financial regulatory authority using the format.

So far, the SEC has been slow to move on the language. "They just don't want to impose something like that on a broad set of companies," says John O'Rourke, senior director of product marketing at Hyperion Solutions Corp., which is revamping its financial software to comply with version 2.0 of xBRL, released in December. But that may be changing: EDGAR, the Electronic Data Gathering Analysis and Retrieval system that the SEC uses to store and process filings submitted electronically, recently published information for companies about xBRL.

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