XBRL - An Introduction - For Malaysia and Singapore

XBRL stands for eXtensible Business Reportingcorrectness and accuracy of the financial statement in
Language. It is an electronic communication of businessXBRL format.
and financial data language developed to presentAlthough Malaysia has not implemented XBRL at this
financial statement on the Internet. The key advantagemoment, there is a reasonable expectation that
of this new "language" is that an identifying tag isSuruhanjaya Syarikat Malaysia (SSM) will implement
applied for each individual item of data instead ofthis in the near future. This expectation can be seen
treating them as a block of text.from the growing use of XBRL in the global
Since the financial data is now tagged, it thus can beenvironment, including our neighbouring country,
recognized by the recipient party's computer.Singapore, who has been using XBRL for a number of
Accountants, auditors, regulators and financial analystsyears already. Other countries in Asia Pacific that are
are used for other purposes; and also presents varietyadopting XBRL formats are Japan, Korea, Australia
of ways in a fraction of a second and eliminate theand the Stock Exchanges of Thailand and China.
possibilities of human error during the re-keying ofSingapore's Accounting & Corporate Regulatory
financial data. This will allow flexibility while enhancingAuthority (ACRA), which is the equivalent of Malaysia's
transparency and timely dissemination of relevantSSM, has already implemented XBRL formatting for
financial information.Singapore companies incorporated on or after 1
With the financial data tagged before publishing ontoNovember 2007.
the Internet, it is the Directors' responsibility to ensure