The eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is a freely available, global, open standards driven data description language for the electronic communication of business and financial iformation. 
 
XBRL is derived from the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) widely utilised eXtensible Markup Language (XML) standard and allows for reliable, automated data exchange and extraction of financial information, irrespective of the underlying software and transmission technologies, including across the Internet. 
 
The XBRL standard is overseen by the not-for-profit consortium XBRL International Incorporated and comprises over 400 globally based regulators, government agencies, software vendors and other organisations.  
 
The consortium is comprised of independent bodies known as "jurisdictions". These are usually organised in a country or region specific manner allowing them to focus on localised information exchange requirements. 
 
As a joint venture of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia and CPA Australia, the Australian jurisdiction is represented by XBRL Australia and includes a number of leading Australian companies and government agencies. 
 
Benefits of XBRL 
 
The primary benefit of XBRL is standardisation. As more organisations adopt this method of communicating data, it increases the efficiency and effectiveness of financial and business reporting for the end-users. 
 
This allows for: 

• easier intergration/communication between various organisations 
  
• automated analysis tools 
  
• organisations, individuals or software applications easily generating a variety of formats and reports from a single data set.

• financial statements 
  
• tax returns 
  
• bank call reports 
  
• general ledger (GL) 
  
• event reporting 
  
• audit schedules