XBRL

DEFINITION

XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is an XML-based standard that tags every line item in financial statements (revenue, cost of goods sold, deferred tax, etc.) with a code from the US GAAP taxonomy. Inline XBRL (iXBRL) embeds those tags directly inside the human-readable 10-K, so the document is both readable and machine-parseable. The SEC mandates XBRL for periodic reports and certain other filings.

WHY IT MATTERS FOR RETAIL INVESTORS

XBRL is why financial databases like Bloomberg, FactSet, and (yes) FilingRadar can pull comparable numbers across thousands of companies. As a retail investor you rarely touch the raw tags, but they enable the dashboards and screeners you do use. Tagging errors do happen — if a number on a third-party platform looks wrong, the XBRL tag may have been mis-applied; the source 10-K is always the authoritative version.

RELATED TERMS

• EDGAR
• GAAP