Bombay Stock Exchange (or BSE) has recently issued a circular requiring all entities listed with them to file Financial Results in XBRL format with effect from 1st April 2017 as against the earlier practice of filing in PDF format. In order to make the transition easy for the reporting companies, BSE has provided an excel utility which can be downloaded from the Listing Centre portal. However, this circular does not apply to Insurance companies who will continue to report in the existing PDF format.

Financial Results are required to be submitted in PDF format within 30 minutes of the conclusion of the board meeting. With effect from 1st April 2017, Companies have to follow it up with XBRL filing as well, within 24 hours from the conclusion of the board meeting.

BSE had earlier mandated listed companies to report Corporate Governance, Shareholding Pattern and Voting Results in XBRL format. XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) as we all know it, is a globally accepted standard for exchanging business information. Prior to XBRL implementation, BSE and Investors would have converted each PDF document into a format fit for consumption spending considerable costs and time in order to do any analysis. With XBRL, each data will carry its own definition will make the data instantly available for consumption by a regulator. Any insights can be obtained by merely running a simple query against the XBRL data. Couple of the examples would be the list of companies with more than 50 million in previous quarter and the list of companies declared interim dividend during the last year etc.

Moreover, XBRL has to be rightly implemented so that it does not pose the burden on the reporting entities. Since the reporting is not complex, BSE has given an excel utility which the filing entities can use and submit data in XBRL format so that there is minimum impact compliance cost and time. BSE is constantly moving forward towards the automation and better consumption of data setting up a right benchmark for other regulatory bodies looking to achieve automation.

About Pratham Consultants: Pratham Consultants, a specialised corporate advisory firm promoted by young and dynamic professionals in preparation of financial statements in XBRL formats for filing with regulators. With a track record of over 5 years, Pratham Consultants prepares more than 1,500 XBRL statements annually for filing with regulators.