Importance of XBRL Filing for Regulators and Consumers in Malaysia

Everyone says that XBRL offers significant benefits for both business and financial reporting as well as analysis. Ranging from automation, cost-saving, faster and more reliable data handling, etc., – all are considered the benefits of using XBRL. 

In light of the same, SSM, the regulatory authority of Malaysia, has finally taken the most-awaited initiative to develop the Malaysian Business Reporting System (MBRS) in order to adopt XBRL. 

• But is it really that beneficial? 
• What about the benefits of XBRL for regulators and consumers? 
• Does it really streamline business and financial reporting? 

Let’s find out.

XBRL: Taking Over the Financial Reporting Landscape in Malaysia

Actually, it’s not just Malaysia; the talks of the importance and benefits of XBRL have been in the news all over the world, ranging from the US, Europe, and even Japan.

In fact, Caroline Crenshaw, SEC Commissioner, says that “The benefits of XBRL are well-documented and extensive. XBRL has made it easy and less costly to extract, filter, compare, and analyze the financial information in SEC filings.” She also mentioned that XBRL makes data more useful for investors and other regulatory authorities like the IRS, financial analysts, and even academic researchers.

Read on to find out how regulators and consumers can benefit from XBRL.

• Easy, Efficient, and Collaborative Data Collection and Reporting

By leveraging XBRL, companies and other producers of financial data can automate the entire data collection process. How? 

If the sources of data extraction have been upgraded to use XBRL, it assembles all the information from different company divisions with different accounting systems efficiently. And once all the data is gathered in XBRL, you can quickly produce different reports using varying subsets with minimum effort.

What does this tell you? By using XBRL, not only can data handling be automated, less time-consuming, and error-free but also that the accuracy of the financial reports can be determined by the software.

• Analysis will Be Close to a Walk in the Park

Collation, re-entry of the same information in 10 different places – all of this can be pretty taxing, right? This is why XBRL is here to automate the handling of data, cutting out such tedious processes. And not just that, an XBRL software can also validate the data, highlight errors and gaps at the click of a button so these can be addressed immediately. In addition, it also helps in analyzing, selecting, and processing the data for re-use, be it for revising, reporting, or decision-making.

• Enhance the Credibility of the Audited Financial Statements

XBRL allows the transparent filing of financial statements and provides reliable information to its users ranging from regulators, investors to founders and managers. And this leads to improved monitoring and decision-making. Moreover, since XBRL can encode any information, it’s also beneficial in non-financial uses such as analyzing supplier data, customer application forms, project information, employee data, etc. Not only the producers but even users can leverage such data to facilitate better decision-making and reporting.

XBRL is Here to Revamp the Financial Reporting Landscape of Malaysia

SSM has finally commenced the transition from PDF and other formats of financial statements to XBRL, one that is true, fair, and increases confidence in the information submitted through MBRS. It’s time for you and every other entity in Malaysia to make this transition focusing on data quality assurance. 

DataTracks is here to assist. With over 16 years of commendable experience in this domain, DataTracks has discovered and adopted the best tools in the box to make this transition as smooth as possible. Having prepared over 200,000 reports, DataTracks has catered to a global clientele of 19,900. 

To apprehend more about their services and how to make this transition smooth, speak to an XBRL expert @ +60-392-126-125 or email at enquiry@datatracks.my.