FRx and XBRL—probably not going to work too well.

Check out Mark Polino’s recent DynamicAccounting post on XBRL, FRx & PerformancePoint: “…it’s increasingly likely that XBRL (the xml based financial statement/reporting language) is going to be mandated by the SEC…”

I heard essentially the same thing at Convergence in March. Here’s what I found out about XBRL and FRx. A new US Gaap taxonomy has recently been finished, and in a year the committee will call it official. Then the SEC will step up requirements.

The new taxonomy is controversial. It is dimension-based and apparently quite complex.

How does this relate to FRx? Well, FRx 6.7 has some XBRL capabilities. See my post What in the World is XBRL, and How To Implement it in FRx for more information.

But FRx 6.7 won’t work with the new beta taxonomy because it’s dimension-based.

It does work with the current taxonomy. But 6.7 can’t do notes or footnotes which is a big part of filing.

So the next logical question is: “Is FRx 6.7 going to work with the new XBRL taxonomy?” Since FRx is now in its final version except for maybe one more service pack and then hotfixes, it certainly doesn’t look that way. But when I asked the question, the answer was that they’ll have to evaluate whether this functionality will ever be added. So there’s some small glimmer of hope, but realistically, I seriously doubt it.

The new version of FRx, Management Reporter, does not currently have XBRL capability. It is, however, planned for a future release.

PS. FRx and its visionary founders have been extremely supportive of the XBRL initiatives for many years.