XBRL for Newly Public Companies

S-1? Congratulations! Cue the balloons and confetti!

Now that the celebration has been taken care of, there are a few other things that need to be addressed. Once your company goes public, you will have a lot more rules and regulations to keep track of, not to mention numerous reports to prepare and file with the SEC.

You're probably aware that public companies are filing their financial statements and footnotes in XBRL, and you may be wondering how that works. If you haven't previously filed with the SEC, you'll submit your first XBRL filing with your first 10-Q.

You may have heard that in the beginning, companies had a phase-in period for their XBRL filings. During this time, companies had a year to file minimally tagged financials—called block tagging—before they started tagging all the amounts in the financials—known as detail tagging. The phase-in period was designed to allow companies time to become comfortable with XBRL and also to allow solution providers to develop products to support these filings.

The phase-in period ended in 2012 per Rule 405 of Regulation S-T, paragraph (f). Today all public companies are subject to the full tagging provisions with their first 10-Q.

Don't panic! There is good news.

If you need it, you are entitled to a 30-day grace period for your first XBRL filing. However, if you take advantage of this grace period, don't forget that the XBRL exhibit would then need to be filed on an amended 10-Q, or 10-Q/A due to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T, paragraph (a).

So what does this mean for you? If there are mistakes in your XBRL data, you could be subject to additional review by the SEC on your entire filing. With added pressure on the SEC to improve the quality of the data, an increase in comment letters is expected over the next year. As a result, the quality of your XBRL is more important than ever.

Read the full article here.