XBRL
The tagging standard that turns figures inside a financial report into machine-readable facts.
Updated 2026-07-26
XBRL attaches a label to each number in a filing, saying what the number is, what period it covers, which entity it belongs to and in what units it is stated. Without it, extracting revenue from an annual report means parsing a table designed for human eyes.
A tagged fact is not automatically comparable to another tagged fact. Two companies can tag the same line differently, one can use a standard element where the other invents its own, and both can be filing correctly.
This is why every figure shown from a filing here carries the element name it came from. The tag is part of the data, not implementation detail: it is what lets a reader see whether two numbers are actually the same measure.
Related terms
5 entries- Extension element
- A custom tag a company defines for itself when no standard element fits its presentation.
- Fiscal period
- The stretch of time a reported figure covers, which need not line up with the calendar year.
- Form 10-K
- The annual report of a U.S. public company, containing audited financial statements and a description of the business.
- US GAAP taxonomy
- The published dictionary of standard tags used for tagging U.S. financial statements, reissued each year.
- XBRL tag
- The named element that identifies what a tagged figure represents, such as Revenues or NetIncomeLoss.