New guidance is available for internal auditors on their potential role in helping their organizations transition to filing financial statements in XBRL.

A free whitepaper published by The Institute of Internal Auditors Research Foundation, “XBRL: What’s in it for Internal Auditors,” provides an overview of XBRL and the Securities and Exchange Commission’s filing requirements for public companies, approaches to implementation, and an overview of how internal auditors can be involved in the adoption of the reporting format.

While management has overall responsibility for ensuring the accuracy of financial statements produced in XBRL, internal auditors can help management implement XBRL and provide objective assurance on the XBRL adoption and conversion processes, according to the report.

The research also cites opportunities for internal auditors to use XBRL to add value throughout the compliance and reporting process, including: enabling them to move from statistical testing to testing 100 percent of relevant data and creating conditions for the transition to a continuous auditing model; allowing for a reduction or elimination of manual intervention and greater ability to apply centralized and standardized business rules, reducing the level of overall risk; providing a way to operate on a standardized data model and offering controls and analytics that can be easily and consistently shared and offering a standardized “shareable” internal audit program.