XBRL

What it means

XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is an open, royalty-free family of specifications for digital, machine-readable business reporting. It lets a reported figure carry its meaning with it, so software can read, exchange and analyse financial and sustainability data without a human re-keying it. It is maintained by XBRL International, a not-for-profit consortium.

Two ideas do most of the work. A concept is a taxonomy element that gives a figure its meaning (Revenue, Assets, Profit). A fact is an individual reported value tied to a concept and to context (period, entity, currency). The “X” (extensible) means taxonomies can be extended to fit a particular reporting framework.

Plain version: XBRL turns a number in a report into a labelled data point a computer understands (“this is Revenue, for this company, for 2025, in euros”) instead of just text on a page.

How it relates to nearby concepts

XBRL is the standard behind Inline XBRL, ESEF and Danish digital filing. The rules a report is tagged against live in an XBRL taxonomy.

Common misunderstandings

• XBRL is a file format: It is a family of specifications and a tagging standard. It has several syntaxes (XML, JSON, CSV and Inline XBRL), not one file type.