Do XBRL Filings Take Longer Hui Du Kean Wu University of Houston – Clear Lake

“interactive data has the potential to increase the speed, accuracy and usability of financial disclosure, and eventually reduce costs” (SEC, 2009)

Timeliness of filing financial report Investor response to SEC filings, and the response is stronger around a 10-K date than a 10-Q date (Griffin, 2003) 10-Q allows investor to better assess the integrity of reported earnings (Balsam, Bartov, and Marguardt; 2002) Financial statement user utilize footnote information to make adjustments at the 10-K dates (Franco, Wong and Zhou, 2011)

Main Findings Preview The time lags between fiscal year end and SEC filing date decrease for 76 days to 60 days for 10-K filings, and from 40 day to 36 days for 10- Q filing. These decreases in reporting lag only manifest for on-time filer, not for extension filer. In a 4 year window, reporting lags decrease from 69 days to 47 days for 10-K filings, from 38 days to 33 days for 10-Q filings.

Hypothesis Development Li, Lin, and Ni (2012) find XBRL adoption results in a significant reduction in cost of equity capital. Information system are able to process large and complex routings and tasks effectively and efficiently (Polites and Karahanna, 2013). Company using XBRL was moving 30% of its bookkeeping staff to different positions, and was able to decrease the reporting time (Pinsker and Li, 2008).

“Bunching” - a Disclosure Timing Theory Dye (2010) “the SEC’s recent initiatives regarding XBRL-tagging of financial data have been motivated in part to enhance the timeliness of financial reporting information.” Prediction: Information acquisition and disclosure at a single point in time.

Bunching under XBRL Acquire Disclose AcquireProcessDisclose Jan 1 Mar 1

H1: Financial statement filings using XBRL takes shorter time than financial statement filings without using XBRL.

Distribution of Reporting Lags(10-Q) Pre-XBRL Post-XBRL

10-Ks Pre-XBRL Post-XBRL

Regression Model Reporting Lag =  0 +  1 XBRL+  2 lnS +  3 INV +  4 GS5 +  5 lnA +  6 ROA +  7 Loss +  8 LEV +  9 AR +  10 IA +  11 GOOD + 

TABLE 4 Comparison of Average Reporting Lags by Fiscal Year Fiscal10-Q Filings 10-K Filings Year XBRL non-XBRL XBRL non-XBRL Reporting Lag N N N N , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,670404, , ,

In disclosure “bunching” theory, one of the necessary conditions is that the presence of effective real-time reporting requirement. H2: The timely XBRL financial reporting is only among companies that make their filings in time, but not among companies that file extensions.

Concluding Remarks XBRL reduces reporting lag for both 10-Q and 10-K filings. We also document a decreasing trend of reporting lag after adoption of XBRL, suggesting a significant learning curve in the filing process. The improvement is more pronounced for on-time filers, but not for filers that requested filing extensions. Accounting information system improve reporting efficiency. This paper may also draw policy implication that XBRL mandate improves business information processing and reporting efficiency.