I have just attended the ICAEW XBRL roadshow at Moorgate Place (I seem to be spending a lot of time there lately). The roadshow was attended by 150 delegates from both profession and industry and was an enlightening overview of what must be the biggest change in accounting procedures for some considerable time. It will become compulsory in just six months time and I suspect that very few are yet prepared for this. Most of the leading software providers are busily getting their XBRL offerings ready and promise to have them available but it will be a close run thing.

The roadshow consisted of presentations by HMRC with their own – admittedly limited – solution. There were further presentations by Twinfield demonstrating their future plans and Corefiling regarding their iXBRL solution.

Of the 150 delegates attending, around 50% (yes – 50%!) still prepare their statutory accounts in Word or Excel. Amazing.

Corefiling’s solution enables Word or Excel documents to be converted in to iXBRL format…and this where it gets interesting. Corefilings solution is an SaaS application. Word documents are uploaded to Core’s servers – converted and downloaded in iXBRL format.

You can see where I am going with this. Those who are still working with 20th Century tools (19th perhaps) are going to be forced to use Cloud technology in order to be compliant. Will this be the catalyst that is needed to make the Cloud mainstream.

It will be interesting.