XBRL Is the Future, Says PwC

PricewaterhouseCoopers says in its "Technology Forecast: 2003-2005, The Intelligent Real-Time Enterprise," that eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is going to be one of the next big things, according to XMLmania.

Eric M Berg, director in the PricewaterhouseCoopers' Global Technology Centre and Technology Forecast editor-in-chief said the technology could even settle the controversy over accounting for stock options. "If you had the information in the XBRL format, you could go back and reorganize the data and tag all of the components," he said. "Anyone who looks at it can set up the document to treat stock options as an expense if they want, reflecting the users opinion about stock options.