Only 50% of CFOs at manufacturing facilities are aware of Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) to define and exchange business and financial performance information, according to a survey by Grant Thornton LLP.

XBRL is being adopted to replace both paper-based and legacy electronic financial data collection by a wide range of regulators. There is widespread speculation that the SEC will make XBRL-based filings mandatory, according to Grant Thornton. This might present a problem since more than 45% of manufacturer CFOs indicated in the survey that if the SEC mandated XBRL-faced filings, it would take them until at least 2010 before they could begin adopting XBRL standards.  A little more than 3% of CFOs thought they could adopt XBRL standards by 2009 and only 17% felt that they could comply by the end of 2007 or 2008.