As most finance executives now know, , the interactive data tagging format designed to make it easier for investors and others to find reported items, and work with them.

Even though it's not quite at the finish line, a few observations already can be made.

For one thing, complying with XBRL reporting requirements is significantly more challenging than making the earlier transition to EDGAR, the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system, notes Harold Zeidman, audit partner with KPMG. He offers an analogy: filing in EDGAR is like taking a picture of financial data and submitting it. An XBRL filing requires the company to identify, or tag, each pixel within a digital picture, he notes.

According to , companies were spending anywhere from 12 to 2,000 hours per quarter preparing their XBRL filings.

Even so, a recent SEC review of financial reports submitted in XBRL found several common errors. Among them: companies' efforts to get their XBRL statements to look like exact replicas of their paper reports. This isn't a requirement, and because of their efforts, companies "are extending (the tags) when they shouldn't, or tagging inappropriately," says Ami Beers, the AICPA's manager of business reporting, assurance and advisory services, and XBRL.