Workiva committed to keeping Arelle technology open-sourced, allowing organizations worldwide to continue easily reporting trustworthy, transparent data

Workiva Inc. (NYSE: WK) announced today its acquisition of the Arelle^® Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL^®) validation platform. As part of its definitive agreement with Mark V Systems Limited, Workiva is now the primary steward of this open-source, worldwide XBRL technology engine.

The agreement includes ownership of the Arelle domain name and trademark, management of the open source code located on GitHub, and a consulting agreement with Mark V Systems CEO Herman Fischer. Arelle is the leading XBRL validation engine available today. As the global standard, it is used by a community of over 50 global regulators, banks and technology companies that depend on it for data quality and comparison.

Workiva CEO Marty Vanderploeg said: “Workiva is the global leader in XBRL and Inline XBRL, and was one of the first companies to utilize Arelle as part of our technology offering to transform and improve data quality, transparency and trust for global businesses. We believe transparent reporting will bring about a better world, and Arelle helps make that happen. We are committed to working with the XBRL community to keep Arelle open-sourced and collaborating for the advancement of this important validation engine.”

Mr. Fischer said: “The introduction of XBRL was arguably one of the most transformative technology developments to come along in the financial disclosure industry. We started Arelle in 2010 as an open-source technology project to ensure the power of XBRL data was validated and maintained. I’ve spent the last few decades ensuring the highest level of quality controls, regardless of new or changing regulations and requirements. Since the beginning, the Workiva team has been a leading contributor to this open source initiative. Their commitment to transparent reporting is clear and decisive. I can think of no better caretaker than Workiva to take the stewardship of the Arelle project. I know Arelle will be in great hands and will continue to be the leading global open-source XBRL validation engine.”

XBRL Background:

XBRL enables machine-readable financial data that standardizes how companies, regulators, and investors analyze and consume financial data. It uses tags to identify each piece of financial data, which then allows it to be used programmatically by an XBRL-compatible program. XBRL allows for easy transmission of data, driving transparency and comparability between businesses. Once the data is tagged, an XBRL-conformant validation engine such as Arelle ensures quality data by checking that it adheres to established rules and by identifying anomalies in the data. Currently Arelle is the only open-source XBRL-certified^TM validating processor.

About Workiva

Workiva Inc. (NYSE: WK) simplifies complex work for thousands of organizations worldwide. Customers trust Workiva’s open, intelligent and intuitive platform to connect data, documents and teams. The results: improved efficiency, greater transparency and less risk. Learn more at workiva.com.

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