Don’t Fear the New ESG Acronym: XBRL Makes Reporting Better and Easier

Amid the decisions in Europe on corporate sustainability reporting, one requirement has not received much attention: companies submitting a European Sustainability Reporting Standards report (ESRS) to comply with the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) will need to “tag” each disclosure using a digital language known as XBRL.

If that sentence raised the blood pressure, read on: digital tagging should make life easier for climate and other ESG reporting, not more difficult. It can also ensure that each company’s disclosures have a bigger impact.

To support companies in adapting to the new requirement, G&A Institute and our partners at DFIN have just published a practical guide to digital tagging. The international standard XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is a technical format that makes ESG disclosures digital and machine-readable, and therefore more easily comparable with disclosures from other companies. The data thus becomes more actionable for regulators, investors, and other stakeholders.

To get there, organizations must not only ensure compliance with complex sustainability reporting frameworks but also integrate digital reporting processes into their existing financial and regulatory reporting workflows. This requires acquiring expertise in both the subject matter of ESG reporting, as well as becoming comfortable with digital reporting standards and technology. And digital tagging may become a requirement in other jurisdictions beyond the EU, like California and Canada.

Our new resource paper walks through:

• The growing scope and complexity of sustainability reporting and how XBRL helps
• Why XBRL is essential for compliance and investor trust
• Strategic benefits of structuring and tagging ESG data in XBRL even as regulations continue to evolve
• A platform from DFIN – ActiveDisclosure℠ – that streamlines compliance reporting

G&A CEO Co-Founder Louis Coppola explains: “This resource paper is a practical roadmap that merges sustainability strategy with cutting-edge digital compliance tools, so companies don’t just meet requirements and expectations — they get ahead of them.”

If you need help, we are here. G&A and DFIN have partnered to provide companies with a comprehensive solution, combining sustainability reporting expertise with a cutting-edge support system for applying XBRL.

With support from G&A and DFIN, companies can turn the challenges of meeting CSRD requirements into an opportunity to better manage ESG efforts and provide higher-quality ESG information to all stakeholders.For more information contact us at: info@ga-institute.com.

This is just the introduction of G&A's Sustainability Highlights newsletter this week. Click here to view the full issue.