Incorporate XBRL and Footnote Disclosure in Financial Accounting Courses

• In Event: SESSION 7A: Accounting Education

Abstract

While financial statements are becoming more prevalent when teaching financial accounting, there appears to be little emphasis on the incorporation of footnote disclosure. Students in financial accounting courses are inadequately exposed to footnotes because of heavy teaching schedules and the limitation imposed by textbooks. The author uses a project with real world financial statements to illustrate how instructors can introduce additional footnote disclosure to enhance both introductory and intermediate financial accounting courses. With the increasing use of XBRL, students would benefit from assignment with requirement of using “Interactive Data” to retrieve information. Students in the study used both “Documents” and “Interactive Data” approaches to retrieve information embedded in the footnote disclosure. The results show that students can find footnote information more effectively by using the “Interactive Data”. The final recommendation is to have students expose to both approaches so that they have a full understanding of the available alternatives.

Author

• Nancy Manzhen Fan, Cal State Poly University - Pomona