Free webinar June 4 will demo the Excel to iXBRL Conversion tool
A free, open-source tool designed by the University of Michigan's Ford School of Public Policy is now available to help local governments make financial data more accessible.
Developed by the Ford School's Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy, or CLOSUP, in partnership with DAC Bond, a tech company that helps clients with municipal bond disclosure requirements, the Excel to iXBRL Conversion tool is designed to be user-friendly and straightforward for smaller local governments with relatively simple finances.
When Congress passed the Financial Data and Transparency Act in 2022, it required most municipalities in the U.S. to modernize and digitize their financial reports. This is a heavy lift for small towns and school districts, most of which still report their financial information in PDF documents, says Stephanie Leiser, director of CLOSUP's Fiscal Health Project.
Now, users will only have to download an Excel template, input their financial data and upload it to the online tool. The tool will convert the information using eXtensible Business Reporting Language, or XBRL, a royalty-free, open source international framework that communicates financial data on the internet.
XBRL labels financial information with standardized meta tags to more easily identify important details—akin to tagging a vacation photo with the date, location and names of people in the photo. Tagged data can then be used to generate government reports, create interactive dashboards, benchmark against peers or build a database to support research and transparency.
"Small governments are already stretched so thin, so we wanted to come up with a tool that is free, quick and easy to use," Leiser said. "Our online tool requires no technical skills beyond inputting data into a spreadsheet and uploading it to our website. Getting over this hurdle of converting the data clears the way for enormous leaps in the accessibility and usability of local government financial data for all stakeholders."
The team received support from Michigan Open Source Software, an initiative from Innovation Partnerships, in its open source community-building efforts. With MOSS assistance, CLOSUP encouraged municipal issuers and market participants to test the tool and provide feedback. Developers have also been invited to contribute new features and customizations through the project's GitHub repository.
