Complimentary webinar on June 4 will showcase the Excel to iXBRL Conversion tool

A complimentary, open-source tool crafted by the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy is now accessible to assist local governments in enhancing the accessibility of financial data.

Created by the Ford School’s Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy (CLOSUP), in collaboration with DAC Bond, a technology firm that supports clients with municipal bond disclosure obligations, the Excel to iXBRL Conversion tool aims to be intuitive and simple for smaller local governments with relatively uncomplicated financial situations.

Following the enactment of the Financial Data and Transparency Act in 2022, Congress mandated that most municipalities in the U.S. streamline and digitize their financial statements. This presents a significant challenge for small towns and school districts, many of which still report their financial details in PDF formats, according to Stephanie Leiser, director of CLOSUP’s Fiscal Health Project.

Now, users simply need to download an Excel template, enter their financial data, and upload it to the online tool. The tool will transform the information using eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), a royalty-free, open-source global framework for transmitting financial data via the internet.

XBRL employs standardized meta tags to label financial information, facilitating easier identification of essential details—similar to tagging a vacation picture with the date, location, and names of individuals in the image. Tagged data can then be utilized to produce governmental reports, create interactive dashboards, benchmark against colleagues, or construct a database to foster research and transparency.

“Small governments are already stretched incredibly thin, so we aimed to develop a tool that is free, rapid, and user-friendly,” Leiser stated. “Our online tool necessitates no technical expertise beyond entering data into a spreadsheet and uploading it to our site. Surmounting this barrier to data conversion paves the way for substantial advancements in the accessibility and utility of financial data for all local government stakeholders.”

The team received support from Michigan Open Source Software, an initiative from Innovation Partnerships, in its efforts to build an open-source community. With MOSS’s assistance, CLOSUP encouraged municipal issuers and market participants to test the tool and provide insights. Developers have also been invited to suggest new features and customizations via the project’s GitHub repository.

CLOSUP, along with Innovation Partnerships’ MOSS, will host a free webinar to demonstrate the tool at 3 p.m. June 4. Registration is mandatory.