Global economy, meet the global financial reporting language.

XBRL, a computer reporting language that’s already enabling banks and a handful of publicly traded companies to more easily exchange electronic financial reports, could also become a cost-saving tool for nearly every size of business.

Using XBRL, or Extensible Business Reporting Language, companies worldwide will be able to use computer codes to “tag” different kinds of data in financial reports so they can be retrieved and analyzed more easily, said Tom Murphy, an executive vice president with the Minneapolis office of RSM McGladrey Inc.

“It’s occurring around the world,” said Murphy, who last week gave a presentation on the technology to the Iowa Treasury Management Association in Des Moines. His message to companies: “You need to take a hard look at it; you need to consider making the change to the standard. You have an upfront cost (in upgrading software), but over time the efficiency you create will more than offset it.”

XBRL allows electronic financial reports to be tagged, much like categories in the Yellow Pages, Murphy said, so that accessing the data is as easy whether you’re in the same company or exchanging data with a company on the other side of the world. An open standard, XBRL has no license fees.

With XBRL, “financial data that you utilize is going to be more accurate and reliable,” he said. With less time devoted to the data-reporting process, that means more time for analysis of financial data, he added.

The language was developed over the past five years through XBRL International, a worldwide consortium of more than 400 businesses, organizations and governmental agencies. The group is now nearing adoption of a final standard for financial reporting, Murphy said.

In October, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. began requiring its more than 8,300 member banks to use XBRL in filing their call reports. And early last year, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission began a voluntary reporting program through which publicly traded companies can use the software language to format the reports they submit to the agency.

Murphy said McGladrey now converts all financial data its clients transmit to the firm into an XBRL-compatible software program.

“We’re making sure that data is XBRL-compatible for the potential (use of XBRL) in the future,” he said. “We’re making sure that any database we’re building has that capability so that we don’t have go back and redo anything.”

For more information on XBRL, visit www.xbrl.org/us.