Firstly, you may be wondering why you would want to spend the time to install a copy of the XBRL Viewer on your computer or network. You could, with less effort expended, just upload your files to the SEC website and preview them there. But consider that every time you upload files to preview at the SEC website, you wait five to ten minutes before you can view them. During a filing deadline or a system slowdown, this wait time could balloon to an even longer period.

Instead, you could install the XBRL Viewer on your own computer and have a preview of your XBRL financial reports in seconds.

The first requirement for installing the XBRL Viewer software is to have the Python scripting language installed on the computer running the software. The SEC has provided an installation script to make this process easier, but it requires 64-bit Windows XP or later. If you have a 32-bit version of Windows, you’ll have to install Python yourself.

The second requirement for the XBRL Viewer software is that only Windows operating systems are supported. Unfortunately, there is no way to install the software without Windows.

If you have a computer that meets both of these requirements, you can have the SEC’s XBRL Viewer running in a few minutes. Just download our free installation guide, and you’ll be on your way to your own private copy of the XBRL Viewer.

The previewer script, along with the correct installation of Python, can be downloaded from www.arelle.org.

Additional Links:

http://arelle.org/download/applications/

http://arelle.org/documentation/edgar-renderer-installation/