MorningStar, Google and Yahoo Finance are expected to offer IDEA filing analysis tools to subscribers that will allow investors to control what and how filed XBRL document data is displayed. Being able to manipulate the display of data is only one of many future benefits of the SEC’s migration to the XBRL filing format.

A recent Yahoo news article mentions: “Instead of investors compiling data from many types of forms and then building cumbersome spreadsheets themselves, they’re now able to simply key in data requests. Such data might involve figures drawn from corporate income statements, balance sheets or executive stock compensation plans. Idea can call up all relevant tags in order to do quick searches.”

Update: View XBRL Data Submitted in the XBRL Voluntary Program on EDGAR and see which companies are using XBRL for their filings now!