Studying The Role of Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) in Continuous Auditing

Using extensible business reporting language (XBRL) not only affects the qualitative characteristics of accounting information, but it can also have an impact on the time, cost and quality of auditing. The present study has aimed to examine the role of extensible business reporting language in continuous auditing. This research is an applied research in terms of the purpose of the study and it is an analytical survey in terms of research method. The statistical population of this study is composed of independent auditors and members of Iran’s official Accountants community. In order to collect the necessary information and the views of the members of the research population, a questionnaire containing five hypotheses and 25 questions were designed and were randomly distributed among 120 of the population members in 2016. Ultimately, the questionnaires that were filled out by the research samples were collected by the researchers. The data obtained from the questionnaires were analyzed using different statistical methods (binominal test, t-test, one-sample Wilcoxon test and Kolmogorov-Smirnov test). The research results confirmed the research hypotheses and indicated that in the environment of extensible business reporting language, the time and cost of continuous auditing will be decreased and accuracy and quality of continuous auditing will be improved. In addition, using extensible business reporting language in continuous auditing will facilitate the extraction and analysis of data and accelerates the processes of executing continuous auditing.