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Get your free 'XBRL for Dummies' book — Update

By Dominic Jones on April 23, 2008

Update: I think you should ignore this offer. And I think Hitachi did itself a disservice.

OKAY, you have to pay $1.90 (see comments below) for postage and handling and it has to ship to an address in the US, but the book itself is “free.”

Hitachi America’s XBRL Business Unit, one of the leaders in deep enterprise implementations of XBRL, is giving it away out of the goodness of their marketing budget.

According to the promo, it is only 84 pages, but it packs in the information that financial professionals need to understand XBRL and its role in the upcoming SEC mandates for financial reporting. 

There should be demand for this freebie because a study last year by Grant Thornton LLP found that almost half of senior finance executives did not know about XBRL.

Copies of the book are only available online by visiting https://store.nationalmailing.com/xbrl/default.php?order.

Hitachi is a pioneer in the development of XBRL products and services. It has developed its own offerings and also partners with systems integrators, auditing firms, and service providers. The company has working partnerships with Merrill Corporation and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Hitachi America, Ltd. XBRL Business Unit focuses on developing business relationships with four types of companies:

  • those who want to reduce their time for financial analysis and reporting;
  • those with multiple divisions that are in a merger/acquisition process;
  • those trading on foreign or multinational exchanges; and,
  • those that want to be perceived as leaders in technology adoption.

A copy of the business unit’s white paper “The XBRL-Enabled Company” can be downloaded at www.hitachi.us/XBRL.


Dominic Jones

Dominic (bio & disclosures) is IR Web Report‘s founder and an online investor relations consultant. He advises leading public companies and investor relations service providers worldwide on using the web for disclosure, engagement and profile building. You can contact him via the contacts page.

Posted in , | Tagged | 4 Responses

  • http://investor.leapwireless.com Amy Wakeham

    You may want to note that there is a $9.35 handling charge in addition to the $1.90 shipping, not a big deal but just in the interest of full disclosure.

  • Suzanne

    They must be looking for real dummies to pay $9.35 in handling charges for a free book!

    Sub Total: $0.00
    Shipping (First Class Shipping to CO): $1.90
    Handling: $9.35
    Total: $11.25

  • http://www.irwebreport.com/ Dominic Jones

    Amy, Suzanne:

    Don’t I feel dumb. I was sure I had checked this. Thank you for correcting the record.

  • Stuart McFaul

    I work with Hitachi and know the story behind the XBRL FOR DUMMIES shipping/handling pricing. Just for clarity’s sake, I wanted to detail the facts:

    1. The book itself is free of charge and was written and published at Hitachi’s cost.

    2. The charges for the book are only to cover the distribution costs. These include the ordering Web site, storage, handling and shipping costs based on our estimated distribution. Until a certain volume of books are distributed, the distribution system operates at a loss; if the book distribution turns profitable, profits will be used to print another run of the book.

    Before launching the book order site, a survey was conducted to determine if people would be OK with the pricing. Those who read the book were unanimous that the pricing seemed fair, especially for the pertinence/quality of content. Many noted that books about XBRL and Dummies books (in general) retailed for a higher price than the charge proposed for shipping and handling.

    I hope this information give enough transparency to the shipping/handling concerns noted in the earlier postings. I must say, I have to laugh… because transparency is what XBRL is all about. ;-)