The SEC XBRL mandate enables the gathering of accounting numbers to be fully automatic in a database-like manner that provides vast opportunities for financial analysis. Using this functionality, this study proposes a simple analytical prescreening measure that uses abnormal digit distributions at the firm-year level to identify firms suspected of having managed earnings. On average, we find that the constructed measure indicates a greater amount of irregularities in the reported accounting numbers of firms with higher incentives to engage in earnings management. The suggested XBRL-enhanced digit analysis approach may provide the SEC and investors a simple measure to flag financial reports carrying a higher probability of human interaction. JEL Classifications: C10; M41; M43. Data Availability: Data used in this paper are publicly available. The analytical prescreening VBA-Tool is available upon request. A description of the tool is available; see Appendix B.

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The eXtensible Business Reporting Language, or XBRL, is a reporting format for the automatic and electronic exchange of business and financial data. In XBRL every single reported fact is marked with a unique tag, enabling a full computer-based readout of financial data. It has the potential to improve the collection and analysis of financial data for Competitive Intelligence (e.g., the profiling of publicly available financial statements). The article describes how easily information from XBRL reports can be extracted.

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