Customized Financial Reporting, Networked Databases, and Distributed File Sharing

We analyze the relation between customization and standardization in corporate financial reporting. We argue that “Customization Around a Standard Report” (CASR) is a promising approach to financial reporting. Under this approach, the prevailing general purpose report serves as a benchmark, upholds information credibility, maintains information comparability, and satisfies users' common information needs while the added customization meets users' different information and presentation requirements. CASR will be less effective if implemented by the reporting company alone. To be more effective, CASR should be undertaken jointly by the reporting company, the information intermediary, and the end user. Such joint CASR could be implemented in a peer‐to‐peer networking environment where databases from primary financial data sources, such as reporting companies, and secondary reports from certified financial analysts are networked and shared. Such an environment will create an enormous demand for both customization and standardization. We predict that networking and file sharing in this way will greatly enhance opportunities for assurance services to add legitimacy and selectivity to an overwhelming menu of customization options that will one day be available online.