If companies are going to be required to file their financial statements in XBRL — and it certainly looks like that will happen sooner rather than later — then it’s time we give investors the tools they’ll need to make sense of the new statements.

That’s apparently the thinking at the SEC, which has launched a new XBRL reader called Financial Explorer.

The viewer “lets investors automatically generate financial ratios, graphs and charts depicting important information from financial statements,” states the SEC. “Information including earnings, expenses, cash flows, assets and liabilities can be analyzed and compared across competing public companies.”

XBRL will be dissected in detail during the first-ever Maryland Business and Accounting Expo, scheduled for June 17-18 at the Baltimore Convention Center. Until then, tell us what you think: Is corporate America ready to make the move to XBRL?