How to audit quarterly revenue with SEC company facts
Trace a revenue number from SEC XBRL JSON to its accession, filing period, taxonomy tag, and source filing.
A company-facts value is useful only with its period, form, filing date, accession number, unit, and taxonomy tag. Those fields let you distinguish a standalone quarter from a year-to-date value and open the filing that reported it.
Why a ticker and a number are not enough
SEC company facts are organized by CIK, taxonomy, tag, and unit. A revenue-looking field can contain annual, year-to-date, and standalone-quarter values. Taking the newest row without checking duration can put a nine-month total beside a three-month comparison.
The JMM refresh job keeps revenue facts whose reported duration is consistent with a quarter, then stores the period dates, filing date, form, accession number, tag, unit, and filing URL. The public company page shows the period, form, filing date, value, and source link; the remaining audit fields stay attached to the evidence record.
Trace one row back to the filing
Open the company profile, choose a revenue-history row, and follow its SEC filing link. Match the period end, form, and reported value in the filing. The accession number in the URL identifies the exact submission; it should not point to a generic investor-relations homepage.
- Confirm the company CIK.
- Check that the unit is USD.
- Check the start and end dates describe one quarter.
- Open the accession-linked filing.
- Note any amended form before using the value for settlement.
Handle taxonomy changes explicitly
Companies can move between revenue tags or change disclosure structure. The refresh job evaluates a short priority list of standard revenue tags and chooses the viable series with the newest reported period. The selected tag remains in the attached evidence so a reporting change can be inspected rather than hidden behind a normalized label.
That approach is transparent but not infallible. A material company-specific reporting change belongs in the corrections record and may require a documented adapter rather than a silent mapping.
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