SEC staff flag dating woes
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently issued a brief data quality reminder on the prevalence of incorrect dates. Staff in the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis have noticed that some filers are using incorrect context dates when digitally tagging facts in their Forms 10-K and 10-Q, used for annual and quarterly reporting of financial statements.
Interestingly, it identifies several sources for these issues. States the SEC: “The types of tagging errors observed include the use of context dates carried over from a prior period’s filing to tag current period information […] using an incorrect year when tagging comparative prior period information, using a calendar year-end date when the filer’s fiscal year does not align with the calendar year, and not using the relevant date of event or measurement for facts associated with an event or measurement, respectively.”
This may also be a useful time to recall our blog post on incorrect dates in early filings made in the European Single Electronic Format (ESEF) – which, like the SEC’s core financial reporting, is also Inline XBRL-based. This focuses on how the difference between accounting and XBRL conventions can cause errors.
Such dating mistakes can have a substantial impact on data quality and utility, but are fortunately relatively easy to detect and avoid – making these insights worth examining.
Read more here.
