Worked examples · Finance
The tie-out: earnings against the filing.
An earnings release states figures before the periodic filing does. A tie-out agrees each figure in the release with the filing, under declared correspondences: each one tied, differing, refused, or with no counterpart.
The problem
A public company that releases the results of a completed quarter or year furnishes the release to the SEC under Item 2.02 of Form 8-K. The figures then appear again in the periodic filing.
No SEC rule states that the two must agree figure by figure. That they do is a matter of the company's own controls and of liability for misstatement, and agreeing them is a tie-out: each figure traced to its counterpart, or stated as having none.
Every release figure, one verdict
455 figures of the release were in the declared population. Each received exactly one verdict. Nothing was differing under the declared correspondences, and nothing was refused.
"Untied" is a statement, not a failure: the certificate says that no counterpart was located in the filing under the declared rules, and names what was searched.
cash and cash equivalents: 10681tied
6,501: 6501untied
Two rows of the 455, verbatim except that the company's name is elided.
Every pair of figures, compared
Beside the tie-out, the certificate compares the two documents' stored figures pair by pair: 1,612 pairs across 455 release records and 3,954 filing records.
The comparison is serialized as an argument graph, so its structure can be read by a program: 882 nodes, 1,274 edges, 98 arguments and 0 attacks. An argument that stands has not thereby won.
Boundary
CERTIFIED: this report states, for the declared pair of documents, which stored figures of one were compared with which stored figures of the other under the declared correspondences, what each comparison found, one tie verdict for each declared target figure naming the equivalence rule it rests on, and the content hash each document's stored records carry. For the other 502 figure sides its tie verdicts name, it also states the byte range in that document's stored bytes at which the figure was read and the text there.
NOT ATTESTED That either document is correct, or that either is authoritative over the other, is not attested. A figure that differs between the two documents is reported as a location at which they differ and never as a finding about which of them is wrong. That a tied figure states the same fact as its counterpart beyond equality under the named equivalence rule is not attested. That either document is complete beyond the questions this checklist declares is not attested. Where in either document a tied figure sits is not attested for 2 of the 504 figure sides the tie verdicts name: 0 were stored before positions were recorded and 2 were refused a position by name, and each says so on its own verdict. Where in either document a compared figure sits is stated only where a tie verdict names it; a comparison verdict carries its two figures by fact identifier and value. That a figure for which this report states no comparison has no counterpart in the other document is not attested; it is a statement about what the declared correspondences matched. That two documents whose content hashes differ are different documents is not attested; one document hashed in two byte frames carries two hashes.
A tie-out needs a declared pair
The same call without naming the pairing is refused. The refusal says what to declare.
refusedpairing_required remedy declare
report type earnings-release-vs-filing compares TWO documents and declares 5 pairing(s), so a run must name which one: [filer], [filer], [filer], [filer], [filer] There is no default - a certificate about a pair nobody chose is a certificate about a comparison nobody asked for.