Start with a debt-and-liquidity map, then trace every important number or conclusion to the governing filing, exhibit, and exact passage. This workflow is designed to answer four different questions without confusing them: what the company owes, what liquidity it can actually use, what the agreements require, and what changed.
A balance-sheet debt number is not a credit agreement. Revolver capacity is not the same as available liquidity. Covenant language is not proof of compliance or breach. A useful review keeps those layers separate, preserves the source for each observation, and records what remains unresolved.
The order matters. Starting with a keyword search for “covenant” can surface useful passages, but it can also detach a threshold from its definitions, exceptions, testing conditions, or later amendments.
| Source | Use it for | What it does not prove by itself |
|---|---|---|
| Form 10-K | Annual debt balances, audited notes, maturity schedules, liquidity and capital-resources discussion, risks, and the exhibit index. | That terms remained unchanged after year-end. |
| Form 10-Q | Interim balances, updated footnotes, current liquidity discussion, new borrowings, repayments, covenant disclosures, and changes since the 10-K. | A complete restatement of every annual footnote or agreement term. |
| Form 8-K | Material agreements or amendments, new direct financial obligations, and triggering events that may accelerate or increase obligations. | The full governing language when the agreement is only summarized. |
| Exhibit 10 | Material contracts, including many credit agreements, amendments, waivers, guarantees, and security documents. | That every referenced schedule or confidential term is present in the public copy. |
| Exhibit 4 | Instruments defining security-holder rights, including many indentures and debt-security terms. | The company’s current calculations under those terms. |
The SEC’s guide to Form 10-K points readers to MD&A for liquidity and capital resources, financial statements and notes for reported amounts, and Item 15 for exhibits. Form 8-K separately identifies Item 1.01 for a material definitive agreement, Item 2.03 for a direct financial obligation, and Item 2.04 for specified triggering events. Regulation S-K Item 601 is the primary exhibit table.
Make a source log before making a model. For every document, keep the issuer name and CIK, accession, form, filed date, period end, primary-document URL, exhibit URL, amendment flag, and the exact passage used. A ticker alone is not a durable identifier, and an accession without the specific exhibit can still leave another analyst unable to reproduce the result.
Next decide whether two records are comparable. Match point-in-time balances to the same type of reporting date. Match duration facts to equivalent fiscal periods. Confirm currency, unit, scale, sign, consolidation scope, and whether a reported amount is principal, carrying value, fair value, committed capacity, or availability. If any of those dimensions is unresolved, retain the observation as unresolved instead of manufacturing a comparison.
Evidence rule: a number is not ready for downstream use until a reviewer can move from the value to the exact filing passage and understand its period, unit, currency, and meaning.
Begin with the balance sheet, then reconcile it to the debt footnote. Capture current borrowings, current maturities of long-term debt, noncurrent debt, any stated total, and the classes of instruments included. The footnote should help distinguish notes, term loans, revolvers, commercial paper, finance leases, securitizations, and other obligations.
Do not automatically add every debt-looking line. A reported total may already include current maturities; a revolver commitment is not debt unless drawn; and finance-lease liabilities may be disclosed separately from borrowings. Preserve the company’s label and the normalized concept so the reconciliation remains auditable.
Liquidity analysis starts with cash and equivalents, but it does not end there. Identify restricted cash and cash held by entities that may not freely transfer it. Then map each committed facility: total commitment, amounts drawn, outstanding letters of credit, swingline usage, borrowing-base limitations, maturity, and disclosed availability.
A useful bridge is:
cash and equivalents
+ disclosed revolver availability
+ other committed, presently available sources
− near-term debt maturities
− other specifically identified near-term funding needs
= a documented liquidity viewThat is a research frame, not a universal accounting formula. Do not count undrawn commitments when access is conditional and the condition has not been evaluated. Do not assume gross cash is usable. Do not mix a quarter-end balance with a later refinancing without labeling the dates. Read management’s liquidity discussion alongside the numbers: Regulation S-K Item 303 requires discussion of material cash requirements, liquidity sources, and material trends or uncertainties.
Use the latest 10-K or 10-Q exhibit index, then search intervening 8-K filings. An 8-K summary can identify the date, parties, and material terms, but the exhibit usually contains the definitions and mechanics needed for serious analysis. Follow references such as “Credit Agreement,” “Amendment No.,” “Amended and Restated,” “Joinder,” “Waiver,” and “Forbearance Agreement.”
Create an amendment chain rather than treating documents as isolated hits. Record the original agreement, each amendment or restatement, the effective date, the provisions changed, and whether earlier text survives. A later restatement can replace the original agreement; a narrow amendment may change only one threshold while leaving the remaining definitions intact.
| Topic | Capture |
|---|---|
| Facility | Type, total commitment, sublimits, currency, borrower, guarantors, lenders, and administrative agent. |
| Economics | Drawn amount, base/reference rate, spread grid, floor, commitment fee, original issue discount, and maturity. |
| Security | Collateral, guarantees, lien priority, release conditions, and excluded assets or subsidiaries. |
| Restrictions | Debt, liens, restricted payments, investments, asset sales, acquisitions, and affiliate transactions. |
| Financial tests | Metric, threshold, comparator, test date, frequency, testing group, and definitions. |
| Default mechanics | Events of default, grace periods, notice, cure, acceleration, cross-default, and cross-acceleration. |
A covenant record needs more than a name and a number. Capture the exact metric, whether the test is maximum or minimum, the threshold, when and how often it is tested, the borrower or restricted group, and every defined component needed to reproduce the calculation. Then capture baskets, carve-outs, grower amounts, pro forma adjustments, equity cures, holidays, and step-downs or step-ups.
Keep three statements separate:
Only the first two can be directly sourced to their respective filing passages. A keyword such as “default” may appear in a definition or boilerplate and is not proof that a default occurred. Likewise, an agreement threshold cannot be compared with a generic leverage ratio if the agreement defines EBITDA, debt, cash netting, or the testing group differently.
For each change, retain both source records. Compare the same concept, measurement basis, and scope. Classify the change: new borrowing, repayment, maturity reclassification, refinancing, amendment, threshold change, waiver, or disclosure-only wording change. Suppress dates, formatting, relocated definitions, and restatements that do not alter the economics.
A defensible before-and-after record includes both accessions, both filing URLs, exact evidence on both sides, evidence hashes, value and unit metadata, validation state, and any uncertainty. If the predecessor agreement is missing or definitions cannot be resolved, state that limit instead of implying continuity.
FilingSift’s public Apple example compares two eligible 10-Q filings. It reports four deterministically validated changes, each tied to evidence from the prior and current filing. From March 28 to June 27, 2026, the cited records show cash and cash equivalents moving from $45.572 billion to $39.544 billion, current term debt from $8.310 billion to $11.007 billion, noncurrent term debt from $74.404 billion to $71.340 billion, and combined term debt from $82.714 billion to $82.347 billion.
Those facts support a narrow period comparison. They do not, by themselves, establish liquidity sufficiency, covenant headroom, credit quality, or an investment conclusion. Follow the factual workflow case study to see the source passages, before-and-after values, uncertainty and representative API fields together, then open the source-cited comparison to inspect every qualifying event.
| Research task | FilingSift support | Boundary |
|---|---|---|
| Find relevant disclosure | Search indexed filings and exhibits, then open evidence-anchored passages. | Searchability depends on current indexed coverage; the live catalog is authoritative. |
| Compare periods | Preserve the previous and current accession, evidence, unit, currency, period, and validation state. | Noncomparable or unresolved records remain explicit rather than becoming zero. |
| Trace agreements | Connect filing and exhibit research across facilities, amendments, covenants, waivers, and related events. | A search hit is not a legal, breach, compliance, materiality, or severity conclusion. |
| Move into analysis | Use source-linked browser workflows, REST resources, published SDKs, CSV, PDF, and bounded spreadsheet exports. | Permissions, plan limits, source admission, and live product coverage still apply. |
The practical edge is not a claim that software replaces reading. It is a tighter evidence chain: FilingSift keeps the reported fact, exact passage, filing identity, comparison context, and current validation state together so analysts can verify the result instead of rebuilding its provenance.
This guide is a research workflow, not legal, investment, accounting, or credit-rating advice. Material conclusions should be checked against the complete filing, operative agreements, amendments, and appropriate professional review.
Content snapshot: . Current API data may be newer.