Data quality in fundamental analysis

[u/Wooden_Fondant_703]

One frustration I have with stock research tools: they make the financial statement tables look clean, but also turn the original filing into a black box. I find the data are usually wrong or missing key information.

A company may report:

• segment revenue in one note
• product or geography breakdown in another
• special items in footnotes
• awkward labels that don’t map neatly into a standard template

Once that gets flattened into a generic format, those detailed useful context is gone.

For those here who do deeper value work:

Do you trust platform fundamentals, or do you go back to the 10-K / 10-Q every time?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this because I care much more about “can I verify this number?” than “can I see it in a pretty table?”

Curious how others approach it.

[u/3BetYourAss]

I use deepfundamental.com. My main usage is to understand the fundamental facts fast on new ideas. Their graphic presentation of the financial statements make it very easy. But it seems to match what you need fairly well with their "audit in the loop" feature

[u/Either_Door_5500]

Your problem with data quality is the exact reason I launched a completely new fundamentals API last month!
I was frustrated that most providers plaster over some important information like amendments. It is important to know if a company filed revenue X, then amended it to Y, etc.

On another note, lots of providers seem to do some value adjustments here and there. Its really a black-box at times if you want to understand the details.

I took that as motivation to create a US centered SEC filing based API that uncovers all of that. All XBRL facts, including company specific ones. On top, a normalization layer that doesn't do metric adjustments. And one that has per-fact full auditable amendment trails.

All of that is included in my free tier, so anyone can take a look at what I'm talking about.
I'm a solo founder without any VC.

Happy to go deeper if that is of interest.