# How the analyst cites a filing

> What happens when you check a number in an Investi answer: the passage or table cell in the SEC filing, a value check, and the formula behind any calculation.

Canonical: https://tryinvesti.com/blog/how-the-analyst-cites-a-filing

_By The Investi team · Published 2026-10-23 · Product_

An AI answer about a company is only useful if you can check it, and checking usually means hunting through a 10-K for the right page. In Investi, each number the analyst takes from a source carries a small numbered marker, and hovering over it opens the passage or table cell in the SEC filing it came from, with the number highlighted. This post explains how it works.

## What a cited answer looks like

An answer reads as ordinary prose. After each figure sits a small numbered chip. When a claim rests on more than one number, such as "net income rose 19%", the analyst underlines the words instead and ties them to every source behind them. In a table, each cell can carry its own source.

Hover over a chip, or move to it with the keyboard, and a card opens after about half a second. The card's top line names the form, the company and the filing date, with an Open link to the full filing. Below it is the number as the company printed it and the passage around it.

## Pointing at a source instead of writing one

The analyst doesn't type out where a number came from. When it looks something up, each fact comes back with a short handle, something like `c7`. The analyst writes that handle next to the number it uses. As the answer streams in, Investi turns each handle into a full citation: the filing, the document inside it, the exact fact or passage, and the value stored there.

1. **Fact looked up.** It comes back with a short handle
2. **Handle written.** The analyst puts it by the number
3. **Citation resolved.** Investi finds the filing and the value
4. **Value checked.** A chip, or a mismatch warning

_The analyst only repeats a short handle; Investi builds the citation and checks the value._

This matters because models are good at reading and reasoning and unreliable at copying long identifiers. Every SEC filing has an accession number, the 18-digit ID the SEC assigns when it accepts the filing. A model asked to write one from memory can get a digit wrong, and the link would still look fine. Repeating a handle it was given a moment ago is a much smaller task. If the analyst writes a handle Investi can't resolve, no chip appears. A number without a chip has no source behind it, and you can see that at a glance.

## Opening the exact passage

A citation points at one place inside a document. Depending on what the analyst used, that place is one of these:

1. A number in the financial statements, tagged in XBRL. XBRL is the format companies use to label each figure they file, so a machine can read "revenue, fiscal 2024, in dollars" without guessing.
2. A passage of text, such as a risk factor or a paragraph in an 8-K.
3. One cell of a table, named by its row and column.
4. One row of a structured form, such as a single transaction on a Form 4 insider filing.

For a tagged number, the card shows what the company called the line in that filing, the scale it rounded to (thousands, millions or billions), the period it covers, any breakdown such as a segment or region, and the statement it belongs to. Below that is the filing itself: the table or paragraph as the company submitted it, shrunk to fit the card and scrolled so the cited number sits in the middle, highlighted. When a filing exists only as a PDF, the card shows an image of the page, scrolled to the cited block.

The card fetches the passage the moment your pointer arrives, so by the time it opens the filing is usually already there.

## Checking the number against the source

A correct source attached to the wrong number is still wrong. The analyst could write 16,261 where the filing says 16,621, or attach one company's handle to another company's figure. So when Investi resolves a citation, it also compares the figure written in the answer with the value at the source. If the two disagree, the card opens with a line in red, above everything else: "The figure in the answer does not match this source."

The check doesn't rewrite the answer or hide the number. It tells you which figure to look at, and the passage underneath shows what the filing actually says.

## Showing the math

Many of the numbers investors care about aren't in any filing. Operating margin, trailing-twelve-month revenue and five-year growth all have to be computed. In Investi, metrics aren't stored. They're formulas over filed numbers, and you can see the formula.

A computed figure gets its own card, marked Computed. It shows the result, the formula and the period, then lists each input on its own row, and each input links to where it was filed. Take AWS in the quarter ended June 30, 2026. Amazon's [10-Q](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872426000026/amzn-20260630.htm) reports $16.62 billion of segment operating income on $42.23 billion of segment revenue. The operating margin is the first divided by the second: 39.4%. A card for that 39.4% lists both inputs, and either one opens the line of the 10-Q it came from.

**Operating margin, quarter ended June 30, 2026**

| Segment | Operating margin |
| --- | --- |
| AWS (Amazon) | 39.4% |
| Google Cloud (Alphabet) | 35.6% |

Source: 10-Q filings, Jul 2026 · SEC EDGAR via Investi ([latest filing](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872426000026/amzn-20260630.htm))

_Neither margin appears in a filing. Each is segment operating income over segment revenue, from the company's own 10-Q._

The same formulas are on every company page. In the formulas pane you can write your own line, a name and an expression over filed numbers, and read it by year, by quarter or on a trailing-twelve-month basis. The pad has functions for TTM, CAGR, growth and lag. Longer calculations run in the [notebook](https://tryinvesti.com/blog/introducing-the-notebook), and its tables keep the same sources cell by cell.

Citations are one part of the layer around the model; [How the Investi analyst works](https://tryinvesti.com/blog/anatomy-of-a-harness) covers the rest.

## When a number changed after it was filed

Sometimes the value in an answer isn't a straight copy from one filing. The card says so in a short note under the passage. The notes cover cases like these:

- The figure was restated in a later filing.
- It was adjusted for a stock split since it was filed, for example "Adjusted for a 4× stock split since it was filed."
- It's a single quarter computed as year-to-date less the prior year-to-date, because the filing only shows the year-to-date figure. Cash flow statements in 10-Qs usually work this way, which is how the twelve-month figures in [what big tech spends on capex](https://tryinvesti.com/blog/big-tech-capex-2026) are built.
- It covers a period of a different length from the rest of the series.

The card also tells you when the SEC disseminated a correction to a filing, or withdrew it. A withdrawn filing is still shown as it was filed.

Restatements keep both values. Driven Brands reported $2.34 billion of fiscal 2024 revenue in the [10-K it filed on February 26, 2025](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1804745/000180474525000010/drvn-20241228.htm). The [10-K it filed on May 19, 2026](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1804745/000180474526000048/drvn-20251227.htm) restates the same year at $1.75 billion. Investi's record keeps both the first-reported and the latest value, and each figure cites its own 10-K, so you can see the number as first reported, the number as restated, and the filing that changed it.

**Driven Brands FY2024 revenue, as first reported and as restated**

| Basis | FY2024 revenue |
| --- | --- |
| As first reported | $2.34B |
| As restated | $1.75B |

Source: 10-K filings, Feb 2025 to May 2026 · SEC EDGAR via Investi ([latest filing](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1804745/000180474526000048/drvn-20251227.htm))

_One fiscal year, two 10-Ks, $587 million apart. Each figure cites the filing it came from._

## Sharing a source

The Open link on a card goes to a source page: the whole filing with the cited figure marked, and a link to the same document on SEC.gov. When you open it while signed in, the address becomes one you can share. Anyone with the link can open it, whether or not they use Investi.

Exports carry their sources too. When you download a table as CSV or .xlsx, each source is named by its line, period, company, form and filing date, and linked to its source page.

On the worked examples published on this website, each source card also lists the accession number and the start of the document's sha256. A sha256 is a fingerprint of the file: change one byte and it changes completely, so anyone can confirm the document is the one the SEC published.

## What it doesn't do yet

A citation shows where a number came from. It can't show that the analyst picked the right number. If the analyst cites a company's total operating income when you asked about one segment, the value check passes, because the figure does match its source. That's why the card shows the filer's own name for the line, its period and its breakdown, and those are worth reading.

Not every source is a filing. A price is cited to its daily close and date, and a total computed across many filed rows is cited as the query that produced it, with its parameters. Coverage is US-listed SEC filers, plus US and international macro data. The analyst can still be wrong. The citations are there so you can check it.

The [methodology page](https://tryinvesti.com/methodology) covers where the data comes from and how it's cleaned before anything gets cited.