1. Choose a source that answers the question

A number needs an identity before it needs a formula. Revenue of 750 could mean one subsidiary, the whole group, a quarter, six months, dollars or thousands of dollars. Write the entity, metric, dates, currency, scale, accounting basis and source version beside it. A filing's publication date is not the period it describes.

For listed US companies, start with the filed annual and interim reports and their notes. A 10-K contains annual financial statements and a 10-Q supplies interim information. An earnings release can be faster, but its adjusted measures and preliminary status require their own reconciliation. For an internal analysis, a controller-approved ledger may supply account detail absent from the statements. A vendor export is useful for discovery; trace important figures back to the underlying report.

This is a hierarchy for a specific question, not a universal rule that one file always wins. Issued statements control reported totals in our case. The ledger explains their composition. When they disagree, record the difference and investigate cutoffs, scope, elimination entries and versions. Do not choose the value that makes the model balance.

Alder example. S03 reports consolidated H1 2026 revenue of USD750 thousand. The earlier draft S05 reports 752. The final issued interim report controls the current total, so use 750. Keep the draft with a disposition explaining the replacement. S04 has a credit-signed sales amount of −750,000 USD units; after a documented sign and scale conversion it agrees with 750. These are three representations of related evidence, not three revenues to add.

Try it. Record a source entry for S03: S03; issued 2026-08-15; Alder consolidated; revenue; 2026-01-01 to 2026-06-30; USD thousands; issued interim; income statement. Identify the question S04 answers that S03 cannot.

Worked answer. S04 supplies account-level detail and an unresolved account. It supports the composition of operating expenses. It does not replace the issued statement's authority or establish that every account is correctly classified.

Transfer check. If a vendor changes yesterday's revenue history today, what would let you reproduce yesterday's analysis? Retain the downloaded snapshot, retrieval date, document identifier, content hash and the version-selection decision. A URL alone can change.

Source guidance: SEC guide to 10-K and 10-Q reports. All Alder documents are original fictional teaching sources.