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For AI agents: a documentation index is available at https://docs.coverbase.com/llms.txt. This page is also available in markdown by appending .md to the URL.
This guide is part of the User Guides collection. It covers where the filed figures on a vendor’s Financial health tab come from. To learn how Coverbase scores those figures, see the Financial health guide.
Coverbase reads a vendor’s audited annual statements from seven sources, tried in a fixed order, so it can rate listed companies in the US, the UK, most of the EU and EEA, Korea, Brazil, Japan, and any market where the company publishes an annual report. Your credit methodology needs these figures from the latest audited year: current assets, current liabilities, total liabilities, equity, operating profit, interest, and cash flow.

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How Coverbase chooses a source

Coverbase tries each source in this order and stops at the first one that has the vendor’s latest annual statements. Sources that publish tagged data come first. Coverbase reads a published annual report only when no tagged source has the company. The Financial health tab names the source above the ratings, for example “Rated from SEC Form 10-K, fiscal year 2025” or “Rated from Annual report, fiscal year 2026”. To check a figure, click Open filing. It opens the document Coverbase read.

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How Coverbase reads each source

  • SEC EDGAR, ESEF, UKSEF, OpenDART, Companies House, CVM and EDINET tag each figure with a standard taxonomy or chart of accounts: US GAAP, IFRS, the UK FRC taxonomy, the Brazilian standard chart, or the Japanese GAAP taxonomy. Coverbase reads only the standard tags for consolidated totals. When a company tags a line with its own custom element, Coverbase leaves that figure blank. Some ESEF filers show no capital expenditure or interest for this reason.
  • Published annual reports are PDFs. A model reads the pages that hold the primary statements and the auditor’s report. Coverbase then checks the result in three ways:
    • The company named in the report must be your vendor.
    • The report must come from the vendor’s own website or from an exchange that publishes for it. The vendor’s site on its home country’s domain also counts, for example telstra.com.au for an Australian vendor recorded as telstra.com.
    • Total assets must be within 2% of total liabilities plus equity. If they are not, Coverbase drops total liabilities and the debt-to-worth ratio.
A model can misread a figure in a published annual report. The 2% balance check catches large errors, not small ones. Before you rely on a rating from an annual report, open the filing and check the figures behind it.

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Audit status

Your methodology can require audited statements before a vendor rates Low. Coverbase decides whether the latest full year is audited from the source. A report counts as overdue when the next year’s report is past this deadline after the fiscal year end:

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When a vendor has nothing on file

Nothing on file to rate means no source had audited annual statements for the vendor. You see it in these cases:
  • The vendor is a private company outside the UK and Korea. These companies publish no statements.
  • The vendor is a bank or an insurer. These companies do not split current from non-current items, so Coverbase does not rate the current ratio.
  • Coverbase could not confirm the vendor’s identity. Coverbase finds each source from the LEI, company number or stock ticker on the Corporate registration tab. When several registered companies share the vendor’s name, Coverbase prefers the one registered in the vendor’s headquarters country and the group parent over its subsidiaries. When nothing separates them, the match waits for review instead of choosing one.
To rate a vendor with nothing on file, click Upload financial statements on the Financial health tab and add the statements the vendor gave you. Coverbase rates submitted statements the same way, and only your organization sees them. See Submitting a vendor’s own financial statements.

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Freshness

Coverbase reads the tagged sources each time it refreshes the vendor’s intelligence. It reads a published annual report at most once every 90 days, because companies publish one each year.

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Troubleshooting