The Need:

All public companies are required to file quarterly and annual reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission, (“SEC”). These reports are commonly known as Form 10-Q for the quarterly report and Form 10-K for the annual report. The content of these reports is strictly monitored by the SEC and companies are required to submit these reports to the SEC within a very short period of time after the end of each reporting period.

As these reports contain specific discussion and analysis of the financial performance of the specified company for the reporting period, these reports contain a lot of numbers both in table format and paragraph format. However, due to the large discussion and analysis required, these reports are consistently prepared via word processor such as Microsoft Word which presents limitations for the use, presentation and flow of actual numerical data.

Having extensive experience in the preparation and audit of these financial statements, I continue to wonder at the process of hard coding numbers into a word document and then as the numbers are subject to change during the report generation process, each number must be manually updated as changes occur. As a result, the report generation process as it exits today is a very labor intensive process involving numerous hours spent scouring the document and tying out numbers only to repeat the process again and again as the numbers are subject to change.

The Solution:

The concept of QuickData, is a software package that integrates the numerical data functionality of excel with the word processing ability of Word. Essentially, this software package would give the user the ability to link numbers within the document to a central database wherein the live accounting data would be held. Any change to this database would automatically flow through the entire document wherever needed. Additionally, numbers in the document should be able to perform simple math functions based on data contained within the live database to allow for % change calculations as well as rounding. Additional features might also integrate guidance or recommendations regarding the required elements of the report in the form of wizards, helpful hints and best practices. Other features should also consider versioning to allow multiple users to work on the document simultaneously and should also consider providing functionality for edgarization, (the format required by the SEC for submission) and filing of the final document.

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