[blindLaw] Reviewing a financial statement and other accounting documents

[Justin Harford]

Hello

Since you didn't get any responses from blind accountants, maybe my response might be at least partially useful, though  I'm not an accountant.

I read a lot of securities and exchange filings including statements of income, cash flow and assets/liabilities. I have found that I get decent results when I pass a PDF of one of these documents through. ABBYY, and export as HTML. I find that around 90% of the time it gets the tables correctly tagged, and it even tags headings for key sections which makes it a bit easier to navigate. Many corporate entities will have spreadsheets of their financial statements. You can usually download these if it is a public company in the USA. I have successfully requested XLS versions of financial statements from foreign companies.

Of course this would break down if the financial statements were hand written, or if you were dealing with a tax return from the IRS. It seems to me like if you are working with a high networth individual, they would be able to supply you with proper spreadsheets.

Sorry you didn't get a reply from a Real accountant. Hopefully somebody with the proper credentials will be sufficiently infuriated with my response to enlighten both of us as I personally would like to know as well.

Regards

Justin Harford
Oregon Bell Academy Coordinator


> On May 30, 2022, at 3:09 PM, Singh, Nandini via BlindLaw <blindlaw at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> No. I may ask again at a later time though.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: BlindLaw <blindlaw-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Caleb E. Smith via BlindLaw
> Sent: Monday, May 30, 2022 3:58 PM
> To: Blind Law Mailing List <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Caleb E. Smith <ces2266 at columbia.edu>
> Subject: Re: [blindLaw] Reviewing a financial statement and other accounting documents
> 
> [EXTERNAL]
> 
> Did you get any responses? I would be curious as well.
> 
>> On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 11:28 AM Singh, Nandini via BlindLaw <
>> blindlaw at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi All,
>> 
>> I have a more corporate-type of assignment that involves reviewing and
>> analyzing such classic accounting  documents like a personal financial
>> statement (for a high net individual) and cash flow. For any corporate
>> attorneys or those who know blind accountants, I would appreciate hearing
>> from you.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Nikki
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