Financial documents examination methods and systems

Abstract

A user is able to extract financial data, particularly tables, from a document. The table is stored and the user can compare the data in this table with data from similar tables from previous documents. The user can see how financial data has changed historically by looking only at financial tables from the same type of document, for example, only balance sheet tables from annual reports for a specific public company, over many years, and see how the values have changed or whether any new categories or types of data have been added or deleted. From the time series of financial data, the user can gain real intelligence into an entity's financial health.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A method of extracting financial data from a document and analyzing similar financial data from older documents to enhance understanding of the document, the method comprising:
 inputting a document containing unstructured data;   identifying tables and data structures in the document and extracting said tables using a parsing engine;   converting tables into dictionaries;   verifying that data in a table is financial data and storing dictionaries for valid financial data tables;   creating a time series for a selected table wherein a row-based matching algorithm is used to identify similar tables; and   storing a time series for a selected table wherein said time series is utilized to examine changes in financial data over time.