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 system for performing time series and table extraction of financial data from a document to generate additional information for the document that enhances understanding of the document, the system comprising:
 at least one processor, the at least one processor configured for:
 receiving a document file containing unstructured data; 
 identifying tabular data within the document file, wherein the tabular data represents a selected table containing financial data; 
 generating a text skeleton from the identified tabular data, wherein the text skeleton includes headers, data headers, terms, and values; 
 using a row-based matching algorithm to generate a time series for the selected table, wherein the time series is generated using at least one table from a previously received document file that is similar to the selected table; and 
 storing the generated time series for the selected table, wherein the time series represents changes to the financial data of the selected table against the at least one table from the previously received document file.