Methodology
How Report Scout finds and verifies reports
Last updated: 6 October 2026
Report Scout keeps an archive of corporate reports (annual reports, sustainability and ESG reports, SEC filings and similar documents) and emails people when a company they follow publishes a new one. This page explains where the reports come from, what is checked before a report is listed, what the dates on a company page mean, how often companies are checked, and what the archive does not cover.
Today Report Scout tracks 2,125 companies in 72 countries, and the archive holds 7,251 reports.
Which companies and reports
The company list began with the world's largest companies (the Fortune 2000) and grows when someone asks to follow a company that is not on it yet: the name they type is matched to the right company, or the company is added. Public and private companies are both covered when their reports are published online.
The archive holds these report types:
| Report type | What it is | Reports |
|---|---|---|
| Annual | Annual reports summarize company strategy, operating performance, and financial outcomes for the full fiscal year. | 2,177 |
| Sustainability | Sustainability reports cover long-term environmental and social impact, including climate, resource use, and stakeholder outcomes. | 1,715 |
| 10-K | 10-K filings are comprehensive annual SEC disclosures covering business, risks, financials, and governance. | 934 |
| ESG | ESG reports highlight environmental, social, and governance priorities, targets, risks, and performance indicators. | 869 |
| Integrated | Integrated reports combine financial and non-financial performance into a unified narrative about value creation over time. | 713 |
| 10-Q | 10-Q filings provide quarterly SEC updates on financial performance, risk changes, and key business developments. | 200 |
| Impact | Impact reports describe measurable social or environmental outcomes linked to company programs, products, or capital allocation. | 177 |
| Universal Registration Document | Universal Registration Documents provide a comprehensive annual regulatory disclosure package used in several European markets. | 117 |
| TCFD | TCFD reports disclose climate-related governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics aligned with the TCFD framework. | 103 |
| Quarterly | Quarterly reports provide interim business and financial updates between annual reporting cycles. | 101 |
| CDP | CDP disclosures provide standardized climate, water, and forest-related data submitted through the CDP questionnaire process. | 92 |
| 20-F | 20-F filings are annual SEC reports submitted by foreign private issuers, similar in scope to a 10-K. | 52 |
| Annual Financial | Annual Financial reports focus on audited financial statements, notes, and accounting disclosures for a completed year. | 1 |
How a report is found
- For each company and report type being followed, an AI model with web search looks for the company's latest report of that type on its own website and elsewhere on the web, and proposes links to the document.
- When that produces nothing usable, a separate web search runs as a second route.
- Every candidate document is downloaded and its text extracted, so that the document itself can be checked.
What is checked before a report is listed
The opening pages of each document are read by a classifier that answers five questions:
- Is it a full report? Press releases announcing a report, summaries, brochures and overviews covering several companies are rejected.
- Is it about this company? The company has to be the document's main subject. Its country is used as a supporting hint.
- What type is it? The type is read from the title page. An SEC form counts as a 10-K, 10-Q or 20-F even when its cover says “Annual Report on Form 10-K”, and an “Annual Sustainability Report” counts as a sustainability report, not an annual report. A title in another language is translated.
- Which year? The latest year in the reporting period or title: a report for 2024/25 is filed as a 2025 report.
- Which language? Reports in any language are kept, and the language is recorded.
Only documents that pass are listed. When a company publishes a report only as a web page or inside an online viewer, so that no document can be read, the company page links to that page instead of a PDF, and its type and year come from the page rather than from the document's text.
What the dates on a company page mean
- Report year: the year in the report's title or reporting period, as above.
- Published: the day the company published the report, when that is known. The creation date stored inside a PDF file is not presented as a publication date.
- Added to Report Scout: the day the report was listed.
- Usually published in: shown when at least two of a company's newest reports have a known publication date and came out in the same month or in neighbouring months. The date given for the next report is an estimate from that pattern, not an announcement by the company. The same dates, across all companies, make up the reporting calendar.
How often companies are checked
- Companies that someone follows are checked on a schedule. A company nobody follows keeps the reports found so far, but is not checked again until someone follows it.
- When someone starts following a company it is checked shortly afterwards, and they get a first email listing what was found.
- Until a report is found, the company is checked about once a month. After ten checks without a result, the search is paused and flagged for review.
- Once a report is found, the next one is looked for around the same time the following year: a month before, on the anniversary, and one and two months after. If it has not appeared by then, the search is paused and flagged for review.
- Quarterly reports and 10-Q filings are looked for three months after the previous one, then weekly for three more weeks.
- New reports reach followers in their weekly email, sent on Mondays, or their monthly email, sent on the first Monday of the month.
Where the links point
Each link points to the copy of the report that was found and checked: usually the company's own website, sometimes a regulator's filing system such as the SEC's EDGAR, or another public copy. Report Scout does not host or change the documents.
Limits
- Classification is automated and can be wrong: a report can be given the wrong type or year, and a report can be missed.
- A document that is a scanned image, or only shown inside a viewer, may not be readable; such reports are missed or listed as page links.
- Not every company publishes every report type. Most companies listed outside the United States file no 10-K, and many private companies publish no annual report.
- The archive is not complete. A report missing from a company page has not necessarily never been published.
- Report Scout finds and checks the documents. It does not extract or audit the figures inside them; custom data extraction is available to Professional Plus customers.
Corrections
If a report is missing, mislabelled, or links to the wrong document, email hello@arboretica.com with the company page's address and what is wrong.
Who runs Report Scout
Report Scout is built by Arboretica in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in partnership with the Data Driven EnviroLab. See also the FAQ and the list of companies.