About the SEC’s accession number

[David Tauriello]

An XBRL API user writes:

While validating the XBRL API /report/search response for
entity.code=0000320193 (Apple), all 70 returned rows carried the requested entity.code, but 33 of the report.accession values had first ten digits that differed from that entity CIK.

Could you please clarify:

Can a valid report/search result filtered by entity.code legitimately contain a report.accession whose first ten digits differ from that entity’s CIK?
If so, what do those first ten digits identify?
For issuer/report lineage, should entity.code be treated as the authoritative reporting-entity link while report.accession is treated as an opaque SEC report identifier?

Yes, the first 10 digits correspond to the filing entity, which might be a company acting on behalf of the company as its filing agent, so it can differ from the filing entity’s CIK.

An accession number follows the format XXXXXXXXXX-YY-ZZZZZZ and contains three specific parts:

• First 10 digits (XXXXXXXXXX): The Central Index Key (CIK) of the submitting entity or filing agent.
• Next 2 digits (YY): The two-digit year of the submission (e.g., 26 for 2026).
• Final digits (ZZZZZZ): A sequential count of the filings submitted by that CIK during the year.

No, do not consider the accession to be ‘opaque’ – it is as unique an identifier of the report as its EDGAR URL.

See the SEC’s website for more information.

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