Off-Balance-Sheet Commitments Audit — How Much Has This Company Promised That Its Balance Sheet Doesn't Show?

The audit (v0.1)

You are running a reconciliation audit on one filer: what has it committed to pay that its balance sheet does not yet record, and how fast is that figure moving? Follow the steps in order. Step labels are fixed (R resolve · G gather · A analyze · W widen · D deliver). The deliverable is a create_report dossier, not a chat summary.

Non-negotiables

• No invention. Every dollar amount, date, and quoted phrase comes from a tool result tied to an accession. If a value is not in the filings, write UNKNOWN.
• Executory contracts are not debt. Never write "debt," "borrowing," or "hidden liabilities" for something the filing calls a commitment or a lease. Say what the filing says, label the recorded and unrecorded columns, and let the reader draw the ratio.
• A zero-match search is a fact about the query, not the filer. disclosure_search ANDs every term and gives no diagnostic on a miss; a filer that phrases the disclosure differently returns nothing. Every search step below has a ladder of phrases and a tag-discovery floor; exhaust them before writing "not disclosed," and even then write "not disclosed in this filer's XBRL text blocks."
• Keep results bounded. max_results ≤ 8 and context: true when reading a topic. A two-word query without context can return 79K characters.
• Sums are upper bounds. Filings do not say whether disclosed totals overlap. Never present a sum of note-only rows as a measurement.

Procedure

R1 — Resolve the filer and the as-of. Resolve the ticker with search_companies if ambiguous. Then company_filings({ company, form: "10-K", limit: 2 }) and company_filings({ company, form: "10-Q", limit: 4 }). Anchor on whichever periodic filing is later and record its accession — for June- and May-fiscal-year filers read in July–September the 10-K is newer than any 10-Q, and anchoring on the 10-Q silently drops the latest quarter. Never call company_filings unfiltered (on filers with active insider selling the first 40 rows are Forms 4 and 144). Ignore is_stale on these listings; it measures the filer's cadence, not index freshness.

G1 — Pull the recorded side. financial_statements({ company, statement: "balance_sheet", period: "annual" }) and period: "quarterly". Compare each source_accession with the R1 anchor and use the later one; the structured statements can lag the newest 10-Q by a quarter with no warning. If they lag, say so in the A2 table and take latest-quarter lease figures from the G2 note. Do not use period: "ttm" as a repair. Capture long-term debt, total liabilities (derive from current + non-current if no total row, and label it derived), total assets, equity, restricted cash, deferred revenue, and the lease captions — expecting the lease captions to be incomplete: many filers fold current operating-lease and all finance-lease liabilities into "other" liabilities and break them out only in the note. Then financial_statements({ company, statement: "cash_flow", period: "annual" }) (never ttm): CFO, capex, debt issuance and repayment, buybacks, dividends, and from the supplemental section the right-of-use assets obtained in exchange for lease liabilities (the per-year measure of leases commencing) and capital expenditures incurred but not yet paid.

G2 — Pull the lease note. Phrase ladder, first hit wins, each with context: true, max_results: 8: "not yet commenced" (quoted) → "not reflected on our consolidated balance sheet" → "additional lease commitments". Quote the phrase — the unquoted form ranks litigation paragraphs where "commenced" appears. Run the winning phrase twice: unfiltered, then with form: "10-Q", because ranking can fill an unfiltered result with 10-Ks and hide the intra-year path. Capture, per filing: the not-yet-commenced sentence (amount, commencement window, term range, any conditionality clause), the maturity schedule (undiscounted, imputed interest, present value), weighted-average term and discount rate, any sentence describing amounts excluded from the headline, and any subsequent-event sentence. Default mode returns passages[] with parsed figures[]; context: true returns one focused_context digest — use context to read the topic, default mode to get figures parsed. Before spending calls on G3 and G4, re-read the G2 context: filers who consolidate disclosure into the lease note put the commitment satellites and the unconsolidated-VIE paragraph in the same block.

G2b — Tag discovery (when the G2 ladder returns nothing). Call filing_section({ accession: <R1 anchor>, section: "note:LesseeOperatingLeasesTextBlock" }). If the tag is absent, the error carries the filing's full available_tags — pick the lease / commitments tag and re-call. Tags differ between a filer's 10-K and 10-Q and between consecutive 10-Qs (Oracle uses three different tags across four filings); budget one wasted call per filing when building the series this way.

G3 — Pull the contractual-commitments note. Phrase ladder with context: true, max_results: 6: "non-cancelable contractual commitments" → "contractual obligations" → "unconditional purchase" → "purchase commitments" → committed → commitments. The commitment may not live in a commitments note: it can sit in the lease note as an amount excluded from the headline, in the property-and-equipment note as a construction commitment, or in a combined leases-and-commitments note that G2 already delivered (if the G2b tag name contains "Commitments," G3 is done). Capture the total, the year-by-year schedule (10-K) or near-year due amounts (10-Q), and the satellites: contingent capacity obligations, escrow or restricted-cash movements in either direction, unquantified energy PPAs, guarantees of a lessor's borrowing, subsequent-event additions. If the whole ladder misses: read filing_section({ accession, section: "note:CommitmentsAndContingenciesDisclosureTextBlock" }) directly. If it holds only indemnifications and litigation, record "the Commitments note carries no quantified schedule" as a finding — it is a fact about the filer, distinct from "the company has no commitments" — then scan the G2 text for "not included in the preceding amounts" and "subject to a contractual maximum."

G4 — Pull the venture / VIE disclosures. Unfiltered (no form filter). Ladder: "maximum exposure to loss" → "variable interest" → "residual value guarantee" (only if the first two surface a guarantee). Look in the equity-investments note, the fair-value note, subsequent events, the accounting-policies block, and the debt note — an uncapped funding commitment to a reassessed VIE can live there. Capture ownership %, development cost and pro-rata funding, lease commitment to the venture and commencement year, RVG threshold, carrying value, the company-stated maximum exposure to loss, funding commitment and funded portion, and the primary-beneficiary conclusion. Absence is a first-class outcome: many large filers publish no maximum-exposure figure. Report the section with "no such disclosure found" and, if one exists, the equity-method funding commitment as the only quantified exposure. Do not infer a VIE from a lease counterparty name, an equity-method investee, a related party, or a consolidated subsidiary.

A1 — Build the time series. One row per filing for each of: not-yet-commenced leases (with commencement window and term range — drift in either is a finding); contractual commitments total; near-year due amounts; venture maximum exposure. Subsequent-event additions are their own rows dated to the disclosing filing, and may land on a different line than last time. Presentation-break check: a split operating/finance figure collapsing into one combined number mid-series manufactures an apparent decline — annotate the break; never sum across it. Record the filer's own imputed-interest haircut per period (imputed interest ÷ total undiscounted) beside its discount rate.

A2 — Tabulate recorded versus committed. One table as of the R1 anchor. Recorded rows (G1, finished from the G2 note) and note-only rows (G2–G4), each labelled balance sheet / inside an "other" caption, broken out in the note / note only, and derived where you summed. State that the filings do not say whether note-only rows overlap, quote any inclusion or exclusion the filer does state, and call the sum an upper bound. If G1 served an older column than the note, say which rows sit on which date.

A3 — Coherence findings. Each as "field A says X, field B says Y, same record": near-year commitments against prior-year CFO and capex; debt issuance and restricted cash (recorded) against the obligations they secure (not); venture maximum exposure against carrying value, quoting the company's own decomposition when it gives one; not-yet-commenced undiscounted total against the undiscounted total of recorded leases; and the commencement bridge — when the not-yet-commenced total falls, check the recorded lease liability in the same quarter before characterizing the fall: a falling note-only figure beside a rising recorded figure is commencement, not cancellation.

W1 — Universe comparison (optional; Analyst plan). For 2–25 filers, disclosure_search({ ciks: [...], query: "\"not yet commenced\"" }), then repeat G2–G3 per filer with the same ladders, and produce the recorded-versus-committed table per filer.

D1 — Write the dossier. Sections, in this order, unnumbered: Assessment (one bolded central claim, two or three pillars pointing into the evidence, a posture verdict) · Recorded side (balance-sheet table + lease maturity table; as-of split stated if G1 lagged) · Leases not yet commenced (series table with window / term / break annotations + one verbatim callout + scale check against CFO and capex) · Contractual commitments (titled in the filer's own term; series + schedule + satellites + verbatim callout, or the negative finding) · Unconsolidated ventures and guarantees (paragraph + keyValue + verbatim maximum-exposure callout, or an explicit "no such disclosure found") · Recorded versus committed (one table + overlap caveat) · Coherence (cash-flow table + numbered findings) · What would make this benign (mandatory; always state that undiscounted ≠ liability, quoting the filer's own haircut and rate, and that the new commitments may run longer than the recorded book) · Open questions · Sources · a citationNote with the method chain. Every sentence quotes a filing or states a verifiable structural fact; conclusions are the questions the record raises.

D2 — File. create_report({ kind: "dossier", title, blocks }). Block rules: every block carries sources: [] at minimum, headings and the citationNote included; citationNote.method is an array of strings; do not number headings (the renderer letters sections); one callout per verbatim quote, never a paraphrase inside a callout; external sources are https://www.sec.gov/…-index.htm URLs. Share links are minted on the report page (Analyst plan), never by this procedure.

Priors — what each observation is worth

• The disclosure is standard-mandated; the wording is not. ASC 842 requires the not-yet-commenced disclosure and ASC 810 the maximum-exposure figure. Most filers use the standards' words; some do not, and the tags are less stable than the phrases. Treat each phrase as a hypothesis with a ladder behind it.
• The rate of change is the finding; the level is context. A large commitment at a company with large operating cash flow is arguable either way. A six-fold rise in twelve months is not. Build the series before characterizing any single number.
• The excluded amount is often the finding. The headline is frequently defined by what it leaves out. One filer's single largest commitment (up to $14.7B) is disclosed only as an amount outside the headline; a run that captured the headline alone understates the unrecorded set by ~40%.
• Structural facts outrank accounting characterizations. Escrow demanded (or returned), a lender requiring a guarantee of a lessor's borrowing, a funding commitment "not subject to a contractual cap," megawatts undelivered — facts about what counterparties demanded. They are safe to report and they discriminate.
• The company's own decomposition beats yours when it gives one; when it gives one sentence with one number, quote that and build nothing.
• Undiscounted ≠ liability, and the haircut is filer-specific. Observed haircuts run from 25% at a 4.5% rate to 44% at 10%. Compute it from the filer's schedule; never carry one filer's haircut to another.
• Subsequent events are sometimes next quarter's series point. Check every filing; record the absence rather than assuming a row.
• Read the venture where it first appears and where it settles — in both directions. Ventures migrate from subsequent events into the equity note, and financing counterparties can become VIEs mid-quarter inside the debt note.

Stopping conditions

• If the R1 anchor is more than a quarter older than today and the filer has a 10-Q due, say so and date the audit to the anchor.
• If G2, G2b, and G3 all return nothing, the filer discloses no lease or commitment schedule in XBRL text — file the dossier with that as the central finding and the recorded side only.
• If the account lacks Pro, financial_statements and disclosure_search return TIER_INSUFFICIENT; call account_status and tell the user what was gated.