PCAOB Form AP Auditor Engagement Scraper

Extracts the complete PCAOB AuditorSearch / Form AP engagement register: for every issuer audit report filed since 2017, which registered audit firm signed it, which individual engagement partner signed it (by name and PCAOB Partner ID), which other accounting firms participated and at what percentage, and the audit and fiscal-period dates. This is the authoritative issuer-to -auditor-to-partner mapping for every US-listed issuer.

What data does this actor extract?

Each record is one Form AP filing — one issuer audit report. Beyond the raw filing fields, the actor computes two signals that require the full register in memory at once and are not present in the raw PCAOB data:

• partner_tenure_years — consecutive fiscal years the same engagement partner has signed for the same issuer, the clock SOX caps at five years before a mandatory partner rotation
• auditor_change_flag — the issuer's audit firm differs from its prior fiscal period's filing, an auditor-change event
• other_participating_firms — other accounting firms disclosed as auditing more than 5% of the issuer, exploded into a clean array of { firm_name, country, percentage_or_range } instead of the raw nested JSON PCAOB publishes

Both derived clocks are computed from is_latest_form_ap_filing rows — the PCAOB-resolved current state of each engagement — so a superseded or amended-away filing never manufactures a phantom partner-year or firm switch. A superseded row is then backfilled with its canonical twin's clock when the two describe the same issuer, fiscal period, firm and partner; otherwise those three fields are null.

Sample output record:

{
  "form_filing_id": "5",
  "is_latest_form_ap_filing": true,
  "firm_id": "248",
  "firm_name": "Grant Thornton LLP",
  "firm_other_name": null,
  "firm_country": "United States",
  "firm_issuing_country": "United States",
  "firm_issuing_city": "Chicago",
  "firm_issuing_state": "Illinois",
  "audit_report_type": "Investment Company",
  "issuer_id": "581613",
  "issuer_name": "Advisors Disciplined Trust 1243",
  "issuer_cik": "0001600931",
  "audit_fund_series": null,
  "audit_report_date": "2017-01-31",
  "fiscal_period_end_date": "2016-09-30",
  "engagement_partner_last_name": "Mleko",
  "engagement_partner_first_name": "Frank",
  "engagement_partner_middle_name": "Michael",
  "engagement_partner_suffix": null,
  "engagement_partner_id": "0024800138",
  "engagement_partner_other_ids": null,
  "secondary_engagement_partner_last_name": null,
  "secondary_engagement_partner_first_name": null,
  "secondary_engagement_partner_id": null,
  "is_multiple_audit_period": false,
  "audit_period_information": null,
  "dual_dated": false,
  "audit_dual_date": null,
  "is_audit_divided": false,
  "is_audit_not_divided": false,
  "audit_not_divided_percent_information": null,
  "number_of_participants": null,
  "participant_percentage": null,
  "participant_range": null,
  "other_participating_firms": [],
  "is_amendment": false,
  "amendment_scope": [],
  "partner_tenure_years": 1,
  "auditor_change_flag": false,
  "partner_rotation_due": false
}

Use cases

• Audit firm business development — identify issuers whose engagement partner is approaching the five-year SOX rotation ceiling, before a competitor's audit team does
• Short sellers and forensic-accounting research — screen the auditor_change_flag event feed for issuers that recently switched audit firms
• Academic accounting research — Form AP is a standard dataset in the audit-quality literature, and partner_tenure_years is the field most of that literature computes by hand
• Issuer-side audit committees — benchmark their own engagement partner's tenure and participating-firm disclosures against the full market

How it works

The actor downloads PCAOB's own daily-refreshed bulk export directly — no browser automation, no per-issuer lookups. PCAOB republishes the entire Form AP register as a single ZIP archive every day; the actor extracts, parses and joins it in one pass, then computes the two derived clocks described above across the full corpus before saving records.

Data source: https://assets.pcaobus.org/firm-filings/FirmFilings.zip

Input

Field	Type	Description	Default
maxItems	Integer	Maximum number of records to return	10

Output

One record per Form AP filing. The current register holds roughly 156,000 filings covering every issuer audit report filed since the 2017 requirement took effect, growing by about 20,000 filings a year.

Field	Type	Description
form_filing_id	String	PCAOB's unique identifier for this Form AP filing
is_latest_form_ap_filing	Boolean	True if this is the current, non-superseded version of the filing (false on an original filing that was later amended)
firm_id	String	PCAOB-registered identifier of the audit firm that signed the report
firm_name	String	Audit firm name
firm_other_name	String	Alternate/trade name for the firm, when disclosed
firm_country	String	Audit firm's country of registration
firm_issuing_country	String	Country of the office that issued the report
firm_issuing_city	String	City of the office that issued the report
firm_issuing_state	String	US state of the office that issued the report, when applicable
audit_report_type	String	Filing category (e.g. "Investment Company", "Issuer, other than Employee Benefit Plan or Investment Company")
issuer_id	String	PCAOB identifier for the issuer whose audit report this is
issuer_name	String	Issuer name
issuer_cik	String	SEC Central Index Key (CIK) for the issuer
audit_fund_series	String	Fund series name, for investment-company filings that cover one
audit_report_date	String	Date the audit report was issued (YYYY-MM-DD)
fiscal_period_end_date	String	End date of the fiscal period covered by the audit report (YYYY-MM-DD)
engagement_partner_last_name	String	Engagement partner's last name
engagement_partner_first_name	String	Engagement partner's first name
engagement_partner_middle_name	String	Engagement partner's middle name
engagement_partner_suffix	String	Engagement partner's name suffix (Jr., III, etc.)
engagement_partner_id	String	PCAOB Partner ID of the signing engagement partner — the join key for partner-tenure analysis
engagement_partner_other_ids	String	Other PCAOB IDs disclosed for the same partner, when present
secondary_engagement_partner_last_name	String	Second signing partner's last name, for dual-signed reports
secondary_engagement_partner_first_name	String	Second signing partner's first name
secondary_engagement_partner_id	String	Second signing partner's PCAOB Partner ID
is_multiple_audit_period	Boolean	True when the report covers more than one fiscal period
audit_period_information	String	Free-text description of the covered period(s), when disclosed
dual_dated	Boolean	True when the report carries two report dates
audit_dual_date	String	The second report date, when dual-dated (YYYY-MM-DD)
is_audit_divided	Boolean	True when audit responsibility was divided among firms by a criterion (assets, revenue, etc.)
is_audit_not_divided	Boolean	True when other firms participated without a formal division of responsibility
audit_not_divided_percent_information	String	Raw PCAOB participant-disclosure JSON backing other_participating_firms for a not-divided filing
number_of_participants	Number	Count of other firms that participated in the audit
participant_percentage	Number	Disclosed participation percentage, when PCAOB reports an exact figure
participant_range	String	Disclosed participation percentage range, when PCAOB reports a band instead of an exact figure
other_participating_firms	Array	Other firms disclosed as auditing >5% of the issuer, exploded from the raw participant JSON: firm name, country, and disclosed percentage or range
is_amendment	Boolean	True when this filing amends an earlier one
amendment_scope	Array	Which Form AP sections this filing amended (previous filing, firm identification, audit report, other firms, divided responsibility, participants >5%, participants <5%, audit divided). Empty on an original filing
partner_tenure_years	Number	Consecutive fiscal years (ending at this filing's year) the same partner has signed for this issuer, computed from current filings only. Null on a superseded filing with no matching current filing
auditor_change_flag	Boolean	True when this issuer's audit firm differs from its prior fiscal period's current filing. False on the issuer's earliest observed filing. Null on a superseded filing with no matching current filing
partner_rotation_due	Boolean	True when partner_tenure_years >= 5, the SOX engagement-partner rotation ceiling

Notes

• PCAOB republishes the full register daily — each run picks up that day's file, so a filing amended this morning is reflected the same day
• partner_tenure_years, auditor_change_flag and partner_rotation_due are computed from is_latest_form_ap_filing filings; a superseded/amended-away filing inherits its canonical replacement's values when one matches on issuer, fiscal period, firm and partner, and is otherwise null rather than a guess
• other_participating_firms is populated only for filings that disclosed participating firms — most filings involve a single audit firm and this array is empty