Understanding Units & Quarterization

Overview

This guide explains how Daloopa represents financial values across fiscal periods, why the raw value disclosed by a company may differ from the value we surface, and how to interpret the relationship between them.

Every data point in a series carries two values:

These two values can differ because companies do not all disclose their financials on the same basis. Some report a clean quarterly figure; others report a cumulative year-to-date (YTD) or full-year figure. The span field tells you which basis a given value_raw was reported on, and therefore how value_normalized was derived.

Key principle: To reconcile any difference between value_raw and value_normalized, always start with the span field.

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The span field

span describes the reporting basis of value_raw and depends entirely on how the company chose to disclose that specific series for that period.

How span maps to fiscal periods

The available span values depend on the fiscal period:

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How value_normalized is calculated

When span = Quarterly

No quarterization is required. The disclosed figure is already a single-quarter value:

value_normalized = value_raw

When span = Year to date or Annual

Daloopa needs to strip out the prior periods' cumulative contribution to isolate the quarter. The general principle is:

value_normalized = (current period cumulative raw) − (prior period cumulative value)

Applied per fiscal period, the explicit rules are:

Note: Each quarter subtracts the immediately preceding period's cumulative value. Because Q1's raw and normalized values are equal, the Q2 calculation can reference either — the result is the same.

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Worked example — AAPL

Series: series_id = 1914880  |  Unit: Million

This series illustrates a full fiscal year where each quarter after Q1 is disclosed on a cumulative basis. The headline difference — 2017Q4 showing value_raw = 627 against value_normalized = 93 — resolves cleanly once the spans are applied.

The $627M figure is the full-year cumulative total; the $93M normalized figure is Q4 in isolation.

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Quick reference

• value_raw = as disclosed by the company. value_normalized = quarterized by Daloopa.
• Always check span first to understand any difference.
• Quarterly span → the two values match (value_raw = value_normalized).
• Year to date / Annual span → value_normalized = current cumulative raw minus the prior period's cumulative value.
• Q1 is always quarterly; FY is always annual.
• A difference that is not a clean power of ten is usually a quarterization effect (cumulative vs. isolated), not a units/scale effect.

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A note on units & scale

value_raw is reported in the unit the company disclosed (e.g., Million), captured in the unit field. value_normalized is expressed on a consistent internal basis, so for Q1 the two values may be identical in magnitude but differ only in scale (for example, units vs. thousands vs. millions).

When diagnosing a value_raw vs. value_normalized discrepancy, distinguish the two causes:

• Scale differences appear as clean powers of ten (×10, ×1,000, ×1,000,000).
• Quarterization differences appear as non-power-of-ten ratios (e.g., the 6.74× ratio in the AAPL Q4 example above), reflecting cumulative-to-isolated conversion rather than a unit change.