Form DOSLTR Files Dataset

The Form DOSLTR Files dataset packages every EDGAR submission of form type DOSLTR (Draft Offering Statement Letter) — the dedicated correspondence channel issuers use to communicate with the staff of the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance during the non-public review of a draft Regulation A offering statement on Form 1-A. One record corresponds to a single DOSLTR accession number, identified by its 18-digit accession number, and bundles a structured metadata.json submission header together with the body documents the filer attached — typically a single HTML response letter, occasionally with PDF enclosures such as scanned signature pages or supplemental exhibits. The EDGAR filer of record is the prospective Regulation A issuer (Tier 1 or Tier 2), although outside counsel commonly drafts and transmits the letter on the issuer's behalf. Coverage begins July 2015, immediately after the SEC's Regulation A+ amendments (Release No. 33-9741) took effect on June 19, 2015 and introduced the non-public draft offering statement regime under Rule 252(d). Records are distributed as monthly ZIP containers at <dataset>/<year>/<year>-<month>.zip, and the dataset's file types are HTML, JSON, and PDF.

Update Frequency
Daily
Updated at
2026-04-15
Earliest Sample Date
2015-07-01
Total Size
2.1 MB
Total Records
240
Container Format
ZIP
Content Types
HTML, JSON, PDF
Form Types
DOSLTR

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Dataset Files

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2015-07.zip20.3 KB1 records

What This Dataset Contains

The dataset captures the full population of DOSLTR submissions accepted by EDGAR, preserved as filed inside EDGAR's SGML <DOCUMENT> envelope. Form DOSLTR is the correspondence vehicle — not a registered offering or periodic report — that issuers (most often through outside counsel) use to transmit response letters and supplemental materials into the confidential staff review pipeline for a Regulation A draft offering statement. It plays the same procedural role for Regulation A draft offering statements that DRSLTR plays for confidential draft registration statements filed under Securities Act Section 6(e) by emerging growth companies. DOSLTR submissions are accepted and stored on EDGAR but are not publicly disseminated until the offering statement itself is filed publicly (typically the first non-confidential 1-A or 1-A/A), at which point the prior draft submissions and their associated correspondence become part of the public EDGAR record.

A typical DOSLTR submission contains exactly one substantive document: a business letter, addressed to named SEC reviewers in a specific industry Office of the Division of Corporation Finance, that responds point-by-point to a previously issued staff Comment Letter on the issuer's draft Form 1-A or on a particular draft amendment thereto. Occasional submissions include supplemental enclosures such as scanned signature pages, requested supporting analyses, or backup exhibits, which is why the dataset's body-document file types include both HTML and PDF. Because DOSLTR is a correspondence vehicle, a record is informationally compact — typically a single HTML letter plus its metadata wrapper, with the entire folder usually weighing only a few kilobytes.

The dataset's coverage window beginning in mid-2015 corresponds to the first months after the Regulation A+ regime took effect; DOSLTR has no paper-era predecessor and has been an HTML-era submission for its entire lifespan.

Content Structure of a Single Record

What one record represents

One record in the Form DOSLTR Files dataset corresponds to a single EDGAR submission of form type DOSLTR, identified by its 18-digit accession number. Physically, a record is an accession-named folder (with dashes stripped, e.g. 000164117225009517) located inside a per-month ZIP container at <dataset>/<year>/<year>-<month>.zip. The folder bundles a metadata.json describing the EDGAR submission header together with the body documents the filer attached to that submission. Image binaries that may have been part of the original EDGAR package are excluded; everything else is preserved as filed, byte for byte, inside EDGAR's SGML <DOCUMENT> envelope.

Folder layout of one record

Inside the monthly ZIP, each record folder has the following shape:

1 2025-05/
2 000164117225009517/
3 metadata.json
4 filename1.htm

Two file roles are present:

  • metadata.json — exactly one per accession folder, carrying the structured EDGAR submission header.
  • One or more body documents — the actual correspondence. The dominant format is HTML (.htm / .html); PDF appears when filers attach scanned letters, signed signature pages, or supporting exhibits. Body filenames are filer-chosen: filename1.htm is a common templated name, but counsel-generated names such as corresp.htm or <ticker>_corresp.htm are equally common.

The "complete submission text file" (the concatenated <accession>.txt exposed by EDGAR via the linkToTxt URL) is referenced from metadata.json but is not unpacked into the folder; only the constituent documents that compose it are stored. The file types found in the dataset are JSON, HTML, and PDF.

metadata.json fields

metadata.json is a flat object that mirrors the EDGAR submission header. The fields carrying meaningful structured content are:

  • formType — always the literal "DOSLTR" for records in this dataset.
  • accessionNo — the dashed 18-digit accession number, e.g. "0001641172-25-009517". The undashed form is used as the folder name.
  • filedAtISO-8601 timestamp with timezone offset (Eastern Time), recording the EDGAR acceptance moment, e.g. "2025-05-09T17:29:29-04:00".
  • description — short EDGAR description, commonly the literal "Form DOSLTR -" with an empty trailing free-text portion.
  • linkToFilingDetails — direct URL to the primary document on www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/....
  • linkToTxt — URL to the complete-submission .txt file on EDGAR.
  • linkToHtml — URL to the EDGAR filing-index HTML page (-index.html).
  • linkToXbrl — empty for every DOSLTR record, because correspondence filings carry no structured financial data.
  • id — opaque internal hash identifier.
  • documentFormatFiles — array of attachment descriptors. Each entry exposes sequence, size (bytes, encoded as a string), documentUrl, type, and an optional description. The first entry is the DOSLTR letter itself with type set to "DOSLTR" and sequence 1; the trailing entry is conventionally the complete-submission text file, whose type is populated as a single space character.
  • dataFiles — array, always empty for DOSLTR (no XBRL or other tagged data files).
  • seriesAndClassesContractsInformation — array, empty for DOSLTR.
  • entities — array of filer entities. Each entity object carries companyName (with a role suffix such as "(Filer)" appended), cik, irsNo, stateOfIncorporation, fiscalYearEnd encoded as MMDD, sic as combined code-and-label (e.g. "6500 Real Estate"), and type set to "DOSLTR". Single-issuer DOSLTRs carry one (Filer) entry; co-filer submissions add additional entries.

SGML document envelope around the body

Each body document on disk is wrapped in EDGAR's SGML <DOCUMENT> envelope — the same wrapper EDGAR uses to delimit constituent documents inside a complete-submission text file. The shape is:

1 <DOCUMENT>
2 <TYPE>DOSLTR
3 <SEQUENCE>1
4 <FILENAME>filename1.htm
5 <TEXT>
6 <!doctype html>
7 <html>
8 <head><title></title></head>
9 <body>
10 ... letter content ...
11 </body>
12 </html>
13 </TEXT>
14 </DOCUMENT>

The <TYPE> token mirrors the EDGAR document type (DOSLTR for the primary letter), <SEQUENCE> reflects the attachment ordering (1 for the primary letter), and <FILENAME> reproduces the filer-chosen body-document name. The envelope predates and is independent of the inner payload's MIME type: HTML payloads appear as plain markup inside <TEXT>, while PDF or other binary attachments appear inside the same envelope as a uuencoded payload bracketed by <PDF>...</PDF> (or analogous) tags within <TEXT>. Consumers that intend to render an HTML letter must strip the SGML wrapper to recover a self-contained <html> document; consumers treating the file as opaque text can ignore the wrapper entirely.

Letter body structure

The HTML inside the envelope follows a stereotyped business-letter layout that is highly consistent across filers because it tracks the SEC's expected response-letter conventions. Inline styling is heavy (Times New Roman, ~10pt body text is typical), and the document is normally one continuous flow rather than a set of separately styled sections. The recurring components, in order, are:

  1. Addressee block. Names of the SEC reviewers handling the engagement, the line Division of Corporation Finance, the assigned industry Office (for example Office of Real Estate & Construction, Office of Crypto Assets, Office of Manufacturing), and the staff address 100 F Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20549.
  2. Subject block. A Re: line giving the issuer's legal name, the specific submission being addressed (typically Draft Offering Statement on Form 1-A or Amendment No. N to Draft Offering Statement on Form 1-A), the submission date of that draft, and the issuer's CIK.
  3. Salutation. A formal Dear Ms./Mr. <name>: line addressed to the lead reviewer.
  4. Introductory paragraph. Identifies the issuer, references the staff Comment Letter being responded to (by its date), and notes that the response is being submitted contemporaneously with an amendment to the draft Offering Statement on Form 1-A.
  5. Numbered comment-and-response body. The substantive payload. Each staff comment is reprinted verbatim, typically in bold, inside a small two-column table whose left cell carries the comment number and whose right cell carries the comment text. Immediately below, an underlined heading such as Company's Response: or Response: introduces the issuer's reply paragraph(s), which describe how the relevant section of the draft offering statement has been revised in the contemporaneous amendment, or argue why no revision is warranted (often citing specific Securities Act rules, Regulation A items, or guidance from the Division of Corporation Finance Financial Reporting Manual). The body is segmented by section dividers that track the underlying Form 1-A's own structure — e.g. Cover Page, General, Part I, Part II, Part F/S, Part III — so that responses appear in the same order as the comments and the Form 1-A items they address.
  6. Closing. A Very truly yours, (or similar) line followed by a By: /s/ <Name> signature block, typically presented inside a small layout table to align the signature line, signer name, and title. Optional Enclosure(s) and cc: lines may follow when the submission includes attachments or when the response is copied to additional counsel or company representatives.

Included content

Each record bundles the structured submission header (metadata.json) and the body documents originally attached to the EDGAR submission — the DOSLTR correspondence letter itself and any non-image exhibits the filer attached — preserved in their original filer-supplied bytes inside the SGML <DOCUMENT> envelope. The dataset's body file types (HTML and PDF) cover both natively typed letters and scanned-image PDFs of signed correspondence.

Excluded or separate content

Several items that exist in the broader EDGAR record are deliberately not present inside a record folder:

  • Image binaries (JPEG, GIF, PNG, etc.) attached to the original EDGAR submission are stripped and not unpacked into the folder.
  • The complete-submission text file (<accession>.txt referenced by linkToTxt) is not unpacked; only its constituent documents are stored.
  • The underlying draft offering statement itself — Form 1-A or its draft amendments (form types 1-A / 1-A/A filed via the DOS / DOS/A confidential channel) — is a separate EDGAR submission with its own form type and accession number; the DOSLTR record contains only the correspondence, even though the letter narrates against the draft Form 1-A.
  • The staff Comment Letter being responded to is referenced by date in the introductory paragraph but is not itself contained in the DOSLTR submission; staff comment letters are released on EDGAR as separate UPLOAD correspondence records after the offering statement becomes public.
  • Tagged financial data is never present (linkToXbrl is empty and dataFiles is empty), since correspondence filings carry no structured financial content and Regulation A offerings did not involve XBRL tagging at the time DOSLTR submissions are generated.

Historical evolution

Form DOSLTR was introduced as part of the SEC's 2015 amendments to Regulation A — the rules adopted to implement Title IV of the JOBS Act and commonly referred to as "Regulation A+." Those amendments, effective June 19, 2015, expanded Regulation A into a two-tier framework (Tier 1 up to $20 million and Tier 2 up to $50 million, later raised to $75 million by the 2020 amendments) and introduced the ability to submit a non-public draft offering statement on Form 1-A for confidential staff review prior to the first public filing. DOSLTR was added at that time as the dedicated correspondence channel for the confidential review, paralleling the role DRSLTR plays for confidential draft registration statements under the JOBS Act's emerging-growth-company regime.

The form's required content has remained essentially stable: a response letter addressed to the assigned Office of the Division of Corporation Finance, organized around the staff's enumerated comments, signed by an authorized representative of the issuer or its counsel. Subsequent rule updates affecting Regulation A — most notably the 2020 amendments raising Tier 2 ceilings and refining ongoing reporting — affected the substance of what issuers and the staff discussed in DOSLTR letters but did not change the form's filing mechanics, the SGML/HTML envelope, or the metadata header schema.

Interpretation notes

  • Comment letter context is external. The DOSLTR letter is interpretable only against the staff comment letter it answers; that comment letter is referenced by date in the introductory paragraph but lives as a separate EDGAR record. Cross-referencing typically requires matching by issuer CIK and proximate dates against the issuer's correspondence stream on EDGAR.
  • Comment text is reproduced verbatim. Because each staff comment is reprinted in bold inside a two-column table before its response, the letter is largely self-contained for reading purposes even though the original Comment Letter is not bundled.
  • Section labels track Form 1-A. Internal dividers (e.g. Cover Page, Part I, Part II, Part F/S, Part III) reflect the structure of the underlying Form 1-A and can be used to locate which section of the draft offering statement a given comment-and-response pair concerns.
  • Authorship varies. The signer at the closing block may be an officer of the issuer or, more frequently, outside counsel; the signature block is the only reliable internal signal of authorship, since the addressee and Re: blocks identify only the SEC reviewers and the issuer.
  • Filer entity rows. A single (Filer) entry in entities is the norm; multiple entries indicate co-filers on the same submission. The sic field combines code and label and may need splitting for analytic use.
  • Wrapper handling. Tools that parse the body documents as HTML must first strip the SGML <DOCUMENT>/<TYPE>/<SEQUENCE>/<FILENAME>/<TEXT> lines (and the trailing </TEXT></DOCUMENT> lines) to recover a parseable HTML document. PDF attachments, when present, are stored already decoded inside the folder rather than as the uuencoded blocks that would appear inside the EDGAR full-submission stream.
  • Filer-chosen filenames. Body-document filenames are not standardized across submissions, so machine extraction should rely on documentFormatFiles[*].type == "DOSLTR" and sequence == 1 rather than on filename heuristics to identify the primary letter.
  • Relationship to the offering statement. A DOSLTR record is one node in a multi-submission confidential review thread. Reconstructing the full draft-review history for an issuer typically requires joining DOSLTR records with the corresponding DOS / DOS/A draft offering statement submissions on the same CIK, plus the UPLOAD records that carry the staff comment letters once they become public.

Who Files or Publishes This Dataset, and When

Who files the record

Each DOSLTR accession is correspondence transmitted to the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance during the non-public, pre-qualification review of a Regulation A offering statement on Form 1-A. The EDGAR filer of record is the prospective Regulation A issuer; outside counsel, accountants, or filing agents typically prepare and transmit the letter on the issuer's behalf, but they file under the issuer's CIK.

The filing population is limited to issuers eligible for, and pursuing, a Regulation A offering:

Eligibility to use the non-public DOS/DOSLTR channel is further limited under Rule 252(d) to issuers whose securities have not previously been the subject of a qualified Regulation A offering statement or an effective Securities Act registration statement.

Entities outside this population do not file DOSLTR. Registrants making registered Securities Act offerings file CORRESP. Emerging growth companies and other issuers using confidential draft registration statements under Securities Act Section 6(e) file DRS, DRS/A, and DRSLTR. Regulation Crowdfunding issuers on Form C use a separate submission set. DOSLTR is unique to the Regulation A draft offering statement track.

When the record is created or required

DOSLTR is event-driven, not periodic. A submission is generated whenever the issuer needs to communicate with the staff during the non-public review of a draft Form 1-A. Typical triggers:

  • Response letters addressing a staff comment letter (delivered to the issuer through EDGAR as an UPLOAD), usually filed alongside a DOS/A amendment.
  • Supplemental factual, financial, or accounting information requested by the staff outside a formal amendment.
  • Transmittal or explanatory letters identifying changes in a draft amendment or flagging accounting, valuation, or industry-specific issues.
  • Tandy-style acknowledgements and other procedural correspondence.
  • Withdrawal or status correspondence before the offering statement is publicly filed.

Timing is bounded by the Rule 252(d) review window:

  • The window opens with the issuer's initial DOS submission and continues through successive UPLOAD / DOSLTR / DOS/A cycles.
  • Rule 252(d) requires that the initial non-public submission and all non-public amendments be publicly filed as exhibits to a Form 1-A no later than 21 calendar days before qualification of the offering statement. Once the issuer transitions to public filing, subsequent staff correspondence is submitted as CORRESP rather than DOSLTR.
  • No statutory deadline governs how quickly an issuer must respond to a staff comment; pacing is set by issuer readiness and informal staff target dates.
  • DOSLTR filings are non-public at the moment of submission and generally become publicly available on EDGAR when the offering statement is qualified, withdrawn, or abandoned and the file is released.

Regulatory framework

  • Title IV of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012 directed the SEC to expand Regulation A under Securities Act Section 3(b)(2), authorizing tiered offerings and a higher offering ceiling.
  • The SEC adopted final rules on March 25, 2015 in Release No. 33-9741 ("Regulation A+"), effective June 19, 2015. The release created Tier 1 and Tier 2, modernized Form 1-A, and adopted Rule 252(d), which permits eligible issuers to submit a draft offering statement for non-public staff review before public filing.
  • EDGAR introduced the DOS, DOS/A, and DOSLTR submission types in 2015 as the non-public counterparts of 1-A, 1-A/A, and CORRESP. DOSLTR is therefore an EDGAR construct designated by the staff to operationalize the Rule 252(d) non-public review process; it is not a form prescribed by its own rule text.

Important distinctions

  • DOSLTR is correspondence, not a disclosure document. It carries no offering terms, no audited financials, and has no qualification effect; the substantive document is Form 1-A and its DOS / DOS/A drafts.
  • DOSLTR vs. CORRESP: CORRESP is the public-filing correspondence channel; DOSLTR is its non-public Regulation A counterpart. Correspondence migrates to CORRESP once the issuer publicly files Form 1-A.
  • DOSLTR vs. DRSLTR: DRSLTR pairs with DRS / DRS/A under Section 6(e) for confidential registration statements; DOSLTR pairs with DOS / DOS/A under Regulation A. The two tracks do not overlap.
  • The EDGAR filer is the issuer, even when counsel drafts and transmits the letter.
  • Issuers that abandon their Regulation A offering during staff review still leave DOSLTR records on EDGAR once released.
  • DOSLTR has no paper-era predecessor. The submission type exists only from June 19, 2015 forward, when the Regulation A+ amendments and the non-public submission regime took effect.

How This Dataset Differs From Similar Datasets or Filings

Form DOSLTR sits in a tight cluster of EDGAR submission types that govern issuer-staff correspondence during the Regulation A offering process. The useful comparisons are not the broad universe of SEC filings but the narrow set of related correspondence channels, the underlying draft offering statements, and the parallel confidential-review machinery used for traditional registered offerings.

DRSLTR — Draft Registration Statement Letter

DRSLTR is the closest structural sibling to DOSLTR. Both are non-public issuer correspondence channels tied to a confidential pre-filing review track. The split is regulatory regime: DRSLTR carries correspondence on draft registration statements submitted under JOBS Act Section 6(e) — typically attached to DRS, DRS/A, S-1, or F-1 review tracks for emerging growth companies and certain foreign private issuers. DOSLTR carries correspondence on draft offering statements submitted under Regulation A Rule 252(d), where the underlying filings are DOS and DOS/A. The two sets do not overlap in content and rarely overlap in filer population. Use DRSLTR for IPO-track confidential review dialogue; use DOSLTR for Reg A pre-qualification dialogue.

CORRESP — Public correspondence

CORRESP is the post-public-filing channel for the same kind of letters DOSLTR carries during the confidential phase. Once a Reg A issuer publicly files Form 1-A, subsequent issuer correspondence is filed as CORRESP, and prior DOSLTR correspondence is generally released after qualification. Document type is similar (response letters, comment-resolution charts, supplemental materials); the difference is visibility timing and submission code. A complete record of issuer-staff dialogue around a Reg A offering typically spans DOSLTR during the draft phase and CORRESP afterward.

UPLOAD — Staff comment letters

UPLOAD is the inbound counterpart to DOSLTR. UPLOAD contains the SEC staff's comment letters; DOSLTR contains the issuer's responses going the other direction. UPLOAD is broader in coverage because it carries staff comments across many filing regimes, not just Reg A drafts. A researcher reconstructing a full review history must pair DOSLTR with UPLOAD on the same accession family — DOSLTR alone captures only the issuer's side of the conversation.

DOS and DOS/A — The underlying draft offering statement

DOS is the non-public draft offering statement itself; DOS/A is its amendment. DOSLTR is the correspondence surrounding those filings, not an offering document. DOS and DOS/A contain the prospectus-equivalent disclosure (business description, risk factors, financials, offering terms); DOSLTR contains response letters and supplemental explanations. They are complementary: DOS/DOS/A shows what the issuer proposed to sell, DOSLTR shows how the issuer and staff negotiated the disclosure.

1-A and 1-A/A — Public Regulation A offering statements

Form 1-A is the public, qualified Reg A offering statement that DOS becomes when the issuer proceeds publicly; 1-A/A is its amendment. DOSLTR sits in the confidential pre-qualification dialogue; 1-A and 1-A/A sit in the public qualification track. A typical Reg A offering produces DOS/DOS/A plus DOSLTR during confidential review, then 1-A (and possibly 1-A/A) at the public stage.

1-A POS and 1-A-W — Post-qualification amendments and withdrawals

1-A POS is a post-qualification amendment used to update disclosure after staff qualification. 1-A-W is a withdrawal of a Reg A offering statement. Both are downstream of qualification and unrelated to the confidential draft review DOSLTR concerns. There is no DOSLTR-equivalent for post-qualification correspondence — that role is filled by CORRESP.

Reg A vs Reg D vs Form D

DOSLTR has no counterpart in the Regulation D world. Reg D offerings are private placements exempt from registration and qualification; the only EDGAR filing is Form D, a brief post-sale notice with no prospectus, no draft, and no staff dialogue. Because Reg D offerings undergo no staff review, there are no comment letters and no correspondence channel like DOSLTR or CORRESP. The question "how did the staff and issuer negotiate this offering" is only answerable for Reg A (DOSLTR plus UPLOAD plus CORRESP) and for registered offerings (DRSLTR plus UPLOAD plus CORRESP); it is structurally unanswerable for Reg D.

Boundary summary

DOSLTR is defined by the intersection of three narrow attributes: it is correspondence (not substantive offering disclosure), it is issuer-side (not staff-side), and it is tied specifically to the Regulation A Rule 252(d) confidential draft review (not Section 6(e) IPO drafts, not public-phase correspondence, and not private placements). DOS/DOS/A and 1-A/1-A/A hold the offering documents; UPLOAD holds the staff's comments; CORRESP holds post-public-filing dialogue; DRSLTR holds the analogous correspondence for registered offerings. The Form DOSLTR Files dataset is the only dataset that isolates issuer-originated letters during the confidential Reg A review window beginning July 2015, and it cannot be reconstructed from any of its neighbors.

Who Uses This Dataset

DOSLTR records expose the confidential comment-and-response dialogue between Regulation A issuers and the Division of Corporation Finance during draft offering statement review. Users cluster around the letter body (numbered responses, defended positions, supplemental schedules), the metadata.json fields (cik, entities, filedAt, accession number), and the accession sequence relative to DOS and DOS/A amendments.

Securities counsel for Reg A issuers

Attorneys drafting response letters mine the corpus for precedent on recurring staff comments: revenue recognition, use-of-proceeds language, going-concern qualifications, testing-the-waters materials, bad-actor disclosures. They read the numbered comment responses and supplemental schedules in the letter body, then track the DOSLTR sequence against subsequent DOS/A filings to see which arguments held and which forced an amendment. Output: precedent-aware response drafts and fewer comment rounds.

In-house disclosure and compliance counsel

Issuer-side counsel benchmark peers on financial-statement age, auditor independence, share-class structures, founder-stock disclosures, and Reg A eligibility. They use entities to filter by industry and counsel of record, filedAt to gauge review cadence, and the letter text to extract response patterns for internal playbooks and pre-submission disclosure scrubs.

Placement agents and funding-portal regulatory teams

Broker-dealers and online funding portals onboarding Reg A issuers use DOSLTR sequences as a readiness signal. They count DOSLTRs tied to a given DOS accession, measure spacing between letters and DOS/A amendments, and read the letter body for staff pushback on financials or business model. Feeds listing decisions, suitability review, and pricing of compliance services.

Academic researchers on disclosure and staff review

Accounting and legal scholars treat the corpus as primary evidence of issuer-staff dialogue. The full letter text supports NLP work on comment topics, response length, and defensive language; filedAt relative to DOS/DOS/A accessions yields review-duration and amendment-trigger metrics; entities and cik enable cross-sectional analysis by industry, size, and tier.

Private-markets reporters and data providers

Journalists and pipeline-tracker analysts pull cik, filer name, filedAt, and accession numbers to identify issuers in confidential Reg A review before qualification, and read letter bodies for sector-specific staff scrutiny (crypto-adjacent, cannabis, real-estate funds, biotech). Output: pipeline dashboards and stories on offering delays.

RegTech and disclosure-analytics engineers

Product teams building comment-letter search, response-drafting copilots, and analytics dashboards ingest the full document text and metadata.json for retrieval indices keyed on comment topic and issuer attributes. Letter bodies ground RAG for drafting tools; accession-sequence data powers metrics like average rounds to qualification and counsel league tables.

Diligence reviewers in Reg A secondary and follow-on deals

Diligence analysts evaluating Reg A issuers for secondary trades, follow-on financing, or acquisition scan letter text for restated financials, auditor changes, undisclosed related-party arrangements, and eligibility concerns. They check whether the DOSLTR sequence terminates with qualification or stalls, signaling unresolved issues or a withdrawn draft.

Synthesis

The dataset serves a narrow Reg A audience: counsel who write the letters, intermediaries who underwrite the issuers, researchers who study the review, reporters who track the pipeline, and RegTech teams who index the corpus. Value comes from joining metadata.json fields with the substantive letter text and the DOSLTR-to-DOS/A timing relationship.

Specific Use Cases

Concrete workflows enabled by the Form DOSLTR Files dataset, anchored to metadata.json fields, the SGML-wrapped letter body, and the relationship between DOSLTR submissions and the surrounding DOS, DOS/A, and UPLOAD records.

  • Building a Reg A comment-response precedent index. Strip the SGML <DOCUMENT> envelope from each body file, parse the two-column comment table and the Company's Response: paragraphs, and key the extracted pairs by entities[].sic, entities[].cik, and filedAt. The resulting index lets securities counsel retrieve precedent responses on recurring topics (financial-statement age under Rule 8-08 of Regulation S-X, testing-the-waters materials, bad-actor certifications, use-of-proceeds wording) before drafting a new reply to staff.

  • Measuring confidential review duration and amendment triggers. For each issuer cik, order DOSLTR accessions by filedAt and join against that issuer's DOS and DOS/A submissions on the same CIK. Differences between consecutive DOSLTR timestamps and the next DOS/A acceptance time yield per-round response intervals; the count of DOSLTRs preceding the first public 1-A is a readiness metric used by placement agents and academic researchers studying review cadence.

  • Reconstructing full issuer-staff dialogue threads. Pair each DOSLTR record with the matching UPLOAD records (staff comment letters) for the same issuer CIK and proximate dates referenced in the letter's introductory paragraph. Because the DOSLTR reprints staff comments verbatim inside the bold two-column table, the join can be validated by string-matching comment text across the two corpora, producing a clean comment-and-response pair dataset for NLP modeling or RegTech retrieval.

  • Industry-Office routing and reviewer attribution. Extract the addressee block (named SEC reviewers, the assigned Office of ... line) and the closing By: /s/ signature block from the HTML body, then merge with entities[].sic from metadata.json. The output is a mapping of SIC codes to the Corporation Finance industry Offices that actually reviewed Reg A drafts, plus a counsel-of-record league table showing which law firms sign the most DOSLTRs in each Office.

  • Pipeline tracking for confidential Reg A issuers. Filter records on formType == "DOSLTR" and recent filedAt, then surface entities[].companyName, cik, stateOfIncorporation, and sic to populate a pre-qualification pipeline dashboard. Reporters and private-markets analysts use this to identify issuers in active confidential review before any public 1-A appears, and to flag stalled threads where DOSLTR activity ceases without a subsequent public filing.

  • Topic-aware RAG for response-drafting copilots. Ingest the unwrapped HTML letter bodies, segment on the Form 1-A section dividers (Cover Page, Part I, Part II, Part F/S, Part III), and embed each comment-response pair with metadata facets (sic, filedAt year, signer firm). The resulting retrieval index grounds drafting assistants that, given a draft staff comment, return the closest prior DOSLTR responses in the same industry Office and Form 1-A section.

  • Diligence signal extraction for follow-on and secondary deals. For a target Reg A issuer's cik, pull every DOSLTR letter body and search for restated-financials language, auditor-change disclosures, related-party rewrites, going-concern modifications, and eligibility concessions. Combined with whether the DOSLTR sequence terminates in a qualified 1-A or trails off (suggesting withdrawal or abandonment), this produces a structured diligence note for secondary-trade or acquisition review.

Dataset Access

Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-dosltr-files.json

This endpoint returns dataset-level metadata and the list of available containers. The response includes the dataset name, description, last updated timestamp, earliest sample date, total record count and size, form types covered, container format, file types contained in each record, the full dataset download URL, and per-container details such as size, record count, updated timestamp, and download URL. No API key is required to call this endpoint. It is well suited for monitoring which monthly containers were updated in the most recent refresh run, allowing downstream consumers to download only the containers that changed.

Example
1 {
2 "datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-69eb-a4c9-3d0f8735c6b6",
3 "datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-dosltr-files.zip",
4 "name": "Form DOSLTR Files Dataset",
5 "description": "Form DOSLTR is a Draft Offering Statement Letter used to submit correspondence to the SEC staff in connection with a non-public draft offering statement filed under Regulation A.",
6 "updatedAt": "2026-04-27T02:51:19.000Z",
7 "earliestSampleDate": "2015-07-01",
8 "totalRecords": 240,
9 "totalSize": 2113987,
10 "formTypes": ["DOSLTR"],
11 "containerFormat": "ZIP",
12 "fileTypes": ["HTML", "JSON", "PDF"],
13 "containers": [
14 {
15 "downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-dosltr-files/2026/2026-03.zip",
16 "key": "2026/2026-03.zip",
17 "size": 18432,
18 "records": 2,
19 "updatedAt": "2026-03-21T02:51:19.000Z"
20 }
21 ]
22 }

Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-dosltr-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Downloads the complete dataset as a single ZIP archive covering all DOSLTR filings from July 2015 to the present. This endpoint requires an API key passed via the token query parameter.

Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-dosltr-files/2026/2026-03.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Downloads one monthly container ZIP instead of the full archive. Each container holds records organized as <accession-number>/metadata.json plus the body documents (HTML or PDF). This endpoint requires an API key passed via the token query parameter.

Frequently Asked Questions

What form does this dataset cover?

The dataset covers EDGAR submission type DOSLTR (Draft Offering Statement Letter) — the dedicated correspondence channel for issuer letters and supplemental materials transmitted to the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance during the non-public review of a Regulation A draft offering statement on Form 1-A under Rule 252(d).

What does one record in this dataset represent?

One record represents a single DOSLTR EDGAR submission, identified by its 18-digit accession number. Physically, it is an accession-named folder inside a per-month ZIP container that holds a metadata.json submission header plus the body documents the filer attached — typically one HTML response letter, occasionally with PDF enclosures such as scanned signature pages or supporting exhibits.

Who is required to file Form DOSLTR?

The EDGAR filer of record is the prospective Regulation A issuer (Tier 1 up to $20 million or Tier 2 up to $75 million), although outside counsel, accountants, or filing agents typically prepare and transmit the letter under the issuer's CIK. Eligibility is further limited under Rule 252(d) to issuers whose securities have not previously been the subject of a qualified Regulation A offering statement or an effective Securities Act registration statement.

When are DOSLTR records created?

DOSLTR is event-driven, not periodic. A submission is generated whenever the issuer needs to communicate with the staff during the non-public review of a draft Form 1-A — most commonly to respond to a staff comment letter (delivered as an UPLOAD) alongside a DOS/A amendment, but also for supplemental information, transmittal notes, Tandy-style acknowledgements, and pre-public withdrawal correspondence.

What time period does the dataset cover?

Coverage begins July 1, 2015, immediately after the SEC's Regulation A+ amendments (Release No. 33-9741) took effect on June 19, 2015 and introduced the non-public draft offering statement regime. DOSLTR has no paper-era predecessor and has been an HTML-era submission for its entire lifespan.

What file formats are inside a record?

Each record folder contains exactly one metadata.json plus one or more body documents wrapped in EDGAR's SGML <DOCUMENT> envelope. Body documents are predominantly HTML (.htm / .html), with PDF appearing when filers attach scanned letters, signed signature pages, or supporting exhibits. The dataset's file types are therefore JSON, HTML, and PDF, distributed inside monthly ZIP containers.

How does Form DOSLTR differ from DRSLTR and CORRESP?

All three are issuer correspondence channels, but they are tied to different review tracks. DRSLTR carries correspondence on confidential draft registration statements submitted under Securities Act Section 6(e) (paired with DRS / DRS/A) for emerging growth companies and certain foreign private issuers. CORRESP is the public-filing correspondence channel used after an issuer publicly files. DOSLTR is the non-public counterpart specifically tied to Regulation A draft offering statements filed via DOS / DOS/A under Rule 252(d).