Form NSAR-AT Files Dataset

The Form NSAR-AT Files Dataset is a closed historical corpus of transitional semi-annual reports filed by registered management investment companies on EDGAR under Section 30 of the Investment Company Act of 1940 and Rule 30b1-1 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Each record corresponds to a single EDGAR submission of a Form NSAR-AT or NSAR-AT/A filing — the variant of Form N-SAR used when a fund changed its fiscal year-end and had to report on the resulting stub period. The filers are mutual funds, closed-end funds, and Small Business Investment Companies registered as management investment companies under the 1940 Act. The dataset's earliest sample dates from January 1, 1994, when EDGAR electronic filing for investment companies began, and terminates in mid-2018 when Form N-SAR was rescinded effective June 1, 2018, and replaced by Form N-CEN. Records are distributed as monthly ZIP containers holding the original submission documents (TXT, JSON, FIL, and HTML files), with image attachments excluded.

Dataset APIs

Dataset Files

What This Dataset Contains

The dataset packages every EDGAR-era NSAR-AT and NSAR-AT/A filing into a uniform per-accession folder layout. Form NSAR-AT is the transitional variant of Form N-SAR, the semi-annual report historically required from registered management investment companies. The "AT" suffix designates a transitional reporting period: a fund files NSAR-AT when it changes its fiscal year-end, and the filing covers the stub period running from the prior fiscal year-end to the close of the new transitional period. NSAR-AT/A is the amendment counterpart, used to correct or supplement a previously filed transitional report.

Substantively, Form N-SAR is a structured question-and-answer instrument rather than a free-form narrative document. The registrant answers a long, fixed catalog of numbered items addressing fund identification, service-provider relationships, portfolio composition, brokerage allocation, sales-load and fee structures, advisory-fee breakpoints, investment policies, monthly capital activity, per-series income and expense statements, balance-sheet positions, and a small set of exhibit and event-flag attestations. Each answer is keyed by item number and sub-item code, producing a compact line-oriented file rather than the prose-and-table layout typical of registration statements or 10-K filings.

The dataset covers the entire EDGAR-era population of NSAR-AT filings from January 1994 through the form's discontinuation in mid-2018. Records are distributed as ZIP containers; inside each container, every accession folder contains a metadata.json sidecar plus the original submission documents as TXT, JSON, FIL, and HTML files. Image attachments lodged with the original EDGAR submission are stripped.

Content Structure of a Single Record

A single record corresponds to one EDGAR submission of either a Form NSAR-AT or a Form NSAR-AT/A filing, identified by its 18-digit accession number. Inside the dataset's monthly ZIP containers, each record materializes as a per-accession folder whose name is the accession number stripped of dashes (e.g., 000132535814000752). The folder bundles a metadata.json sidecar describing the filing at the EDGAR-header level together with the original submission documents that compose the filing itself, with image attachments excluded. A record therefore captures both a structured metadata view and the full primary content as it was lodged with EDGAR.

A record contains two structural layers:

1. The metadata sidecar (metadata.json), which exposes the EDGAR-header-derived view of the filing: form type, accession number, filing timestamp, period of report, registrant identity, fund series and class structure, document inventory, and canonical EDGAR URLs.
2. The primary submission documents, dominated by the main N-SAR answer file. The main document is wrapped in EDGAR's SGML <DOCUMENT> envelope and carries the structured triplet body (item, sub-item, value) that constitutes the actual N-SAR response. For NSAR-AT/A amendments and for some original submissions, additional documents — such as a complete-submission text dump, HTML cover pages, or amendment narrative exhibits — also appear inside the same accession folder.

The file types found in the dataset are TXT (full-submission text concatenations), JSON (the metadata sidecar), FIL (the conventional EDGAR extension for the structured N-SAR answer file), and HTML (cover pages and amendment exhibits where present). Image attachments from the original submission are stripped.

The metadata.json sidecar

The sidecar is a flat JSON object with nested arrays. Top-level fields include:

• formType — NSAR-AT for original transitional reports, NSAR-AT/A for amendments.
• accessionNo — dashed EDGAR accession identifier.
• filedAt — ISO-8601 filing timestamp with timezone offset.
• effectivenessDate — date of effectiveness, in YYYY-MM-DD.
• periodOfReport — close of the transitional reporting period; this date, paired with the registrant's new fiscal-year-end, encodes the fiscal-year change that triggered the AT filing.
• description — human-readable form label.
• linkToFilingDetails, linkToTxt, linkToHtml, linkToXbrl — canonical EDGAR URLs back to the original index page and primary documents.
• documentFormatFiles[] — ordered inventory of the documents in the submission, each carrying sequence, size, documentUrl, description, and type. The first entry is conventionally the main NSAR-AT answer document; the second is typically the complete-submission text dump.
• dataFiles[] — present in the schema but not populated for N-SAR filings.
• entities[] — one or more filer records, each with cik, companyName, fileNo (the Investment Company Act file number, e.g., 811-22135), irsNo, stateOfIncorporation, fiscalYearEnd (MMDD), act (40 denoting the Investment Company Act), filmNo, filer type, and any tickers[].
• seriesAndClassesContractsInformation[] — the EDGAR series and class hierarchy that became mandatory for fund filers, listing each series by its S-prefixed identifier and name, with a nested classesContracts[] array of {classContract (C-id), name, ticker} entries. For multi-series trusts, this block is the cleanest structured map of the legal-entity tree the filing covers.

The main N-SAR answer document

The primary document carries an EDGAR SGML wrapper with <TYPE>NSAR-AT, a <SEQUENCE> ordinal, a <FILENAME> (commonly answer.fil), a <DESCRIPTION>, and a <TEXT> block enclosing the body. Inside <TEXT>, every meaningful line is a fixed-format triplet:

1. Item code — a three-character item number (000, 001, 028, 054, 070, 074, etc.).
2. Sub-item code — a letter/digit suffix addressing the specific sub-question, column, or row index (for example A000000, B00AA00, C010100, 01AA01). The middle block typically encodes a series/class or service-provider index, while trailing digits encode rows within that index.
3. Answer value — a Y/N flag, a fixed-width integer or decimal (often expressed in thousands of dollars), an MM/DD/YYYY date, an alphanumeric code, or a free-text string such as a firm name or address.

The answer body is organized into the following item groups, in numerical order:

• Item 000 — header. Period-of-report date, CIK, filing-type indicator flags, and the N-SAR form version stamp (e.g., 6.1).
• Items 001–002 — registrant identity. Name, Investment Company Act file number, telephone number, and mailing address.
• Items 003–006 — registrant flags. Series-company indicator and other exclusion flags determining which downstream items are required.
• Item 007 — portfolio roster. Each series of the registrant listed by sub-item index, establishing the series enumeration used by later series-keyed items.
• Items 008–015 — service providers. Investment adviser (008), sub-adviser (009), administrator (010), principal underwriter/distributor (011), transfer agent (012), independent public accountant (013), and custodian (015), each with name, file number, city/state/zip, and role code.
• Items 018–027 — affiliations and brokerage. Affiliated-broker disclosures, broker-by-broker commission tables (020 A broker name, 020 B IRS number, 020 C commissions in thousands), aggregate commission totals (021), and purchase/sale flag rows.
• Item 028 — monthly capital activity. Per-series, per-month rows (sub-rows A–G) reporting purchases of capital stock, redemptions, dividends reinvested, and net asset value.
• Items 030–035 — sales loads and 12b-1 structure. Front-end and back-end load schedules, contingent deferred sales charges, and Rule 12b-1 plan attributes.
• Items 042–044 — portfolio statistics. Portfolio turnover rate, average maturity (for money-market and fixed-income funds), and brokerage research credits.
• Item 048 — advisory fee schedule. Breakpoints A–K enumerating advisory-fee tiers and the corresponding rates.
• Items 053–054 — board composition and investment policies. Flags for board-independence-related attributes and a matrix of permitted/restricted investment policies, with each letter sub-item corresponding to a defined policy line item (borrowing, senior securities, short sales, real estate, commodities, lending, and so on).
• Items 061–069 — special structures. Bank-affiliation, insurance-company affiliation, master-feeder structure, and sub-adviser indicator flags.
• Item 070 — investments by category. Sub-rows A–R covering categories (U.S. Treasuries, agencies, corporate debt, common stock, options, futures, repurchase agreements, etc.) with 01 purchase and 02 sale Y/N flags.
• Item 071 — aggregate trading. Total purchases, total sales, average net assets, and the resulting portfolio turnover percentage.
• Item 072 — income and expense statement per series. Interest income, dividend income, advisory fees, 12b-1 fees, custody, audit, transfer-agent, registration, professional, and other expense line items, plus net investment income and realized/unrealized components.
• Item 073 — dividends and distributions per share. Reported by class.
• Item 074 — balance sheet per series. Assets A–Q, liabilities R–T, and net asset value components U–Y.
• Items 075–076 — average net assets and NAV change.
• Items 077–085 — exhibit and event flags. Cross-references to filed exhibits, accountant changes, legal proceedings, and other event attestations. These items reference the exhibit attachments that, when present, accompany the answer file as additional sequence-numbered documents.
• SIGNATURE / TITLE — the two final lines, outside the numbered triplet grid, recording the name and title of the officer signing on behalf of the registrant.

For NSAR-AT/A amendments, the same structured body is restated in full; amendment narratives or correction exhibits, where present, accompany the answer file as additional sequence-numbered documents in the same accession folder, typically as HTML or plain text.

Included content

A record includes:

• The metadata.json sidecar, always present and uniformly structured.
• The full SGML-wrapped main NSAR-AT answer document (commonly answer.fil, occasionally a .txt variant), carrying the complete numbered item-and-sub-item response grid and the closing signature block.
• The complete-submission text dump where present, which concatenates all SGML document blocks for the filing into a single file.
• HTML cover pages and amendment narratives where the registrant filed them, particularly common for NSAR-AT/A submissions that explain the scope and reason for the restated answers.
• Exhibit attachments referenced in items 077 and adjacent flag items, when those exhibits were lodged as text or HTML.

Excluded or separate content

Image files originally lodged with the EDGAR submission are excluded from the dataset record; the textual content of the filing is retained in full. Post-filing correspondence, SEC staff letters, and registrant responses that arrived under separate EDGAR form types (UPLOAD, CORRESP) are not part of an NSAR-AT record. An NSAR-AT/A amendment is its own EDGAR accession and its own record in the dataset rather than an attachment to the original NSAR-AT.

Changes in required content over time

Across the 1994–2018 EDGAR window the body of Form N-SAR remained substantively stable in its item-and-sub-item architecture, but several incremental shifts are reflected in the answer files:

• The N-SAR version stamp recorded in item 000 ticks across releases (e.g., 6.1 and earlier point versions), reflecting periodic revisions to the official form instructions and to the controlled vocabulary for several flag items.
• The series-and-class disclosure regime adopted by the SEC in 2006 introduced the S-prefixed series identifiers and C-prefixed class identifiers that populate the metadata sidecar's seriesAndClassesContractsInformation[] block. Earlier filings predate this identifier scheme and therefore carry an empty or sparser series-and-class structure in metadata, even when the underlying answer file already uses series-indexed sub-item codes.
• Rule 12b-1, custody, and sub-adviser flag items evolved with successive Investment Company Act rule amendments; the precise set of Y/N flags and the policy-matrix letters in item 054 reflect the version of the form in force at the filing date.
• The form was rescinded effective June 1, 2018, and replaced by Form N-CEN. The dataset therefore terminates at that boundary; no NSAR-AT records exist after rescission, and no NSAR-AT-to-N-CEN bridging document is present inside the record.

Changes in data format over time

Because Form N-SAR was always filed as a structured fixed-format answer file wrapped in EDGAR's SGML document envelope, the format of the main document is essentially constant across the 1994–2018 span. The principal format observations:

• The SGML <DOCUMENT>/<TYPE>/<SEQUENCE>/<FILENAME>/<TEXT> wrapper is used throughout the dataset, mirroring EDGAR's general SGML submission convention from the start of electronic filing.
• The body inside <TEXT> is a line-oriented item-code/sub-item-code/value grid; the answer body itself is never HTML or PDF.
• HTML appears only in auxiliary documents — chiefly cover pages and amendment narratives accompanying NSAR-AT/A filings — and TXT appears as the full-submission concatenation. The .fil extension on the main answer document is a longstanding EDGAR convention for the structured N-SAR response and persists across the dataset.

Interpretation notes

Several nuances matter when working with these records:

• Stub period. The transitional nature of NSAR-AT means the period covered is generally shorter than the standard six-month N-SAR semi-annual window. The periodOfReport in metadata, paired with the new fiscalYearEnd MMDD on the entity, encodes the fiscal-year change that triggered the filing; reconstructing the prior fiscal year-end requires reading item 000's period date together with the previously reported semi-annual cadence.
• Monetary scale. Monetary values inside the answer file are typically reported in thousands of dollars; raw integer values must be rescaled before comparison with values in other forms.
• Sub-item code structure. The sub-item code is not a free-form label. Its middle block addresses a series, class, or service-provider index, while trailing digits address the row within that index. Correctly joining items 028, 070, 072, and 074 across series therefore requires parsing the sub-item code rather than treating it as opaque.
• Amendment supersession. NSAR-AT/A amendments fully restate the answer grid rather than only the corrected items, so the latest-filed accession for a given period of report supersedes earlier versions. Downstream consumers should de-duplicate by (cik, periodOfReport) while preferring the most recent filedAt.
• Signature and title. The signature and title lines sit outside the numbered triplet grid and must be parsed as free-text trailers; they are the only authoritative record of the signing officer for the transitional report.
• Series ordering. The ordering of series in seriesAndClassesContractsInformation[] does not always match the series ordering implied by the sub-item codes in the answer file. Joins between the metadata layer and the series-keyed items in the answer body should rely on the S-id mapping rather than positional order.
• Exhibits and event flags. Items 077–085 act as the cross-reference layer between the structured answer grid and any auxiliary documents in the accession folder; reconciling a flagged exhibit to its file requires walking documentFormatFiles[] in sequence order.

Who Files or Publishes This Dataset, and When

Form NSAR-AT is filed by registered management investment companies under the Investment Company Act of 1940. The legal filer is the registrant (identified by CIK), not the adviser, distributor, transfer agent, or sponsor — though those service providers contribute much of the underlying data.

The filing population includes:

• Open-end management investment companies (mutual funds), including series trusts where each series reports through a single registrant.
• Closed-end management investment companies, including listed closed-end funds and interval funds.
• Small Business Investment Companies (SBICs) registered as management investment companies under the 1940 Act.

Outside the population: unit investment trusts, face-amount certificate companies, business development companies (which file Exchange Act periodic reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q), unregistered private funds, and foreign funds.

Regulatory framework

Two provisions create the obligation:

• Section 30 of the Investment Company Act of 1940, which establishes periodic reporting for registered investment companies.
• Rule 30b1-1 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which prescribed Form N-SAR and required semi-annual reports from registered management investment companies, including transition reports tied to fiscal-year changes.

Form N-SAR is the parent form; "NSAR-AT" is the EDGAR form-type tag used when a transitional semi-annual report is filed under that framework.

Triggering event: fiscal year-end change

NSAR-AT is triggered by a change in the registrant's fiscal year-end — typically following a fund reorganization, merger, adviser change, or family-wide calendar consolidation. It covers the stub semi-annual period between the old fiscal year-end and the start of the new fiscal year.

The trigger is calendar-realignment, not periodic or materiality-driven. Once the board adopted a new fiscal year-end and the transitional six-month (or shorter) period closed, the filing obligation attached automatically.

Deadline

Under Rule 30b1-1, NSAR-AT must be filed within 60 days after the close of the transitional reporting period. The 60-day clock runs from the end of the stub period; there is no event-conditional gating.

NSAR-AT/A amendments can be filed at any time afterward to correct prior responses, refile exhibits, or update service-provider information. Amendments share the original filing's trigger.

Relationship to other N-SAR variants

NSAR-AT differs from NSAR-A in that it covers an irregular stub period created by a fiscal-year change, not a regular six-month period. It differs from NSAR-BT in that NSAR-BT covers a transitional annual period; some funds filed NSAR-AT and NSAR-BT in sequence depending on the length and placement of the transition.

Rescission and replacement (June 1, 2018)

The entire Form N-SAR regime — NSAR-A, NSAR-B, NSAR-AT, NSAR-BT, and their amendments — was rescinded effective June 1, 2018 under the SEC's Investment Company Reporting Modernization rules. It was replaced by Form N-CEN, an annual structured-XML census report due within 75 days after fiscal year-end (and within 75 days after the close of a transitional period for fiscal-year changes). N-CEN consolidated annual census reporting and eliminated the separate semi-annual N-SAR cadence.

NSAR-AT records in this dataset are therefore historically bounded: EDGAR filings run from January 1994 through May 2018. After June 1, 2018, fiscal-year-change transitional reporting migrated to Form N-CEN.

Important distinctions

• Registrant vs. series. For series trusts, the NSAR-AT is filed at the registrant level, but item responses report fund-level data for each series.
• Funds vs. operating companies. Operating companies changing fiscal year-ends file Exchange Act transition reports on Form 10-K or Form 10-Q under Rules 13a-10 / 15d-10 — not NSAR-AT. NSAR-AT is exclusively a 1940 Act fund-reporting construct.
• BDCs. Business development companies are regulated under the 1940 Act but report under the Exchange Act periodic regime; they did not file Form N-SAR or NSAR-AT.
• UITs and face-amount certificate companies. Outside the management-investment-company definition; different reporting forms apply.
• Pre-EDGAR history. Form N-SAR predates EDGAR. The dataset's 1994 start reflects the onset of electronic filing for investment companies, not the inception of the underlying obligation.

How This Dataset Differs From Similar Datasets or Filings

Form NSAR-AT sits inside a tightly scoped family of investment company reporting forms. The most informative comparisons are with the other N-SAR submission variants, the N-CEN successor that replaced N-SAR after June 1, 2018, and the parallel disclosure tracks N-CSR/N-CSRS (shareholder financials), N-PORT (monthly holdings), and the rescinded N-Q (quarterly holdings).

Form NSAR-A and NSAR-A/A (semi-annual N-SAR)

Same form body, same Q&A item set, same filer population. The only difference is the trigger and period:

• NSAR-A: routine first-half-of-fiscal-year report, filed every year a fund operates.
• NSAR-AT: filed only when a fund changes its fiscal year-end, covering the transitional stub period that bridges the old and new fiscal calendar.

Use NSAR-A for routine semi-annual N-SAR data; use NSAR-AT only to capture off-cycle stub periods that fall outside the normal cadence. NSAR-AT/A amendments are included in this dataset and should be paired with the original NSAR-AT to reconstruct the final report state.

Form NSAR-B and NSAR-B/A (annual N-SAR)

NSAR-B covers a full fiscal year and includes annual-only items (auditor disclosures, fidelity bond, certain accounting items) on top of the semi-annual content. NSAR-AT follows the semi-annual scope, not the annual scope, even though it is filed in connection with a fiscal year change. For annual census-style content pre-June 2018, NSAR-B is the correct dataset; NSAR-AT will not contain annual-only items.

Form NSAR-U variants

NSAR-U is an unspecified-period N-SAR submission used in unusual situations and is not interchangeable with NSAR-AT. NSAR-AT is specifically tied to a fiscal year-end change and follows the semi-annual item scope; NSAR-U does not carry that defined trigger or period.

Parent Form N-SAR

N-SAR is the underlying form prescribed under Section 30 of the Investment Company Act and Rule 30b1-1. NSAR-A, NSAR-B, NSAR-AT, NSAR-U, and their amendments are EDGAR submission designations that all carry an N-SAR body. The full N-SAR regime was rescinded effective June 1, 2018, which is why this dataset terminates in mid-2018.

Form N-CEN (successor)

N-CEN replaced N-SAR under Investment Company Reporting Modernization. Key contrasts:

• Frequency: annual only (no semi-annual report); filed within 75 days of fiscal year-end (60 days for UITs).
• Format: structured XML, fully machine-readable, versus N-SAR's text-based FIL Q&A submissions.
• Transitional handling: the post-2018 regime handles fiscal year changes differently and does not have a direct NSAR-AT analogue.

N-CEN is the only census option after June 2018; it cannot be projected backward to fill in NSAR-AT's transitional periods, and NSAR-AT cannot be extended forward.

Form N-CSR and N-CSRS (certified shareholder reports)

Filed under Section 30(b)(2) and transmitted to shareholders. Content is fundamentally different from NSAR-AT:

• Form N-CSR/Form N-CSRS: narrative and financial-statement oriented (audited or unaudited financials, schedule of investments, MD&A-style discussion, SOX certifications).
• NSAR-AT: structured Q&A on operations, expenses, brokerage, advisory fees, and aggregated portfolio composition.

Period overlap exists (both can cover a fiscal half-year), but they are complements, not substitutes. Use N-CSRS for shareholder-facing financials during a transitional period.

Form N-PORT (monthly holdings)

Form N-PORT replaced the portfolio holdings components of N-SAR and N-Q. Granular position-level data in structured XML, filed monthly with the third month of each quarter made public 60 days after period-end. NSAR-AT's portfolio items are aggregated, reported once per transitional period, and embedded in a Q&A text format. For position-level holdings, use N-PORT; NSAR-AT offers only high-level composition.

Form N-Q (rescinded quarterly holdings)

Form N-Q was the pre-modernization quarterly schedule of holdings for fiscal Q1 and Q3, complementing N-CSR/N-CSRS holdings for Q2 and Q4. Rescinded when N-PORT public reporting took effect. Overlap with NSAR-AT is limited to the shared filer population and pre-2019 era; N-Q's purpose was holdings disclosure, while NSAR-AT's purpose is the broader operational census applied to a transitional period.

Boundary summary

NSAR-AT is uniquely defined by the intersection of three narrow conditions:

1. Legacy N-SAR Q&A item structure (rules out N-CEN, N-CSR, N-CSRS, N-PORT, N-Q).
2. Transitional period tied to a fiscal year-end change (rules out NSAR-A, NSAR-B, NSAR-U).
3. Within the 1994 to June 2018 EDGAR window for electronic N-SAR.

Use NSAR-AT specifically when capturing fund activity inside off-cycle stub periods that joining NSAR-A and NSAR-B would miss; for any other purpose, one of the related datasets above is a more direct fit.

Who Uses This Dataset

NSAR-AT is a low-volume, closed corpus that sits at the intersection of fund compliance, fund accounting, SEC oversight, and mutual fund research. A small set of professional users rely on it to reconstruct stub-period fund history, audit transitions, and build long-horizon mutual fund panels.

Investment Company Act compliance counsel

Fund regulatory lawyers use the dataset to confirm that a Rule 30b1-1 transitional report was filed on time and that its content matches board records around a fiscal-year change. They pull metadata.json form-type and filing-date fields, item 000 (registrant) and item 007 (series/class) from answer.fil, and the signature block to tie the filing to a specific authorized officer. Outputs: compliance memos, board-minute reconciliations, responses to SEC staff inquiries.

Fund accountants and external auditors

Audit teams bridging a short fiscal period work item 072 (investment income), item 073 (distributions), item 074 (net assets, receivables, payables), and item 048 (advisory fees and waivers) to tie a stub period back to surrounding annual reports. NSAR-AT/A amendments are read item-by-item against the original to isolate corrections that flow through to expense ratios or restated NAVs.

Mutual fund operations and fund administration teams

Back-office and transfer-agency operations groups research how prior administrators handled fiscal-year cutovers for legacy products. They use item 020 (custodians and pricing agents), item 054 (transfer-agent activity and shareholder accounts), item 028 (monthly purchases, redemptions, net flows), and the item 070-series (portfolio transactions) to build cutover checklists, NAV-strike calendars, and shareholder-communication templates for future transitions.

SEC examinations and enforcement staff

Examiners and enforcement attorneys reviewing legacy conduct around a fiscal-year change focus on item 048 (advisory fees), item 071 (aggregate brokerage commissions), and the item 070-series (affiliated brokerage, soft-dollar arrangements) to flag fee anomalies or affiliated-party transactions concentrated in the transition window. The signature block and metadata.json filer fields anchor accountability for deficiency letters and referrals.

Academic researchers in mutual fund economics

Researchers studying expense competition, fund mergers, and reorganizations use NSAR-AT as a natural-experiment panel because fiscal changes often coincide with sponsor changes or complex restructurings. Items 048, 072, 074, 028, and 054 supply standardized variables that join cleanly to the broader N-SAR and NSAR-A series.

Quantitative historians and long-horizon panel builders

Quant teams extending 1994-2018 fund-level time series use item 071 (transaction volume), item 072 (income), item 028 (flows), and item 074 (balance-sheet snapshots) to close stub-period gaps and avoid double-counting at fiscal-year breaks. The result feeds flow-performance, fee-performance, and trading-activity panels.

Asset management M&A and diligence teams

Buy-side and advisor-transaction diligence teams reconstruct predecessor-fund periods between annual reports. They lean on items 000 and 007 for entity and series identity, item 048 for historical advisory and sub-advisory fee terms, item 020 for in-force service-provider relationships, and item 074 for net-asset trajectories. Outputs: valuation models, contract-assignment analysis, transition-services plans.

RegTech vendors and EDGAR archive providers

Engineering teams at filing-data vendors normalize the closed NSAR-AT corpus once and index it permanently. They parse the answer.fil Q&A schema into typed columns, link metadata.json accession numbers to CIK and series identifiers, and maintain amendment chains between NSAR-AT and NSAR-AT/A so downstream legal, compliance, and research customers can query it.

Restatement and amendment trackers

Forensic-accounting boutiques and compliance-monitoring teams diff each NSAR-AT/A against its original NSAR-AT at item-code level, focusing on items 028, 048, and 070-074, to detect which line items were corrected and by how much. Output: alerts on funds whose historical reporting was revised, feeding sponsor- and adviser-level risk scores.

Specific Use Cases

The Form NSAR-AT Files Dataset corpus supports a narrow set of historical workflows centered on fund fiscal-year changes between 1994 and June 2018. The use cases below are the most concrete and frequently encountered.

Closing stub-period gaps in long-horizon fund panels

Quant researchers stitching 1994 to 2018 mutual fund time series pull item 028 (monthly capital activity per series), item 071 (aggregate purchases, sales, and turnover), item 072 (per-series income and expenses), and item 074 (balance-sheet positions) from answer.fil to fill the off-cycle window between an old fiscal-year-end and a new one. Joining on entities[].cik and the S-prefixed identifiers in seriesAndClassesContractsInformation[] prevents double-counting where NSAR-A and NSAR-B records would otherwise overlap or leave a hole.

Auditing a fiscal-year-change transition for a specific fund

Fund accountants and external auditors bridging a short transitional period work item 048 (advisory-fee breakpoints A–K), item 072 (investment income, 12b-1 fees, custody, audit, transfer-agent expense), and item 074 (assets A–Q, liabilities R–T, NAV components U–Y) against the surrounding annual financials. The periodOfReport field paired with the entity's new fiscalYearEnd MMDD anchors the stub-period boundaries used in the workpapers.

Diffing NSAR-AT/A amendments against the original filing

Restatement-tracking and forensic-accounting teams parse each NSAR-AT/A as a full restatement of the answer grid and compare it line-by-line with the prior NSAR-AT for the same (cik, periodOfReport). They focus on items 028, 048, 070, 072, and 074 to identify which dollar-denominated values or Y/N flags were corrected, then preserve the lineage by retaining only the latest filedAt while archiving the earlier accession folders for the diff record.

Reconstructing service-provider relationships during transitions

Asset-management M&A diligence and fund-administration teams pull items 008 (adviser), 009 (sub-adviser), 010 (administrator), 011 (distributor), 012 (transfer agent), 013 (independent accountant), and 015 (custodian) to capture the in-force service-provider stack at the moment of a fiscal-year change. The output feeds contract-assignment analysis, transition-services agreements, and historical adviser-of-record lookups for predecessor funds.

Confirming Rule 30b1-1 compliance for a transitional report

Investment Company Act counsel use the metadata.json formType, filedAt, periodOfReport, and entities[].fileNo fields together with the SIGNATURE and TITLE lines that close the answer document to confirm a transitional report was filed on time, by an authorized officer, against the correct 811-file number. The reconciled record supports board-minute attachments, response packages to SEC staff inquiries, and internal compliance memos.

Building a normalized closed-corpus index for downstream querying

RegTech vendors normalize the entire corpus once: they parse the fixed-format item-code/sub-item-code/value triplets into typed columns, key each row to a series via the sub-item middle-block index, link to seriesAndClassesContractsInformation[], and maintain explicit amendment chains between every NSAR-AT and its NSAR-AT/A. Because the form was rescinded in 2018, the index is build-once and never grows, which makes it well suited as a permanent lookup table behind compliance, research, and litigation tooling.

Dataset Access

The Form NSAR-AT Files Dataset is available through three access methods: a metadata index endpoint, a full archive download, and per-container downloads. The dataset covers form types NSAR-AT and NSAR-AT/A with samples dating back to 1994-01-01, distributed as ZIP containers holding TXT, JSON, FIL, and HTML files.

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

This endpoint returns dataset-level metadata (name, description, last refresh timestamp, earliest sample date, total record count, total size, form types covered, container format, and file types) along with the full list of container files. Each container entry includes its key, size, record count, last updated timestamp, and a direct download URL. Use this index to monitor which containers were updated in the most recent refresh run and decide which files to fetch incrementally. This endpoint does not require an API key.

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          curl https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-nsarat-files.json
        

Example response:

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          {
        

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            "datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-69f0-82f2-1639257e87bc",
        

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            "datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-nsarat-files.zip",
        

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            "name": "Form NSAR-AT Files Dataset",
        

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            "updatedAt": "2026-04-15T18:14:12.233Z",
        

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            "earliestSampleDate": "1994-01-01",
        

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            "totalRecords": 710,
        

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            "totalSize": 2322162,
        

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            "formTypes": ["NSAR-AT", "NSAR-AT/A"],
        

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            "containerFormat": "ZIP",
        

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            "fileTypes": ["TXT", "JSON", "FIL", "HTML"],
        

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            "containers": [
        

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              {
        

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                "downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-nsarat-files/2017/2017-12.zip",
        

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                "key": "2017/2017-12.zip",
        

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                "size": 184320,
        

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                "records": 12,
        

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                "updatedAt": "2026-04-15T18:14:12.233Z"
        

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              }
        

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            ]
        

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          }
        

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

Downloads the complete dataset as a single ZIP archive containing all container files. This endpoint requires an SEC API key, passed either as a token query parameter or via an Authorization header.

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          # Using token query parameter
        

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          curl -O https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-nsarat-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
        

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          # Using Authorization header
        

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          wget --header="Authorization: YOUR_API_KEY" https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-nsarat-files.zip
        

Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-nsarat-files/2017/2017-12.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Downloads one individual container listed in the index, which is useful when only a specific period is needed or when refreshing files updated since the last sync. This endpoint also requires an SEC API key.

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          # Using token query parameter
        

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          curl -O https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-nsarat-files/2017/2017-12.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
        

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          # Using Authorization header
        

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          wget --header="Authorization: YOUR_API_KEY" https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-nsarat-files/2017/2017-12.zip
        

Frequently Asked Questions

What forms does this dataset cover?

The dataset covers form types NSAR-AT (the original transitional semi-annual report on Form N-SAR) and NSAR-AT/A (amendments to that report). Both are EDGAR submission designations carrying the same N-SAR Q&A body, the second restating the first to correct or supplement prior responses.

What does one record in this dataset represent?

One record corresponds to a single EDGAR submission of a Form NSAR-AT or NSAR-AT/A filing, identified by its 18-digit accession number. Each record materializes as a per-accession folder containing a metadata.json sidecar plus the original submission documents — most importantly the SGML-wrapped main answer file (commonly answer.fil) carrying the structured item-code/sub-item-code/value response grid.

Who is required to file Form NSAR-AT?

Form NSAR-AT is filed by registered management investment companies under the Investment Company Act of 1940 — specifically open-end mutual funds, closed-end funds, and Small Business Investment Companies registered as management investment companies. Unit investment trusts, face-amount certificate companies, business development companies, unregistered private funds, and foreign funds do not file NSAR-AT.

What event triggers an NSAR-AT filing?

NSAR-AT is triggered by a change in the registrant's fiscal year-end — typically following a fund reorganization, merger, adviser change, or family-wide calendar consolidation. The filing covers the stub semi-annual period between the old fiscal year-end and the start of the new fiscal year, and is due within 60 days after the close of that transitional period under Rule 30b1-1.

What time period does the dataset cover?

The dataset covers EDGAR-era NSAR-AT filings from January 1, 1994 through May 2018. Form N-SAR was rescinded effective June 1, 2018 and replaced by Form N-CEN, so the corpus is closed: no new NSAR-AT records are produced after that boundary.

What file format is the dataset distributed in?

The dataset is distributed as monthly ZIP containers. Inside each container, a per-accession folder holds a metadata.json sidecar (JSON), the main N-SAR answer document with a .fil extension wrapped in EDGAR's SGML envelope, an optional full-submission text dump (TXT), and any HTML cover pages or amendment narrative exhibits. Image attachments lodged with the original EDGAR submission are excluded.

How does NSAR-AT differ from NSAR-A and NSAR-B?

NSAR-A is the routine first-half-of-fiscal-year semi-annual report, NSAR-B is the routine annual report, and NSAR-AT is filed only when a fund changes its fiscal year-end and must report on the resulting stub period. NSAR-AT follows the semi-annual item scope (not the broader annual scope of NSAR-B) and captures off-cycle periods that joining NSAR-A and NSAR-B alone would miss.

How should NSAR-AT/A amendments be reconciled with the original NSAR-AT?

NSAR-AT/A amendments fully restate the answer grid rather than only the corrected items, so the latest-filed accession for a given period of report supersedes earlier versions. Downstream consumers should de-duplicate by (cik, periodOfReport) while preferring the most recent filedAt, and can diff the amendment against the original at item-code level to isolate exactly which values were corrected.