What is an accession number?
An accession number is the unique identifier the SEC assigns to each individual filing — the key that points to one exact document on EDGAR.
The unique ID for a single filing
An accession number is the identifier the SEC assigns to each individual filing on EDGAR. Where a CIK identifies the company, an accession number identifies one specific document that company filed.
What it looks like
It's formatted as three dash-separated parts, for example:
0000320193-24-000123
- The first block is the CIK of the filing agent.
- The middle block is the two-digit year.
- The last block is a sequence number for that filer and year.
Why it's useful
Because each accession number points to exactly one filing, it's the perfect key for linking to, deduplicating, and caching filings. FiledFeed keys every filing on its accession number — that's how the same filing is never ingested twice, and it's what appears in the address of a filing detail page so the link always resolves to one exact document.
Finding it
You'll see the accession number on every filing detail page on FiledFeed, and it's part of the URL of the original filing on SEC.gov.