SEC 8-K Auditor & Officer Change Alerts

Short-seller and activist research analysts get every SEC 8-K in the window already filtered to auditor changes and officer/director changes, without reading item numbers by hand.

Pick a date window and get every SEC Form 8-K filed in it that reports a change of auditor or a change of officer or director. One row per filing, with the link to the filing on EDGAR.

Introduction

When a US public company does something its shareholders are meant to hear about quickly, it files a Form 8-K and tags the filing with an item number that says what the news is. Two of those numbers are the ones people watch hardest.

Item 4.01 means the company changed the accounting firm that signs off its books. An auditor walking out, or being swapped mid-year, is one of the oldest warning signs there is.

Item 5.02 means a director or a senior officer left, was elected, or was appointed, or that their pay arrangement changed.

Finding these on EDGAR by hand means opening the filing list day by day and reading item numbers off each filing. This actor does that reading and hands back a table. Ask for the last 7 days and you get every 8-K in those 7 days that carries either item number, newest first, each with the company name, the stock symbol, the filing date, the item numbers, and the address of the filing itself.

Everything comes from EDGAR at the moment the run happens. Nothing is served from a stored copy, and no row is ever produced that did not come back from the SEC.

Tutorial

1. Set Days back to how far you want to look, from 1 to 30. 1 is today only. 7 is today and the six days before it. Dates follow the US Eastern clock, which is the clock EDGAR files by.
2. Leave both 8-K item numbers ticked to get auditor changes and officer changes together, or untick one to get only the other.
3. Put your own email address in Contact email. The SEC asks every automated reader to name a contact in the request, and the run sends whatever is in this box.
4. Optionally put a Stock symbol such as AAPL in to restrict the run to one company. The symbol is looked up in the SEC's own published company list.
5. Set Maximum rows to the most rows you are willing to pay for. The run stops there.
6. Start the run. Results land in the dataset and can be downloaded as JSON, CSV or Excel.

A run takes a few seconds for a small window and under a minute for the full 30 days. Requests to the SEC are spaced out to stay under the 10 requests a second the SEC allows.

Pricing

$0.002 per row. No start fee.

Every row is charged, starting with the very first one. There is no allowance of rows at no cost, so a 100-row run costs $0.20 and a 1,000-row run costs $2.00.

A run that finds nothing pushes no rows and therefore costs nothing. A run that stops because of bad input, or because EDGAR could not be read, also pushes no rows and costs nothing.

Maximum rows is the spend cap. Set it and the run cannot cost more than that number multiplied by $0.002, whatever the date window holds.

Input and output examples

Input:

{
  "daysBack": 7,
  "items": ["4.01", "5.02"],
  "maxItems": 100,
  "contactEmail": "you@example.com"
}

One output row, exactly as it comes back:

{
  "accession_number": "0001636422-26-000111",
  "cik": "0001636422",
  "company_name": "Health Catalyst, Inc.",
  "tickers": [
    "HCAT"
  ],
  "form": "8-K",
  "filed_date": "2026-09-14",
  "period_of_report": "2026-09-11",
  "items": [
    "5.02",
    "7.01",
    "9.01"
  ],
  "matched_items": [
    "5.02"
  ],
  "matched_item_labels": [
    "Departure or election of directors; appointment of certain officers; compensatory arrangements of certain officers"
  ],
  "event_types": [
    "officer_or_director_change"
  ],
  "auditor_change": false,
  "officer_or_director_change": true,
  "file_number": "001-38993",
  "film_number": "261377641",
  "state_of_incorporation": "DE",
  "business_location": "South Jordan, UT",
  "sic_code": "7370",
  "primary_document": "hcat-20260911.htm",
  "document_url": "https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1636422/000163642226000111/hcat-20260911.htm",
  "source_url": "https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1636422/000163642226000111/0001636422-26-000111-index.htm",
  "fetched_at": "2026-09-15T03:01:40Z"
}

Every field in a row:

Field	What it holds
accession_number	The SEC's own unique number for this filing
cik	The company's permanent SEC identifier, ten digits
company_name	The company as EDGAR names it
tickers	Stock symbols EDGAR lists for the company; empty if it has none
form	Always 8-K
filed_date	The date EDGAR accepted the filing
period_of_report	The date of the event the filing reports
items	Every item number on the filing, including ones not asked for
matched_items	Only the item numbers that were asked for
matched_item_labels	Those item numbers written out in words
event_types	auditor_change, officer_or_director_change, or both
auditor_change	True when the filing carries Item 4.01
officer_or_director_change	True when the filing carries Item 5.02
file_number	The company's SEC file number
film_number	The SEC's film number for this filing
state_of_incorporation	Where the company is incorporated
business_location	The city and state on file
sic_code	The SEC's industry code for the company
primary_document	Filename of the 8-K document itself
document_url	Direct link to the 8-K document
source_url	Link to the filing's index page on EDGAR
fetched_at	When the run read EDGAR, in UTC

Recommendations

Run it daily with Days back set to 2. EDGAR adds the current day's filings through the evening, so a two-day window picks up anything that landed late without paying twice for a week of history.

Item 5.02 is common and Item 4.01 is rare. On a 200-row sample taken over the fourteen days to 14 September 2026, 195 rows were Item 5.02 only, 4 were Item 4.01 only, and 1 carried both. If auditor changes are what matters, untick 5.02 and keep the row count, and the cost, small.

EDGAR holds nothing on Saturdays, Sundays or federal holidays, so a window made only of weekend days returns zero rows and costs nothing.

Limitations

The item number is what this returns, not the story behind it. EDGAR records which item a company filed under. It does not record, in the place this actor reads, which accounting firm was hired or dropped, or which person left or arrived, or why. Those sentences are inside the filing document. Every row carries document_url and source_url so the filing can be opened and read, but no name of an accountant or an officer is extracted, and none is promised.

Two smaller points. Filings made late in the day appear in EDGAR's search index after a short delay, so a run covering only today can miss the last few hours; covering two days avoids it. And on a 200-row live sample, company name, filing date, item numbers and both links were present on every row, while stock symbol was present on 96% and state of incorporation on 92%, because EDGAR does not hold those for every filer.

FAQ

Where does the data come from? EDGAR full-text search on efts.sec.gov, read live during the run. EDGAR is published by the US Securities and Exchange Commission and is free to access.

Does it need an API key or a login? No. EDGAR is open. The only thing the SEC asks for is a contact address in the request, which is the Contact email input.

How far back can it go? 30 days. For a longer history, run it more than once with different windows.

What happens if EDGAR is down? The run pushes no rows, costs nothing, and writes a status of UNKNOWN with the error to the run's OUTPUT record. It never fills the gap with made-up rows.

Can the same filing be charged twice in one run? No. Rows are de-duplicated on the SEC's own accession number before anything is pushed.

Why did a run return fewer rows than expected? Either the window contains weekend or holiday days, or Maximum rows was reached. When the cap is what stopped it, the run's OUTPUT record says so.

Is there support? Yes. Raise it through the Apify Store issues tab for this actor, or email operations@ustechautomations.com. Replies within 2 business days.

Refunds and support

Refunds: if a run returns zero rows for a valid input, email operations@ustechautomations.com within 7 days and we refund that run. Support: same address, replies within 2 business days.