Inside the Filing Room | Jitender Singal & Gana Misra on SEC Reporting

In this episode of Finrep's podcast, Gana Misra, CEO of Finrep, sits down with Jitender Singal, Senior Manager of External Reporting at Clarivate, to look at SEC reporting from the reporting team's seat. Jitender traces a path from chartered accountancy and statutory audit at KPMG and EY — where IFRS and Indian GAAP work and a secondment to KPMG Dubai gave way to his first U.S. SEC engagements — to external reporting at Clarivate today, and explains how moving from auditing the numbers to writing the story behind them shapes the way he runs a U.S.-listed company's reporting function across time zones.

The conversation covers how a reporting function splits across U.S. and India teams and where the quarterly clock actually starts, what a full end-to-end filing looks like from shell roll-forward to XBRL validation and filing, and why new disclosures — not the numbers — eat most of the calendar. Jitender also talks about tagging XBRL in-house, integrating the reporting stack across Workiva, OneStream, and NetSuite, how to keep filings consistent enough to avoid SEC comment letters, where AI genuinely helps today versus where it's still hype, and whether quarterly 10-Qs should give way to semiannual reporting.

What you'll learn:

• How a U.S.-listed reporting function divides work across U.S. and India teams, and where the filing clock really begins

• What a full end-to-end quarterly filing involves — from shell roll-forward to XBRL validation

• Why new disclosures, not the numbers, consume most of the reporting calendar

• How to keep filings consistent enough to avoid SEC comment letters

• Where AI genuinely helps in reporting today, and where human judgment still has to stay

Tune in to hear how the reporting, audit, and disclosure sides of a public company actually fit together.

SEC Reporting Journal — Season 2

Inside the Filing Room | Jitender Singal & Gana Misra on SEC Reporting

Gana:
Welcome, everyone, to the second season of SEC Reporting Journal, brought to you by Finrep AI — a purpose-built AI for financial research and reporting, backed by Accel. I'm your host, Gana, dialing in from San Francisco. Today I have with me Jitender Singal, Senior Manager, External Reporting at Clarivate. Jitender is an experienced professional with over 14 years of post-qualification work experience. He's heavily involved in SEC financial reporting requirements, including 10-Ks, 10-Qs, and 8-Ks, which also includes reviewing the U.S. GAAP disclosure checklist prepared on a quarterly and annual basis by statutory auditors. Jitender has rich experience working across multiple geographies and audits, at companies of many different sizes, and his key expertise is in SEC reporting. He's with us today to help everybody understand what's happening in SEC reporting — how he made his way through it, and what changes he's seeing as a senior leader. Welcome, Jitender, and thanks for joining me. To start off, it would be great if you could walk us through your career path — how you started, the CA and audit journey, and what eventually got you into the reporting world.

Jitender:
Sure, and thank you, first of all, for having me here — I'm really excited to be a part of this. I'm a chartered accountant by profession, and early in my career I joined firms like KPMG and EY. During my time at KPMG, I was involved in statutory audits handling IFRS and Indian GAAP engagements, and I also got the opportunity to work for KPMG Dubai as part of an international secondment. Then during my time at EY, I was involved in U.S. SEC engagements — and honestly, that was my first real exposure to SEC reporting. That's where I developed a strong interest in the complexity of SEC reporting, so I'd say my journey started there. Gradually, I got the opportunity to work for Clarivate, where I was offered the role of External Reporting Manager. So my journey to SEC reporting was a natural progression — I'm not just auditing the numbers now, I'm writing the story behind the financials and making it public for Clarivate.

Gana:
Is life as an SEC reporting professional easier than what you had in the audit world?

Jitender:
I won't say it's easier, because as the SEC reporting person you stand in the middle of the company. You need to be aware of everything happening around the company, because at the end of the day you have to report it. Any important event — anything that goes into an 8-K — needs to be reported to the SEC and made public, since we're listed. So you need to be aware, and you need to be on top of it.

Gana:
So with more responsibilities — I was checking that you were recently promoted to Senior Manager, External Reporting. What exactly changed in the scope? And for our broader audience, does external reporting also cover beyond 10-Ks and 10-Qs?

Jitender:
Yes, I recently got promoted to Senior Manager, so there's a big shift from execution to ownership of the areas I'm handling. It's not just about the areas now — it's also about the knowledge, and about driving process improvements with stakeholders at Clarivate. So my scope has drastically increased. And SEC reporting isn't just about 10-Ks and 10-Qs; it also includes 8-Ks, earnings releases, and press releases, and there are a lot of controls to take care of. Basically, overall reporting governance needs to be taken care of.

Gana:
You run a reporting function for a U.S.-listed company while sitting in a different geography. Can you help everybody understand how a function like that typically splits up? And are there learnings you'd want to share that have made you better at what you do? Given the time differences — even on this podcast, we did a lot of back-and-forth coordinating timings; it's close to midnight here and morning back in India — how do you manage it, and what could people in a similar setup learn from your experience?

Jitender:
Team-wise, the bulk of the work is equally divided between the Indian team and the U.S. team. Both are responsible for financial statement preparation, tie-outs, footnotes, and disclosures. The U.S. team is also more involved in the review part, and they lead the communication with leadership. That's the overall structure. From a timing perspective, it all begins with planning — at a very early stage, we know what to do. As the Indian team, we do staggered handoffs, so as we get closer to filing we move the work closer to the final deliverables, working in close collaboration with the U.S. team to make sure we reach the deliverables that need to be filed.

Gana:
Has the advent of all these AI tools helped in the planning structure for you, Jitender? Or how does planning happen today?

Jitender:
Planning begins well before the financial close. It starts with rolling forward the shell — the 10-K or the 10-Q, as the case may be. Then we send the request list to various stakeholders, which includes controls, Treasury, legal, and FP&A. Once the financial period closes, we get the data back from those requests and start preparing the 10-K, the financial statement disclosures, and everything else based on the inputs we receive. From there we gradually progress to drafts — typically there are two drafts — and then the final deliverable, which goes through multiple internal reviews, plus reviews by the disclosure committee, audit committee, and the auditors, to make it ready for filing.

Gana:
Someone sitting outside in the accounting world, not involved in SEC reporting today but who finds all of this fascinating — I'm literally building a company for this function — if they want to break into SEC reporting, what can open up a door? What should they be building as a side project using all these vibe-coding platforms? And in terms of accounting-standards translation, what does somebody have to learn and unlearn at the same time if they want to work in U.S. SEC reporting — understanding the disclosures?

Jitender:
Basic knowledge of U.S. GAAP is definitely required. If a person has a working knowledge of Workiva, that would definitely add to it. And anyone looking to work on an SEC reporting profile should have a keen eye for detail, because attention matters here — every detail is important, and we can't skip anything. We need to see it from the company's perspective. It's not just about the numbers; it's about the entire story. When you look at SEC reporting, the 10-K includes everything — the business, the MD&A, every story of the company. So attention to detail is very important.

Gana:
You spoke about shells and multiple drafts of these statements being prepared. Can you walk us through a full end-to-end quarterly filing — the multiple steps involved, and who the responsible folks are for handling each?

Jitender:
Before the financial period closes, we start with the roll-forward in the shell. Once the shell is rolled forward and we're near the financial close, we send the request list to different stakeholders — controllership, the technical accounting team, legal, HR, and FP&A. Once the period closes, we start receiving the data inputs from these people and begin preparing the documents. Normally there are two drafts, which we share with our auditors through the Workiva platform itself, and we start receiving comments from them. As it progresses, we share the final draft with the audit committee or disclosure committee, and in line with the auditor discussions we move toward the final stages and make the document ready for filing. Those internal reviews also include checking internal consistency and getting the XBRL validations done — all of that goes hand in hand to make the document filing-ready.

Gana:
Can you explain what you mean when you call out "shell"? Is it like an empty roll-forward that happens from the last quarter or annual report?

Jitender:
Yes. In Clarivate we use the same document for the 10-K and 10-Q, just to save time. A shell basically means — for example, we're supposed to begin Q2 in the coming days — rolling forward Q1 to Q2, changing the dates so "three months" becomes "six months." So we prepare that empty structure, the shell, to save time when we actually work on the June reporting.

Gana:
Within these 10-Ks and 10-Qs, Jitender, what is the most time-consuming? Is it these new disclosures? There's been a barrage of disclosures — on tariffs and other things — that people have had to accommodate recently. Is it the MD&A, the footnotes, or is consolidation the most time-consuming part?

Jitender:
I'd say disclosures take most of our time — and especially the new disclosures that keep coming up. Those typically take a lot of time, because we have to go through a lot of guidance. There's a lot of data available on the SEC website and in FASB guidance, and then we have to do the peer analysis as well. The new disclosures definitely take time. The numbers just flow through and we work on them, but the narratives take a lot of time.

Gana:
You mentioned XBRL. Diving a little deeper — can you help us understand what exactly XBRL is? You listed it as one of your core skills. In most reporting teams we see it either outsourced or attached to some horror story. In your case, do you tag it in-house? And where does XBRL still break down? I'd love for you to educate the audience about it.

Jitender:
In Clarivate we manage the tagging and validation in-house — all of that is taken care of internally. For XBRL, I'd say a lot of automation is still required. We do a lot of tagging internally, but I think automation is needed, because the team should be putting more effort on the validation part rather than on manual tagging. The focus should be more on validation.

Gana:
What does your current reporting stack look like? If somebody had to start thinking about a new stack today, what should they be moving toward with the existing set of tools — and where do you see the biggest gaps?

Jitender:
For us, we're using Workiva for our reporting, and from the ERP perspective we use OneStream and NetSuite. I wouldn't call it a gap, but currently in Clarivate we've successfully completed the OneStream-to-Workiva integration. So now we don't need to fetch the trial balance from OneStream and put it into Workiva manually — the integration is done with the click of a button, and the trial balance gets updated automatically. We've actually bridged that gap, and there's no manual intervention involved now.

Gana:
With the advent of GPT, Claude, and other tools, do you see an uptick in AI-related features, or pure AI tooling, in the reporting function? Have you experimented with a few tools? What's your take?

Jitender:
I'd say there's a lot of improvement still required. What we've done so far in Clarivate, put very simply, is use Copilot — we put in the document just to check internal consistency across it. For example, if a debt footnote appears in one of the footnotes and also in the MD&A section, we use it to check whether there's internal consistency across the document; it scans the entire thing. That's one simple functionality, just to check overall sanity. We can also use AI to help fill out our disclosure checklist, which is again helpful. I'm sure there are a lot of uses of AI that can be brought into reporting as time goes on, so we're yet to see a lot of changes come in.

Gana:
Talking about newer tools — how do you handle new disclosures today? If you're approached with a brand-new disclosure, such as new segment reporting requirements or cybersecurity, especially where the guidance is quite thin because it's only recently been pushed out, what's the typical sequence in which you process that? Do you look at your peers, navigate a checklist, engage with an auditor? We'd love to understand how you write a brand-new disclosure today.

Jitender:
As I said, disclosures definitely take a lot of time. So we do a lot of research, because there's a lot of guidance available. We research on the SEC website to see what the guidance is, and we look into the FASB guidance too. Then we do the analysis — how peers are presenting it — along with the disclosure checklist. And the main idea is to be in line with the auditors. If you align with the auditors early, that helps you in the later part, when the close is happening.

Gana:
Coming to a more critical function post-filing — SEC comment letters, which are pretty time-consuming and shift the focus of the teams looking through them. What do you do proactively to avoid getting comment letters? And when you're reading these comment letters, how do you actually work through them — do you benchmark against your own set of financial statements to find high-risk areas? Can you walk us through your treatment of SEC comment letters that our listeners could adopt? Are there good practices they should follow?

Jitender:
As far as SEC comment letters are concerned, consistency is the key — your document needs to be consistent across periods. Non-GAAP disclosures, segment reporting, goodwill impairment — all of these are gray areas, and whenever there are subjective areas like these, they tend to come into the picture, and you can see a comment letter coming in. To avoid that, you need to be well-versed with your financials and make sure they're consistent across periods, to avoid these kinds of SEC comment letters.

Gana:
You spoke about the auditor checklist, which has been a painful experience for most reporting teams. What's been your experience with these auditor checklists, given that they run through hundreds of questions across segments? How do you handle that on a quarterly or annual basis? Can you walk us through that process?

Jitender:
You have to redo it — it can't just be a copy-paste from the last quarter. You need to run through the questions, and wherever there's a change, you should look into each and every question to reflect the new understanding of the company. I think that's the main aspect of it. It is a lengthy process, as you said — there are 100 or 200 questions — but as part of our audit closure, it has to be filled in. So we try to work on the disclosure checklist before the quarter starts, and as we progress, if we see any change later in the process, we update the disclosure checklist accordingly.

Gana:
What's one thing you wish other sub-functions of the CFO office understood better about reporting teams and their challenges?

Jitender:
I think they assume SEC reporting is more about working in isolation, or just putting numbers into a structure. But SEC reporting is much more than that. We depend on inputs from various teams, so if we receive inputs on time, we get more time to do the analysis and the output is better that way. And it's not just about putting numbers into a format — it's about understanding and analyzing them, and writing a financial story for the company as a whole. That's important from an SEC reporting perspective.

Gana:
How does a senior professional like you — buried with so many tasks throughout the quarterly and annual reporting cycles — stay on top of what's happening in the market? How do you keep up with other companies' reports? What's been your mechanism for satisfying that curiosity to learn that you've developed over time? Can you walk us through your own learning process, Jitender?

Jitender:
As part of SEC reporting, you need to update yourself continuously and see what's happening around the market. You can subscribe to various LinkedIn channels or learning platforms. Personally, in Clarivate, we use an intelligence platform where, if there's any new guidance, a lot of interpretations are available. Peer filings is another tool — when we get some time, we look at what our peers are doing and whether there are any changes in the process. These kinds of tools definitely help, because you won't always get enough time to look into every aspect of a document. But there's a comparison feature we can run to understand whether there have been any changes, and what we can bring in. It's also very important to keep yourself updated on the new disclosures coming up. So that's definitely important.

Gana:
For someone very early in their career who wants to be in your seat one day — what should they be focusing on right now?

Jitender:
Someone looking to get into SEC reporting should be well-versed with their financial statements and understand them thoroughly — how the financial statements are prepared, how the footnotes are prepared. Basic knowledge of U.S. GAAP, and what's happening in the U.S. geography, is important; they should be familiar with that. And if they can learn how the Workiva tools work, that's definitely helpful, because Workiva is a platform used in most listed organizations. Attention to detail is another important aspect to take care of.

Gana:
Any parting words for our audience today, Jitender, that you'd want to share?

Jitender:
SEC reporting is definitely a fantastic career. Since you're at the center of the company, you need to be well-versed in everything happening around you.

Gana:
I want to wrap this up with a controversial question. Given the current push around reducing reporting requirements from quarterly to semiannual — it sort of helps the teams preparing the filings, but at the same time there's a feeling it would reduce a lot of transparency in terms of investor communication. What's your take? Should 10-Qs exist, or should they be replaced by a semiannual filing now?

Jitender:
There is this new thing coming up — that quarterly filing should be reduced to semiannual filing. It will definitely reduce a lot of cost from the company's perspective. But yes, a lot of transparency will go away, because investors will then get information on a half-yearly basis. Having said that, I think the earnings release will still be there, and that covers the most important aspect. From an investor perspective, they tend to go to the earnings release anyway, because the 10-K and 10-Q are lengthy documents, so they get the information they're looking for from the earnings release. So the earnings release and press release will play a crucial role — that would be the only interface between the company and investors on a quarterly basis. Disclosures will reduce, because you don't have to work on the disclosures, but you still have the numbers, and everything still has to be presented to people.

Gana:
So do you want this to be removed or not?

Jitender:
I'd say it's a matter of judgment. In order to reduce the burden on the company and the team, we could definitely look at having semiannual filings instead of quarterly ones.

Gana:
Thanks, Jitender, for taking the time and sharing your wisdom with our broader audience. It was great having you with Finrep on SEC Reporting Journal. Thanks a lot.

Jitender:
Thank you, Gana. Thanks.