AI financial statement analysis: compute or fetch the ratios

The same number, twice

Start with the question that decides everything else: do the two routes actually agree? If they disagree you have a reconciliation problem before you have an analysis. So we asked for one company's gross margin both ways, in the same session, minutes apart.

They agree, and both records name the same fiscal year and period end, so the comparison is like for like rather than two different windows that happen to look similar. That is the boring, reassuring result you want from this test, and it means the decision between the two is about what else each one gives you rather than about which one to trust.

What each route actually hands over

The income statement returns fifteen fields: the identifiers and dates, then revenue, cost of revenue, gross profit, operating income, net income, EPS, diluted EPS, and EBITDA. These are line items rather than ratios, which is what makes them useful — the agent can compute whatever ratio you name and you can see the arithmetic it used. They are also a provider's rendering of a filing, and providers normalise: a field can be scoped slightly differently from the company's own headline number for the same line. Reconcile the figures you lean on against the filing itself.

The ratios record returns sixty-six fields, and they span all three statements: margins at every line, receivables and inventory and asset turnover, current and quick and cash ratios, solvency and debt-to-equity, and the price-based multiples. Many of those cannot be computed from an income statement at all, because they need the balance sheet, so this route is not merely a shortcut — it reaches figures the other route does not have the inputs for.

One more difference is worth knowing before you pick. The statement call takes a period and a count, so asking for several years is the same single call and the same single charge — and several years of raw line items is what a growth rate is made of. On our own multi-year pull, revenue more than doubled in one year and then grew another sixty-five percent, while gross margin moved by only a couple of points across the whole stretch. That shape is the analysis; neither year's margin on its own would have suggested it.

So which one

1. Computing, when the inputs matter

   A margin you derived in the session is a margin you can explain. If the number is going into something anyone will question, having revenue and gross profit sitting next to it is worth more than saving a step.

2. Fetching, when the breadth matters

   Inventory turnover, quick ratio, and debt-to-equity need the balance sheet. One ratios call reaches all of them in a single request, which is hard to beat when you want a wide first look.

3. Both, when it is going to matter

   Two calls are still cents, not dollars. Pulling the statement and the ratios record together gives you the derived figure and its inputs, and the agent can flag a disagreement if one ever appears.

4. Neither, for a trend

   A single-period ratio says little on its own. Ask for several years in one call and the shape over time is the analysis; the level in any one year rarely is.

Building this into a session

Both calls are synchronous, so the whole comparison happens in one reply rather than as jobs to wait on. The agent lists the service with its price before anything runs, picking it is the approval, and an empty wallet stops the call before it is charged. Because arithmetic is local work, the part where the agent computes twenty ratios from one statement costs nothing at all.

That is the same division of labour as everywhere else in the catalog: the data is bought, the thinking is free. A peer comparison is four statement calls plus local arithmetic; the single-company earnings brief is two calls plus a paragraph the agent writes itself.

Set it up once

npm install --global @actionway/cli@latest
actionway init
mkdir -p "$HOME/.claude/skills"
cp -R "$HOME/.actionway/skill/actionway" "$HOME/.claude/skills/actionway"

You need Node.js 20 or newer and an Actionway account. Codex users copy the same folder into ~/.codex/skills/actionway instead, and both routes reach the same catalog and the same wallet — the get started page lists the steps per client side by side.