Historical Data Roll Forward

Background

Workiva is a B2B platform that helps large organizations manage complex reporting and compliance workflows. This work focuses on financial reporting, where structured data organizes financial numbers into standardized formats used for SEC filings.

My role: UX lead — user research, UX strategy, concept design, prototyping, and user testing.

Impact

Problem

Updating historical data is a manual, error-prone process that repeats every reporting cycle — four times a year. Users copy documents forward, search across prior filings and systems, and manually enter values cell by cell, spending days on repetitive work that increases the risk of errors and requires extensive review before filing.

We validated this pain at scale: in a survey of 461 users, 75% reported spending one or more full days on this task every quarter.

Solution

I designed an MVP that set the foundation for the team to start building. After returning from parental leave, my PM, tech lead, and I collaborated on a v2 redesign to streamline the workflow, integrate with platform features, and leverage our new design system. While v2 was never built due to a company-wide pivot to AI, it shaped the UX direction for the final shipped product.

From days of manual work to minutes

Updating historical data is a high-effort, high-stakes task that happens every quarter. What previously took days can now be completed accurately in minutes — freeing teams to focus on review, not rework.

Auto-pull prior-period data from SEC filings

Historical Data Roll Forward automatically finds prior-period values from past 10-Q and 10-K filings using existing XBRL tags. Instead of hunting through EDGAR or old spreadsheets, users select a filing and let the system do the matching.

Roll forward data in bulk

With a single action, users can roll forward hundreds of values at once directly into the spreadsheet — eliminating hours of repetitive copy-paste and reducing the risk of manual errors.

Built-in confidence through traceable edits

Each rolled-forward value can be accepted or rejected by integrating with the existing Track Changes feature, giving users reassurance that they can undo any change when needed.

Reception

Conclusion

Historical Data Roll Forward removes friction from one of the most painful steps in financial reporting — while increasing accuracy, speed, and trust. It ships quarterly value to thousands of users who previously had no choice but to grind through it manually.