Unsecured notes and loans payable as a share of total liabilities.
Formula:
debt_unsecured = unsecured_notes_loans / total_liabilitiesDefinitional Range
Bounded [0, 1]. Most nonprofits carry no unsecured notes, so the distribution is highly concentrated at zero with a long right tail.
Benchmarks and rules of thumb
No established benchmark. Presence of unsecured debt is not inherently negative – many healthy nonprofits use lines of credit for cash flow management – but a large and growing ratio warrants scrutiny.
Trend analysis is more informative than a single year's value.
Calculated For: 990 + 990EZ filers.
Usage
get_debt_unsecured_ratio( df,
unsecured_notes_loans = "F9_10_LIAB_NOTE_UNSEC_EOY",
total_liabilities = "F9_10_LIAB_TOT_EOY",
winsorize = 0.98 ,
range = "zo",
sanitize = TRUE,
summarize = FALSE )Arguments
- df
A
data.framecontaining the fields required for computing the metric.- unsecured_notes_loans
Unsecured notes and loans payable, EOY.
- total_liabilities
Total liabilities, EOY.
- winsorize
Winsorization proportion between 0 and 1 (default
0.98).- range
Character string specifying the theoretical range of the ratio, used to set winsorization bounds. Default
"zo". Options:"np"(negative to positive),"zp"(zero to positive),"zo"(zero to one),"nz"(negative to zero), or a custom"lo;hi"pair (e.g."0;10").- sanitize
Logical (default
TRUE). IfTRUE, imputes zero for NA financial fields before computing, respecting form scope.- summarize
Logical (default
FALSE). IfTRUE, prints summary statistics and density plots for all four output columns.
Value
The original data.frame with four columns appended:
debt_unsecured, debt_unsecured_w,
debt_unsecured_z, debt_unsecured_p.
Details
Primary uses and key insights
The unsecured debt ratio measures what share of total liabilities consists of
unsecured notes and loans payable (Part X line 24B), typically including lines
of credit and unsecured bank loans. Used alongside get_debt_secured_ratio(),
it provides a decomposition of the liability structure.
Formula variations and their sources
Unsecured notes and loans payable (Part X line 24B) / total liabilities (line 26B). A direct read from two 990 balance sheet fields.
Examples
library( fiscal )
data( dat10k )
d <- get_debt_unsecured_ratio( df = dat10k )
#> Error in resolve_col(dt, unsecured_notes_loans): None of the specified columns were found in the data: F9_10_LIAB_NOTE_UNSEC_EOY
head( d[ , c( "debt_unsecured", "debt_unsecured_w", "debt_unsecured_z", "debt_unsecured_p" ) ] )
#> Error: object 'd' not found