SEC Form N-CEN: The Annual Census Report Every Fund Files

Form N-CEN is the annual report every SEC-registered fund files to disclose structural and operational facts about itself: who its service providers are, whether it lends securities, how many share classes it has, and similar census-style information. It does not report what the fund holds; that is Form N-PORT's job. N-CEN answers "what kind of fund is this and how does it operate," filed once a year as structured data rather than free text.

Who files N-CEN and when

Every registered investment company has to file Form N-CEN annually, with one date-based exception: most funds file within 75 days of their fiscal year end, but unit investment trusts file within 75 days of the calendar year end regardless of their own fiscal year. The form itself is filed only as structured XML, submitted through EDGAR rather than typed into a free-text document, which is what lets every answer come back as a labeled JSON field instead of a paragraph to parse.

N-CEN next to the other fund reports

A fund's regular filings split by what question each one answers:

N-CEN and N-PORT are often confused because both are relatively new, XML-only filings that arrived from the same 2016 modernization rules, but they answer different questions: N-PORT is a snapshot of positions, while N-CEN is a snapshot of the fund's own operating structure. A single fund complex files both, on different schedules, for every series it runs.

What the form actually asks

N-CEN's questions fall into a few groups, visible once the filing is parsed:

• Registrant information: the fund's legal name, file number, CIK, Legal Entity Identifier, and every office address it keeps books and records at, each tagged with what records live there.
• Series and class information: every series the report covers, identified by its SEC-assigned series ID, and whether the filing includes all classes within that series.
• Fund operations, by series: service providers (adviser, custodian, transfer agent, administrator, auditor), whether the fund engaged in securities lending during the period, and similar operational detail, asked separately for each series.
• Exchange-traded fund detail: for series that are exchange-traded, information specific to how the fund trades and is listed.

None of those sections ask what the fund owns. A fund's current positions come from N-PORT; N-CEN's closest thing to a number is operational (how many series, what kind of lending activity) rather than financial.

A real N-CEN filing's shape

A filing captured from SecFeed's N-CEN API, EA Series Trust's N-CEN filed on 2026-10-13, shows what the parsed structure looks like once it comes back as JSON:

{
  "accessionNo": "0001193125-26-420000",
  "companyName": "EA Series Trust",
  "cik": 1592900,
  "data": {
    "primary_doc": {
      "headerData": {
        "filerInfo": {"investmentCompanyType": "N-1A"},
        "seriesClass": {"reportSeriesClass": {"rptSeriesClassInfo": [
          {"seriesId": "S000072739", "includeAllClassesFlag": "true"},
          {"seriesId": "S000077503", "includeAllClassesFlag": "true"}
        ]}}
      },
      "formData": {
        "generalInfo": {"@reportEndingPeriod": "2026-07-31"},
        "registrantInfo": {
          "registrantFullName": "EA Series Trust",
          "registrantLei": "549300OFTR67XBWX5T25",
          "investmentCompFileNo": "811-22961"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

That one filing covers two series (S000072739 and S000077503) under a single trust registrant, reports a fiscal year ending 2026-07-31, and carries the trust's Legal Entity Identifier directly in the registrant block, exactly the kind of structural fact N-CEN is built to standardize across every fund that files one.

Pulling N-CEN filings with the API

from secfeed import Client

sf = Client("YOUR_API_KEY")
report = sf.form("n-cen", cik=1592900, size=1)
series = report["filings"][0]["data"]["primary_doc"]["headerData"]["seriesClass"]["reportSeriesClass"]["rptSeriesClassInfo"]
for s in series:
    print(s["seriesId"], s["includeAllClassesFlag"])

Passing fields=flat instead of a cik filter returns just the filer list, useful for scanning who filed recently without pulling each full report; the SEC filing types guide places N-CEN alongside the rest of EDGAR's funds and advisers forms, including N-PORT and Form ADV, if you need the wider picture.

Frequently asked questions

Does Form N-CEN report a fund's holdings?

No. N-CEN is a structural census: service providers, securities lending activity, share class and series detail, and similar operational facts. Portfolio holdings are reported separately on Form N-PORT, filed monthly.

What replaced Form N-SAR?

Form N-CEN replaced it. The SEC's reporting modernization rules set a compliance date of June 1, 2018 for all registered funds, after which N-SAR, which had required the same kind of operational disclosure twice a year since 1985, was retired in favor of the annual, fully structured N-CEN.

How often is Form N-CEN filed?

Annually, within 75 days of the fund's fiscal year end. Unit investment trusts are the exception: they file within 75 days of the calendar year end instead, regardless of their own fiscal year.

Is Form N-CEN filed as plain text or structured data?

Structured XML data only. Every field, from the registrant's address to each series ID the report covers, comes back as a labeled value rather than a sentence inside a document, which is why it can be queried field by field instead of read end to end.