Update Schedule & Governance

PTC publishes two different kinds of update. Some datasets are captured on a fixed period — a month or a quarter — and carry that period on the page. Others change only when the underlying evidence changes, and are republished on release rather than on a calendar. This page describes what actually happens in production, so a reader can judge how current any figure is. It does not describe an aspirational schedule.

Two update models

Every published PTC surface belongs to one of two categories. Confusing them is the most common way industry data is misread.

Model A

Period-based (snapshot) datasets

Estimates, industry snapshots, quarterly statistics and ranking tables are produced against a named period — for example 2026-Q3-BASELINE or a monthly snapshot dated to the first of the month. The figures do not drift between periods. When a period is locked, its values are immutable; a correction produces a new period, not a silent edit.

Model B

Release-based (evidence-driven) content

Firm dossiers, company timelines, risk signals and firm status changes update when new verifiable evidence exists — a disclosure, a policy change, a closure. There is no fixed review calendar; there is a review standard. Material changes are republished as soon as they clear editorial review.

Current production cadence

What each surface does today, stated conservatively. Where a cadence is a target rather than an automated guarantee, it is labelled as such.

PTC Estimates™: Produced per estimate period and tied to an industry baseline. The current published baseline is 2026-Q3-BASELINE. Estimate periods are targeted quarterly; a new period is published only when a full model run has been executed, reviewed and reconciled — not automatically at quarter end.
Model runs: Active Trader Model™, Funded Trader Model™ and Monthly Payout Model™ are executed deliberately by an operator through the internal run engine. Each execution is recorded with its trigger, status, firm counts, timings and a full parameter snapshot. Models are not re-run on a timer.
Rankings & PTC Indexes: Published as monthly snapshots dated to the first of the month. Snapshot coverage varies by index: not every index is regenerated in every month, and an index with thin coverage in a given month is shown with its own snapshot date rather than being carried forward silently.
Search-demand inputs: Search volume and visibility inputs are ingested on a monthly capture cycle, global scope first and country batches after. Ingestion timing is an input schedule, not a publication schedule — new inputs do not change a published figure until a model run and review consume them.
Review signals: Public review counts and scores are refreshed on a rolling capture cycle. They feed reputation and trust surfaces, and are always displayed with the capture period they belong to.
Firm dossiers: Release-based. Updated when evidence changes — new disclosures, programme or payout policy changes, ownership or platform changes, status changes including closure. No fixed weekly cycle is claimed.
Company timelines: Release-based, with a staged editorial pipeline. Candidate events are staged, triaged for materiality and source quality, promoted to primary records, and only then published.
Industry statistics: Period-based, published against the same baseline period as the estimates they are derived from. Republished when a new period is locked.

Why PTC does not publish on a fixed clock

A calendar guarantee would be easy to state and hard to honour without degrading the data.

Model runs depend on input coverage. If search, disclosure and review inputs for a period are incomplete, running the model on schedule would publish a worse estimate, not a fresher one.
Every run is reconciled against PTC firm counts and universe assignments before anything is published. Reconciliation failures block publication rather than delay-and-publish.
Firm-level facts arrive irregularly. A material disclosure in week two should not wait for a month-end cycle, and a quiet month should not manufacture an update.
Locked periods are immutable. Republishing a period to hit a date would break the audit trail that makes historical comparison meaningful.

What a refresh actually involves

A published change is the end of a pipeline, not a single action.

Step 1

Input capture

Search demand, review signals, official disclosures and registry records are captured and written to source-tracked tables. Each source family carries its own tier and licensing status.

Step 2

Model execution

A run is executed against a named period. Parameters are snapshotted with the run so the exact configuration behind any figure can be reconstructed later.

Step 3

Publication gating

Each firm-level result is classified — publication eligible, low-confidence display, internal only, or insufficient data. Only eligible results reach public pages; the rest remain in the modelled universe and in aggregates where appropriate.

Step 4

Lock and disclose

The period is locked, aggregates are reconciled, and every public figure is labelled with its provenance class and period. Later corrections open a new period.

Run auditability

Cadence claims are only credible if runs are recorded. They are.

Recorded per run: Model and methodology version, run status, start and completion timestamps, firms processed, successful and failed calculations, average confidence and execution time.
Trigger: Every run stores who or what triggered it. Production runs to date are operator-triggered and labelled accordingly.
Parameter snapshot: The full parameter set used by a run is written as an immutable per-run record, never updated in place.
Period binding: Runs that feed publication carry the period code they belong to, which is the same code shown on public pages.

How freshness is disclosed on the site

Different surfaces date themselves in different ways. Read the label, not the visit date.

Estimate and statistics pages show the estimate period and baseline they were produced against. That period is the correct as-of date for every figure on the page.
Ranking tables show the snapshot month they were materialised for. A ranking from a prior snapshot month is a historical ranking, not a stale live one.
Firm dossiers are release-based and reflect the most recent reviewed evidence. Where a firm is closed or inactive, its last score is labelled historical rather than presented as current.
Methodology pages carry an editorial "last updated" month describing when the document was reviewed against production — it is a documentation date, not a data date.

Corrections and revisions

Errors are handled as versioned events, not as edits.

Locked periods: Never edited. A correction is issued as a new period with its own values and its own date.
Firm-level corrections: Applied to the current release. Where a correction changes a published estimate materially, it is carried into the next estimate period rather than backdated.
Evidence withdrawal: If a source is retracted or shown to be unreliable, the dependent figure is downgraded or suppressed rather than left standing.
Scope changes: Adding or removing firms from a modelled universe changes aggregates. Such changes are made at period boundaries so period-to-period comparisons stay interpretable.

Limitations of this schedule

Stated plainly, because cadence claims are frequently overstated in this industry.

PTC does not guarantee a publication date for any dataset. Targets describe intent; the gate is data quality and reconciliation.
Historical depth is currently shallow. Production estimate periods and ranking snapshots cover a short window, so period-over-period change should be read as directional, not as an established trend series.
Input ingestion cadence and publication cadence are different things. Fresh inputs can exist for weeks before they change a published figure.
Coverage differs by index and by model. A surface that did not regenerate in a given period is shown with its own date rather than being implied to be current.
Release-based content depends on evidence becoming available. Absence of an update means no qualifying evidence was found and reviewed — not that nothing changed at the firm.

Related methodology

Cadence sits on top of the provenance, confidence and model rules documented elsewhere.

Estimate Methodology Confidence Framework Data Sources Ranking Methodology

Research FindingCadence documented from production run records