Carta Release Notes - Product Updates
6 years ago11/1/2019
Easier LP access to capital call notices
If you manage a fund, we know how important it is to provide a great experience for your LPs. That’s why, for customers of our Fund Administration service and LP management products, we are making it easier for your LPs to access capital call notices.
Previously, LPs would receive an email informing them that the fund was issuing a capital call. Then they would have to log in to the Carta website in order to view the capital call notice and find the payment details. Often, things would become complicated if the LP didn’t remember their credentials, or delegated the payment task to a colleague.
In our latest release, we have made things simpler for LPs. When you or our Fund Administration team create a capital call, you will now get to choose whether your LPs will be required to log in to view the notice. If you choose No log in required, the email your LPs receive will include a secure link that takes them directly to the notice. Anyone they forward the email to will also be able to use the link.
The link will expire after 15 business days. After that, LPs will be required to log in to view the notice, which will be available in their Documents folder.
We are always looking for ways to make life better for GPs and LPs. If you have any questions or feedback, please let us know at investorservices@carta.com.
Ives Chor
6 years ago10/7/2019
If you have stock options or common stock from a public company, you can now place limit orders that will remain outstanding for up to 30 calendar days. If you are attempting to sell at a particular limit price, selecting Good Till Cancel will allow the order to trade for multiple days without re-entering each day.
Upon entering a cashless exercise and sell, cashless exercise and hold, or stock sale, selecting Limit order now enables the choice of Day or Good until cancelled.
Selecting Good until cancelled enables you to place an order that remains outstanding until the earlier of 30 calendar days, or your entry into a trading blackout.
Following placement, you can view your order in the Orders screen. This view now shows order duration, where you can track both Day and Good Till Cancel orders, in addition to the date that the orders will be cancelled if they are not executed:
Bryan Wells
6 years ago10/2/2019
Introducing an Exercising Simulator for option holders
At Carta, we want to make big decisions like exercising simple and easy to understand. To that end, we’re excited to announce that we’ll be launching a new simulator tool!
Presets
- Part of this update includes
scenario presetsdetermined by your type of grant(s). By default, we will show Exercise All Vested and Customize Your Exercise choices. If you possess a grant that is early exercisable, you will be able to see and use that preset in your portfolio. - Customizing your exercise will allow you to enter in share quantity amounts in the tool. Changing the date updates the vested amount based on your vesting schedule.
Estimate your costs
To further provide context and helpful information, we’ve introduced the following estimates for all scenarios at the top of the tool. They are:
- Pre-tax cost (strike price x quantity)
- NSO taxes (including option spread)
- AMT taxes (breakdown of calculation)
To support this, you will be able to enter in standard tax data per scenario.
You can also drill down about each type of cost by clicking on the View Details button on the right. Below is an example of how we explain Pre-tax cost.
If you have any questions or feedback for this new tool, please send a note to catherine.stark@carta.com
Gwynne Burgess
6 years ago10/1/2019
Updating Emails for Stakeholders
If you are a company administrator making updates to stakeholder emails on Carta, we want to make sure all stakeholders at your company receive their certificates and grants to the correct email address.
We introduced tooltips to provide more context on the difference between a “Portfolio Email” and a “Contact Email.” A portfolio email is the email address associated with a stakeholder’s securities. For brand new stakeholders who haven’t accepted their security on Carta, we will show a “Pending” label. For stakeholders who are non-individuals (law firms, investment firms), it will read “Investor Portfolio.”
A contact email may be used to track the contact information for the individual or non-individual stakeholder.
To modify a stakeholder’s email address on Carta, visit the dropdown on the right hand side.
Update the email field with the correct email address for the stakeholder and hit Update.
On Update, you will see a step that asks you to confirm this change. For stakeholders who have not accepted any securities, we will send the stakeholder a new email to the updated email address so they can accept their securities.
The stakeholder will receive an email to accept their security. When she accepts, the Portfolio Email column will update with the email the stakeholder used to accept their security.
Upon accepting a security, you may not edit the Portfolio Email for the stakeholder. You may only update the “Contact Email” -- email used for a company’s record keeping/communication purposes.
To update the contact email for the stakeholder, you will see a message that asks you to confirm the change.
If you have any questions or feedback about this new feature, please write to growthproduct@carta.com.
Vince Lo
6 years ago9/18/2019
Improvements to self-service onboarding for Founders
We’re excited to announce that we’ve released a new version of self-service onboarding workflow for founders. The new release includes design improvements, more contextual links to support articles, and the ability to add a vesting commencement date for your stakeholder’s holdings.
More contextual links to guide founders in filling out their onboarding data accurately and quickly.
If you have a vesting start date (or vesting commencement date) that differs from the date of the original issuance, you can now enter it in when you input holdings information for individual certificates.
If you have any feedback or questions about our founder’s onboarding flow, please send a note to growthproduct@carta.com
Connor Bathen
6 years ago9/12/2019
In Open Beta today, Carta now offers an integration with BambooHR, a leading provider of HR software!
Carta Companies on the Scale and IPO Ready plans using BambooHR can set up an integration in minutes and benefit from a seamless, secure integration that keeps employee information up to date in Carta, improving data accuracy and reducing the risk of error.
Email integration_requests@carta.com or your Carta Relationship Manager to learn more about getting access to this feature.
When you integrate Carta with BambooHR, you can use the integration to:
- Auto-update stakeholder profiles in Carta as the corresponding employee record is updated in BambooHR
- Auto-terminate stakeholder profiles upon an employee’s departure
IT, HR and Finance leaders can rest assured that employee new hire and termination events are accurately reflected in Carta, creating the best possible experience for stakeholders, employees, and administrators.
Carta customers can follow the simple steps in this how-to-guide to get up and running: How to set up an integration with BambooHR.
Learn more about how the integration works by reading this topic-guide: How does Carta integrate with BambooHR?.
Des Duggan
6 years ago9/10/2019
Technical improvements to navigation
The Design Technology team at Carta is upgrading the top level navigation of our app, to use the latest Ink Design System improvements.
With this change, we will be able to support future design and navigation improvements planned for 2020.
There will be minor visual changes. We’ve increased contrast and legibility with white dropdown menus, and you might notice a few different colors here and there. Functionality remains the same.
Note: there is no change to menu items or to the way you get to different corners of the app. This update is unrelated to the navigational structure of our site.
For feedback, please reach out to design-technology@carta.com.
Gilmar Lira
6 years ago9/10/2019
We’re excited to announce that we have introduced the ability to retract a board consent on Carta!
Retracting a board consent is easy. Simply click on the “Actions” dropdown on the details page and select “retract consent”:
You can also retract a consent from the board dashboard by clicking on the grey dropdown and selecting “retract”:
Once you retract a consent, it will move the consent back into “draft status”. A consent can only be retracted if no board members have approved it.
We hope this helps make drafting board consents easier and more intuitive!
Connor Bathen
6 years ago9/4/2019
Major Update: Carta App for Android
We’re bringing a large update to drastically enhance the Carta experience for Android customers.
Register for you account in a few quick steps, set up fingerprint authentication for easy access, accept securities, and track vesting schedules within the new app.
As an investor, get real-time IRR and company performance information on the go!
Alex Legault
6 years ago8/21/2019
Track reported issues from stakeholders
As a company administrator, you have been getting emails when stakeholders report issues about their holdings. Now, we aggregate reported issues in one place and allow you to “Resolve” or “Dismiss.” Under the company drop-down, you will find a new section called “Reported Issues.” This will take you to the ledger of reported issues.
When you resolve an issue, add a note to send back to the Stakeholder. You may also choose to dismiss the issue, which will prompt you to enter a note for the reporting stakeholder.
This feature is being rolled out in Beta this week. If you have feedback, please reach out to product@carta.com.
Connor Bathen
6 years ago8/16/2019
Add board members to company account during onboarding
If you are a company or legal administrator, you will now be asked to add a board member to the company’s account during onboarding.
Why add board members during onboarding?
Board members are one of the most important stakeholders of a company. At Carta, we’ve built some features around board management and governance that make it easier for board members to streamline all their processes on Carta. For example, Carta makes equity grants even more efficient for board members by allowing board consents to be drafted and approved so that you can issue option grants to stakeholders without waiting for the next board meeting.
There is a new task in the Onboarding Setup Guide that requires companies with less than 25 stakeholders to add a board member to their account before going live.
If you’re a law firm user onboarding a company to the free Carta Launch Plan, you will see the same task in step 3 of the Launch Setup Guide.
When the company’s board members are added to the account, they will immediately be sent an email asking them to create their account and login. By default, board members will be added to Account Users but will not have access to view the company’s cap table unless you modify their level of access by visiting Account Users.
We believe it is valuable for companies to add their board members during their initial implementation. Capturing data and information early on will ensure the company is set up for success when utilizing Carta and realize the full benefits of our platform.
If you have any questions about Carta’s board management and governance features, please send a note to growthproduct@carta.com
Learn more about creating board resolutions on Carta >
Connor Bathen
6 years ago8/16/2019
Add Multiple Resolution Templates to a Board Consent
We’ve made it easier to add multiple resolutions into one board consent document. Going forward, you can add as many resolution templates into the consent editor as you need.
To add a new resolution template to a consent, open a draft consent and click on the “X” icon. Choose “resolution template”:
From here, you can drop in any template that you have saved:
Once a template is selected, it will populate into the consent document:
We hope this helps make drafting board consents easier and more intuitive!
Connor Bathen
6 years ago8/16/2019
External Broker Option Transaction Recordkeeping
We have added functionality to facilitate the capture of stock option trades for public companies that occur with other brokers.
If you are a public company on the platform and have executives that trade via other brokers (through 10b5-1 plans or other trades) we now have an administrator-facing tool to enter in trade executions for stock options. The functionality allows for the calculation and adjustment of tax withholding information, and flows through to Carta’s reports. Additionally, reporting is available to assist your company in settling the off-platform trade with your executive’s external broker.
Upon selecting “Off System Transaction” at the employee grant level, administrators can now enter in trade execution information related to stock option transactions executed outside of Carta.
Selecting Off System Transaction brings you to the exercise information screen:
Taxes will be calculated based on the inputted trade information, and can be reviewed and adjusted if necessary.
Upon reviewing and approving, the transaction information will be stored as an off-system transaction, and the options available for exercise will be adjusted accordingly.
Bryan Wells
6 years ago8/15/2019
Copy assumptions for ASC 820 valuations
To help streamline the ASC 820 valuation process and eliminate duplicative work, we’ve released a new feature within our ASC 820 valuation tool that lets you create a new valuation using the assumptions from a previous valuation or copy the assumptions from a scenario.
When modeling out the valuation, you may wish to create a new scenario with the same assumptions from a previously created scenario. To do this, navigate to the scenario you wish to copy and select ‘Copy scenario’.
Once copied, you will see a new scenario appear with the assumptions prepopulated.
You may additionally wish to use the same valuation assumptions year over year. To do this, select ‘Create valuation’.
Enter in the new valuation date, select the cap table you wish to use, and then select the valuation from which you would like to copy the assumptions.
Once the valuation is created, you will see the new valuation on the Valuations ledger.
EJ Jacoby
6 years ago8/14/2019
Technical improvements to navigation
The Design Technology team at Carta is updating the top level navigation of our app, to benefit from the latest Ink Design System improvements.
With this architectural change, user experience will be more consistent, future design improvements will be easier, and we will be able to better support our future product roadmap.
There will be minor changes to visuals and interaction. On the visual side, the text is now bolder and more legible. On the interaction side, menu items will now open on click, instead of on hover.
Note: there is no change to menu items or to the way you get to different corners of the app. This update is unrelated to the navigational structure of our site.
For feedback, please reach out to design-technology@carta.com.
Gilmar Lira
6 years ago8/2/2019
How to get access to Carta's new and improved Equity Plan Balance Report
If you oversee the management of your company’s equity plan or you’re a law firm user helping a client understand their equity plan, we are excited to announce that we have a new Equity Plan Balance Report available via request today.
We’ve made a couple of key changes in the new report:
- Run one report for multiple equity plans: Get a high level view of how issuing/amending multiple plans affect available equity.
- Audit how shares and grants “pour over” from one plan to another: Track how shares and grants are moving between plans as they are canceled or issued so you know exactly what’s available from a plan at any given day.
- See a summary of how amendments and new issuances affect plan size: Track changes to plans as your company chooses to amend or create new plans with varying terms.
As one of the most downloaded report on Carta today, we believe this report will help companies and their law firms understand their current equity plan and plan for the future as business needs evolve.
This report is currently in closed beta. If your Carta subscription includes reporting features, this report is available for your use upon request. To gain access, please send a note to angela.jo@carta.com
Connor Bathen
6 years ago8/2/2019
Holding Summary for Investors on iOS
For investors, we’re excited to bring updates to the iOS app, which now showcase the same great portfolio companies’ summary info that you’ve seen in the web experience.
Depending on the level of access for your account, you’ll see data, including:
- Investment cost
- Value of the holdings
- Gain/loss calculations
- First holding date
- Gross IRR
- Gross return multiple
- Ownership percentage
In the coming weeks, stay tuned for more updates as we improve the investor experience within the iOS app.
Don’t have the app yet? Get it now!
Alex Legault
6 years ago7/26/2019
New and Improved Exercising Flow
We’re excited to announce our enhanced exercising flow coming early next week!
The updated in-product experience aims to help employees feel more confident throughout the process and reduce the finance and HR team’s burden of managing (and answering questions about) option exercises.
To begin, your company must have online transactions turned on in Carta. Once they do, all you need is:
- A US bank account
- ISO, NSO, or ISO/NSO split grants that are vested
As part of the update, we’ve added an Exercise button directly on the Holdings page, under the new vesting chart. Click on the button to begin.
Once you’re ready, Carta will guide you through a step-by-step process that includes:
- The ability to select which grant and how many shares to exercise
- Estimated tax breakdowns to help you understand your obligations at the time of exercise and the end of the fiscal year
- In-flow profile and payment management to streamline the exercising experience without friction
- Autofilled 83(b) election form for employees who early exercise
- A clear timeline of next steps you should look out for before the shares are in your portfolio
Have more questions about your equity? Click here to learn more >
Connor Bathen
6 years ago7/23/2019
ISO, NSO, and Splits Vesting Report
We’re releasing a new vesting report for ISO, NSO and split grants! It lives under the Capitalization section of your Reports page.
In this update, we’ve introduced:
- A vesting report for ISO, NSO and ISO/NSO split grants
- Added a ISO/NSO column for the Exercised and Settled report
On top of that, we allow companies to generate the report for all their employees or for an individual.
Read more on Carta’s reporting capabilities >
Connor Bathen
7 years ago7/20/2019
ISO Option Exercise on iOS App
We’re releasing an update to the iOS app to support ISO option exercises!
To begin, you will need:
- An ISO option grant
- To be a US resident
- To link a bank account for ACH-based payments
Once you’ve installed the latest version of the app, head to the option grant that you intend to exercise. If exercising is available, you can click on the blue “exercise” button to begin.
Confirm that you’re currently a US resident to help the platform guide you through your potential taxes correctly. Before exercising, it is recommended that you consult your personal financial advisor or tax professional to make sure exercising is right for you.
Once you confirm that you’re a US resident, you’ll be able
- Choose the number of option grants you want to exercise
- The bank account that you want to pay with
- And ensure your portfolio profile is up to date
Once you’ve filled out all exercised details, you’re now ready to exercise. Before clicking “Exercise”, ensure that you read the terms of the exercise, review all linked documents, and agree to the withdrawal of funds to pay for the exercise.
After you submit the exercise request, the issuing company will approve the exercise request, which will initiate the funds transfer from your bank account to the company bank account. Lastly, the resulting certificate will be created, signed by the officers, then sent to you to accept. You’ll receive email updates from us as your option exercise progresses.
Don’t have the app yet? Get it now!
Alex Chen
7 years ago7/19/2019
We’ve made improvements to the ASC 820 valuation workflow. Now when you create a new valuation, you will be able to run through different scenarios, generate reports for each scenario, and select which scenario you wish to use as the final version in your financial statements.
Learn how to create a valuation on Carta >
Learn how to create a valuation scenarios >
Connor Bathen
7 years ago7/16/2019
We’ve made some updates to the law firm dashboard to make it more useful to our legal users. The goal was to provide more top-level information about companies that law firms want to see (e.g. current FMV, company status, or latest round raised), as well as include the total number of users associated with the law firm organization.
Connor Bathen
7 years ago7/15/2019
Reports: Tax withholding report
We’ve released a new report that details tax withholding events that have been processed on Carta. This report currently shows withholding events in association with these transaction types:
Private Companies:
- NSO Exercises
- NSO - ISO Disqualified Exercises
Public Companies:
- RSU Settlements
- NSO Exercises
- NSO - ISO Disqualified Exercises
- NSO Exercises - Cashless exercise and sell
- NSO Exercises - Cashless exercise and hold
You can find the report under Capitalization > Reports > Equity Plan Analysis > Tax Withholding Report
The report details out Stakeholder ID information as well as a breakdown of taxes withheld in association with each transaction.
Bryan Wells
7 years ago7/12/2019
(Public Beta) ISO Options Exercise on iOS app
We’re making an improvement to the iOS app to support ISO option exercises. We’d love your feedback to make this experience better, so please email us with your questions and comments around this beta release.
To begin, you will need:
- An ISO option grant
- To be a US resident
- To link a bank account for ACH-based payments
- To have an official signature tied to your account (you update it here on your computer)
- To download the beta app on your iOS device
Once the beta app is installed, head to the option grant that you intend to exercise. If exercising is available, you can click on the blue “exercise” button to begin.
Once you confirm that you’re a US resident, you’ll be able
- Choose the number of option grants you want to exercise
- The bank account that you want to pay with
- And ensure your portfolio profile is up to date
Alex Chen
7 years ago7/12/2019
Custom messages in Board Consents
We’ve made some improvements to notifications in the Board product. Now, when you publish a consent, you can write a custom message that will be included in the email notification that goes out to your board members.
You can also preview what the email notification will look like to board members by clicking the “preview email notification” link:
Connor Bathen
7 years ago7/5/2019
Reports: stakeholder contact spreadsheet update
We released an update for Stakeholder contact spreadsheet. Now you can see updated emails for your stakeholders.
Justin Lo
7 years ago7/5/2019
Reports: options outstanding report
We released a new report that allows company admins to see a list of outstanding options along with total vested, vested outstanding, unvested and more helpful data that should simplify your reporting.
You can find the report under Capitalization > Reports > Compliance > Options outstanding report.
Mara Pritchard
7 years ago7/2/2019
View your subscription details
We’ve added a new subscription details page under company settings. You can now view your Carta subscription with estimated next charge, last charge, features under your plan, and pricing tiers.
Mara Pritchard
7 years ago7/2/2019
For company administrators that have “Company editor” or “Company viewer” permissions, you can now clearly see which actions on the security ledgers are limited with your permission set:
Learn more about permission sets on Carta >
Justin Lo
7 years ago6/27/2019
Changes to Public Market wire instruction form for Canadian bank wires
We updated Public Market wire form for Canadian bank wires. As Canadian Banks requires mandatory fields to process wires, we have added two new fields to capture this information. There is also field validation in place to ensure entries are correct
Branch Code- 3 or 4 digit institution/bank number
Transit Number-5 digit branch transit number
You can find this form in settings-->accounts-->add-accounts-->account-details--> Wires and select Bank Branch Country=‘Canada’
Aneetha Sampath
7 years ago6/25/2019
Reports: security acceptance status
We released a new report that allows company admins to see full list of securities and their acceptance status (eg accepted or awaiting holder signature).
You can find the report under Capitalization > Reports > Compliance > Security acceptance status report.
Connor Bathen
7 years ago6/23/2019
What to do when asked for a unique code after registering for your Carta account
Carta is an invitation-based platform. You need to have been issued a security or granted access to a company, law firm, or investment firm account to receive an email invitation to register.
In the past, you may have registered for your account and landed on a page that asked you to enter a unique code before proceeding. This particular page created confusion for our customers, so we released a few updates to better inform you on why you are seeing the page after creating your account and what you can do to access your portfolio on Carta.
First, we will describe three possible reasons why you are seeing this page. The most common reason our customers see this page is because they already have an existing account with a different email address. We’ll outline clear next steps for you to take.
If you are still experiencing trouble, click “Still need help” to locate your unique code and enter it in to access your portfolio.
We hope this new update creates a more seamless registration experience for you!
Learn more about why some situations require a unique code to register >
Connor Bathen
7 years ago6/21/2019
Reports: easier vlookup and consistent securities names
We made a handful of improvements to existing reports. Now you can find unique stakeholder identifiers (ID), employee IDs in all reports and all securities have unique IDs that are consistent across reports.
When you need to vlookup across multiple reports and merge data, it would be much easier to do.
Justin Lo
7 years ago6/21/2019
Reports: securities ledger grouped by type
One of the most used reports “Securities ledgers by type and class” got an upgrade. Now you can see securities grouped by type of security which simplifies navigation and makes it easier to run analysis for a type of security (Shares ledger, Equity Awards Ledger, Warrants Ledger, etc).
You can find it under Capitalization > Reports > Ledger report by type
Alex Chen
7 years ago6/17/2019
You can now access your support pin, to verify your identity when you call one of Carta’s support agents. Find this in the account section of the app by selecting “Customer Support PIN”.
Alex Chen
7 years ago6/17/2019
iOS App: Connect your Bank Account
With the v3.5 release of our iOS app, you’re now able to securely and instantaneously link your bank account, to fund transactions such as option exercises (coming soon!).
You can find this under the account tab of the app.
Don’t have the app yet? Get it now!
Alex Chen
7 years ago6/14/2019
Starting July 1st, 2019 Carta will be charging sales tax to a subset of customers in the United States. When required by that state, Carta will collect sales tax in states where we have a physical presence or significant business activities.
You will be notified of the tax amount in your renewal and charge emails.
Connor Bathen
7 years ago6/6/2019
As more and more transactions take place on Carta, we want to make it easier for our customers to find and review those transactions.
The first transaction page we’ll be rolling out over the next few weeks is an Option Exercise ledger. You can track exercises as they move through various statuses: Requested, Approved, Waiting for Funds, or Cancelled. We will also indicate if an exercise occurred through a Tender Offer.
If you are the Option Exercise Approver for your company (you can check this under Company > Permissions and Roles > Roles), you will also be able to approve exercises on this page.
Note: Exercises that were completed before a company on-boarded to the Carta platform will not be displayed in the ledger.
Alex Chen
7 years ago6/4/2019
Profile editing within iOS app
In the iOS app, you can now edit your profile to add citizenship, residency, and tax information. This information will be used when you exercise options within the app (coming soon!)
Keep your profile up-to-date by going to Account > Profile
Don’t have the app yet? Get it now!
Alex Chen
7 years ago6/3/2019
New valuation methodology for ASC820 customers
We’ve released a new valuation methodology to help Investors determine the fair value of their holdings. Investors can now apply an equity adjustment to the post-money valuation. Equity adjustments are generally applied to backsolve or post-money valuations when the last preferred financing round was greater than 6 months ago and there is reason to believe that the market has changed since the last financing was raised, or when the portfolio company does not have sufficient revenue to support a meaningful indication of value.
To use the post-money equity adjustment methodology to value a portfolio company, follow these steps:
Navigate to the portfolio company’s valuation page.
Create a new valuation.
Add your public comparable companies. These will be used to estimate the equity adjustment.
Navigate to the Value company page and select the post-money valuation methodology. Indicate the weighting you would like applied and save!
Once saved, you will see a new page where you can record the post-money valuation, apply the equity adjustment, and include an explanation as to why you are applying the equity adjustment.
EJ Jacoby
7 years ago6/1/2019
Add equity plans when onboarding on Carta
If you’re a company founder and self-onboarding on Carta for the first time, we’ve made some improvements in the workflow that allow you to add equity plans so you can issue option grants to your employees.
To add an equity plan using our onboarding tool, navigate to Add Equity Plan.
Add information about the equity plan and hit Save.
Once you save, you can add another plan or continue to the next step of onboarding. This feature does not allow you to issue option grants, only add a plan.
Justin Lo
7 years ago5/29/2019
Reverse cancellation and repurchases
Company administrators are now able to reverse cancellations on every security type as well as reverse repurchases!
To reverse a cancellation, go to the security ledger and select the row action for a cancelled security:
In the modal, select a reason for reversal and confirm the information. If there was a certificate resulting from a partial repurchase, that certificate will be deleted. Only unaccepted certificates can be deleted. If a resulting certificate is accepted, please reach out to Carta support.
Once reversed, the original security will show as outstanding in the ledger and a note will be added to the security under the “Documents and notes” section. No notifications are sent out when reversing cancellations or repurchases.
Note: This feature does not include reversing transfers, exercises or conversions at this time.
Justin Lo
7 years ago5/24/2019
Option vesting schedule in Portfolio Holdings
The team is happy to announce our newest iteration on the private company portfolio experience.
As an employee with options, you can now see all the relevant grant information up front under Overview. To the right, we’ve introduced a schedule charting your vesting progress from beginning to end.
More tweaks were made to the option grant ledger to ensure we’re fully explaining the information presented to you.
Interested in understanding more about your options? See our Equity 101.
Gwynne Burgess
7 years ago5/21/2019
Improved Portfolio Screen and Badging
We’re excited to announce updates to how we present your equity information.
Now, when you visit a company screen, you’ll see a summary of all your equities, grouped by type. In addition, if you have option grants, you’ll see an overview to help you understand key information, including how many options you can exercise and the next vesting date.
Additionally, we’ve also added improved badging to make it easier to understand the vesting and exercise status for each of your grants.
Don’t have the app yet? Get it now!
Alex Legault
7 years ago5/17/2019
We have updated the modify workflow to better notify users about repricings in Carta.
If a user modifies the exercise price on an option grant, they will see a banner in the review screen to ensure they are inputting the new exercise price correctly.
Mara Pritchard
7 years ago5/15/2019
Early Exercising ISO/NSO Grants
I’m happy to announce we now allow private company users to easily early exercise their grants that are impacted by the $100K Rule. Going forward, those participants can exercise electronically on Carta through ACH.
What’s changed?
Now, users can select ‘Exercise’ on their outstanding ISO/NSO split grants in the Holdings page.
Once in the flow, they can see their early exericable pool and select portions of available ISO and NSO options. Signing and exercising is all online.
After the transaction is complete, participants can see those shares reflected in their portfolio, separated by ISO and NSO.
Have questions, concerns? Feel free to reach out to support@carta.com
Mara Pritchard
7 years ago5/13/2019
Improved permissions for Law Firms
Historically, permission sets on law firms and companies have not been the same, which has caused confusion around what users can do.
Going forward, permissions for law firms will be the same as for companies. The new permissions are defined below:
Law firm permissions will migrate as follows:
- No access --> No company access
- View --> Company Viewer
- Edit --> Legal admin
- There will be a new permission called “Company editor” that has no equivalent from the old law firm permission sets
We recommend law firm administrators review the changes and verify that law firm users have the appropriate permissions. You can update permissions for law firm users in two places:
Set default permissions for a user on the law firm People page. This is also where you can set a “law firm administrator”, which will allow them to manage users within the law firm:
Set company-specific permissions on the law firm Companies page:
Still have questions? Learn more about permissions and roles on Carta >
Connor Bathen
7 years ago5/13/2019
ASC820 valuations for Firms without cap table access
Are you getting ready to do your fund’s quarterly or annual ASC820 valuations? Want to get started on that valuation but your portfolio company hasn’t granted you cap table access? Not a problem, we’ve made this step easier!
You can now create an ASC820 valuation for a portfolio company that has not granted you cap table access just yet. To do this, navigate to the portfolio company, click on the valuations page, and select the Create valuation button.
You will then be prompted to create a pro-forma cap table for the portfolio company.
Once done, you will be able to create a valuation using that pro-forma cap table.
For more information regarding pro-forma cap tables and the ASC820 valuation tool, reach out to investorservices@carta.com.
Div Shivesh
7 years ago5/9/2019
We are retiring our ancient “Your session has expired” dialog in favor of a more modern approach, similar to other financial platforms.
Customers will now be taken to the login screen once their session becomes inactive for too long. Logging back in will take customers to the same page they were previously at.
For design feedback, reach out to design@carta.com.
Gilmar Lira
7 years ago5/8/2019
We’re listened to your feedback and added the ability to share and export documents for later viewing or printing. You can access these capabilities on any document viewing screen, by tapping the share button at the top right.
Don’t have the app yet? Get it now!
Alex Chen
7 years ago5/6/2019
Updates to self-onboarding flow for new companies on Carta
If you’re a company founder and self-onboarding on Carta for the first time, we’ve made some improvements in the workflow that allow you to add custom information for your stakeholders’ holdings.
You can create custom vesting schedules and legends by visiting the new Templates page. It’s important that you set these up in advance so you can select them from a dropdown later.
Note: Any legend or vesting schedule that you create during this step can be revisited or edited after your company is live on Carta by visiting Securities --> Templates.
Select the newly created vesting schedule and legend when filling in details for individual certificates. In addition, you can include acceleration terms i.e. Single Trigger.
We’re hoping these improvements will allow for greater flexibility and accuracy as you onboard on Carta. Please send product feedback or questions to angela.jo@carta.com.
Connor Bathen
7 years ago4/30/2019
Improvements to Blackout Period management
Following the release of the new blackout feature, we’ve made further iterations to remove friction and empower company admins. Issuers can now do the following:
- Delete an active blackout
- Edit end date of an active blackout
- Create a blackout “as-of-now”
You can delete a pending or active blackout by selecting it from the drop down
If details change and the end date needs to be updated, you can do so
If necessary, admins can create blackouts as of right now
Furthermore, if changing an existing blackout will impact trades, admins will be notified
Connor Bathen
7 years ago4/22/2019
Board Resolution Approval on iOS
We’ve released a new feature today, which allows board members to approve resolutions right from the iOS app.
You’ll be able to see the full resolution documents, the board members who are able to approve the resolution, as well as approval status and progress.
We’ve also included updates to improve your app experience including:
- A native password reset flow
- Automatically filling in your email address during the registration process
Don’t have the app yet? Get it now!
Alex Chen
7 years ago4/15/2019
Pro-forma cap table updates for investment firms
Waiting for your portfolio company to grant you access to their cap table on Carta? Want to get started with managing your investments now? If so, we’ve got a solution for you!
You can now create a pro-forma cap table for portfolio companies before they grant you cap table access. The pro-forma cap table will only appear on the investment firm’s view and will not be shown to your portfolio company.
To create a pro-forma cap table on a portfolio company that has yet to grant you cap table access, navigate to that portfolio company and find the Capitalization page.
Create a name for your pro-forma cap table. Inserting the date of creation or the date the cap table was last updated may be beneficial in keeping track of your pro-forma cap tables.
The last step is to fill out the cap table builder as you normally would. It should be noted that since the portfolio company has not yet granted cap table access, the pro-forma cap table builder will not contain any data until you have created the first pro-forma.
Div Shivesh
7 years ago4/15/2019
Carta Investor Updates allows you to send communications from the Carta platform to investors, employees, and other stakeholders on the cap-table easily through the Carta platform. We give you the tools you compose a mixed media update and attach all relevant files. Our financials templates are great for companies who are looking for guidance on what is important to investors. Recipients of the update will receive a notification and they will be able to access the update from their Carta portfolio. Companies sending update can also keep track who has viewed updates.
Investor Updates is now available to companies in the Growth and Enterprise plans. You can access more help content for this feature here.
Connor Bathen
7 years ago4/12/2019
Modify security details using row action dropdown
Users with “Legal administrator” permissions now have another way to modify securities!
On any security ledger, select the “V” on the right side and click modify.
Legal administrators can also modify multiple securities at once by selecting the checkboxes for the securities on the left side and selecting the “Actions” button in the top left corner. Select “Modify” from the dropdown.
Learn more about modifying securities on Carta >
Connor Bathen
7 years ago4/11/2019
Acceptance Flow - Email Screen
We have introduced a new page for users accepting a security via email. You can now check if you have an account before acceptance. We’ve further improved this process and enabled users to accept a new security with an existing Carta account.
How? You will be prompted after clicking through on the email invite.
If the email exists, you can login and accept your new security in your Tasks.
If you’re a new user, you can register and accept the security in Carta.
We hope this simplifies the acceptance flow for both new and returning users. For questions or concerns, please reach out to support@carta.com
Maxwell Estes
7 years ago4/1/2019
Waterfall modeling - Acceleration
This past weekend we released an improvement to our waterfall modeling feature, allowing investors and companies to toggle between standard and accelerated vesting. By selecting accelerate vesting, the model will assume all equity awards will be fully vested as of the selected exit date.
Please send questions or feedback to support@carta.com.
Jordan Agnew
7 years ago3/18/2019
ASC820 valuations when an exit event is near
Fund administrators that use Carta’s ASC820 valuation tool can now use a time to exit in the valuation of less than 1 year when a predicted exit event is near.
Time to exit is used as an input in calculating the discount for lack of marketability which is often used when the valuation is derived from publicly traded market comparables.
We hope this makes it easier for you value even more of your portfolio companies. For any feedback, questions, or comments, please reach out to investorservices@carta.com.
Mara Pritchard
7 years ago3/17/2019
Organize your Schedule of Investments with tags!
We recently shipped a new feature for fund administration customers to help organize your schedule of investments. You can filter by your customized tags, and generate exports based on the filter parameters.
Learn more about tagging your investments on Carta.
We hope this feature helps you manage your funds during the busy reporting season. We’d love to hear your feedback, so don’t hesitate to reach out at investorservices@carta.com with any questions or comments.
Jordan Agnew