Carta Release Notes - Product Updates

4 years ago9/16/2021

Partially Canceling Option Grants

What’s new

Legal administrators in Carta can now partially cancel an option grant in Carta. Partially canceling an option grant will reduce the number of outstanding shares and return the shares back to the option pool.

How it works

You'll find the partial cancellation tool by navigating Securities > Equity awards and clicking on the ledger dropdown for the specific option you'd like to partially cancel:

First, you'll be asked to provide an effective date for the partial cancellation. A partial cancellation is an amendment to the option grant, and the effective date will determine when the amendment takes effect in the company's as-of date reporting.

Next, select the cancellation method, which determines how the partial cancellation will affect the vesting schedule for the option grant. Because a partial cancellation reduces the outstanding quantity of the option, Carta needs to know from which tranches the shares should be canceled.

Last in, first out cancellation method

For some situations, the issuer or their legal counsel may not specify the way in which the amendment will affect the vesting schedule. Issuers can select the last in, first out cancellation for the vesting schedule, and Carta will cancel shares starting from the future-most tranche and move up the vesting schedule until the specified quantity has been canceled.

Custom cancellation method

For situations in which the issuer or their legal counsel want to affect the vesting schedule in a specific manner with a partial cancellation, issuers can select the "Custom" share allocation method - this approach provides flexibility and allows the issuer to cancel shares from any tranche. The in-app spreadsheet allows legal administrators to first reflect the partial cancellation in a spreadsheet application outside of Carta and then copy/paste the resulting vesting tranches back into Carta.

After selecting "Review and confirm" at the bottom of the page, verify the cancellation quantity and other information to save the partial cancellation.

Additional Resources

For more information around the limitations and best practices for the partial cancellation tool, please refer to this support article.

Who this affects

The new partial cancellation tool is available to the legal administrators in all of Carta's private market customers.

Timing

Available now.

Vince Lo

4 years ago9/16/2021

View Public Company Holdings on Mobile

Users with holdings in public companies will now have the ability to view their holdings for both public and private companies straight from the Carta iOS app. Shareholders can now track market values, view total holdings value and more.

Who this affects

Shareholders with holdings in public companies.

Supported platforms

What's new

With an aim to provide functional and streamlined experiences for shareholders, we’ve brought the ability to view public holdings on the Carta iOS app. Public company cards will now be present among private companies on the home screen. The following information will be displayed for each public company card with the ability to view further details when clicked:

Hira Zahid

4 years ago9/15/2021

Use Cap Table Access to Set Rule-Based Permissions for All Stakeholders

We are making it easier for companies to keep employees, investors, and other stakeholders informed about their holdings and company changes.

Companies have historically been able to grant viewing permissions to their stakeholders via our Cap Table Sharing page and features. This experience, however, was burdensome for many company administrators who found themselves having to change sharing settings as new stakeholders were added to their cap table or existing stakeholders changed their relationship to the company, such as an employee leaving the company or an investor exiting their position.

With our new Cap Table Access page, company administrators can designate what type of information they want to share with their different stakeholders and set rules based on these preferences. By setting permissions by rules instead of a stakeholder-by-stakeholder process, we make it easier for company administrators to get the right stakeholders the appropriate information and reflect their information sharing philosophy.

Companies can choose to enable a group of stakeholders with a specific level of access based on their relationship to the company. For example, companies can choose what information founders, investors, employees, and former employees, and other stakeholders access on Carta. We’ve renamed, updated, and simplified our access levels to Restricted, Basic, Advanced, and Full Details. We include a “Recommended” level for different relationships (e.g. Investors = Advanced) to help guide founders and other company administrators on setting up their Cap Table Access settings based on user feedback.

We’ve also added a new rule where former stakeholders--those who no longer have an active investment or holding in the company--will be downgraded to Restricted automatically. This means that as stakeholders enter and exit the cap table, their respective level of cap table access will update automatically.

New Cap Table Access page: Group levels

We know that sometimes it’s important for company administrators to create experiences specific to a single stakeholder or user. The new Cap Table Access feature allows companies to set overrides for specific stakeholders in the “Individual levels” tab. We also provide information on that stakeholder’s relationship and holdings information.

New Cap Table Access page: Individual levels

To help ensure company administrators set access levels that best fit the needs of their stakeholders, our access level guide is clickable from either the Group Level or Individual Level views of the new Cap Table Access page.

Access level guide

We appreciate our users’ feedback on how to make this page clearer and easier to use. We hope these improvements save company administrators valuable time and help them mirror their company information sharing philosophy in our software.

Who is this available for?

The cap table sharing page is available via a limited release to select Carta companies. In the coming weeks, we will begin to migrate additional companies to the new Cap Table Access feature set. This new product is not limited by subscription tier.

Companies with the new Cap Table Access features enabled can visit Stakeholders > Cap Table Access.

If you’d like to enable the new Cap Table Access settings for your company, you can also contact us.

Amanda Domingues

4 years ago8/31/2021

Instant KYC for Non-Individual LPs Completing Subscription Documents

Non-individual Limited Partners who complete subscription documents on Carta can now be KYC’ed instantly.

What’s New

This release is a follow-up to our KYC for Individual LPs feature. If your fund leverages Carta’s KYC/AML service and you have non-individual Limited Partners (LPs) completing subscription documents in Carta, these LPs can now be instantly KYC’ed on the platform. Carta instantly KYCs the LP's control person and beneficial owner(s) in addition to the LP entity itself.

Carta’s instant KYC feature is made possible by Carta integrations with identity and verification databases like LexisNexis, Ekata, Socure, and more.

Limitations

How it Works

  1. As an LP completes their subscription documents, non-individual LPs (for funds that avail of Carta’s KYC/AML service) will see a dedicated Know Your Customer section. Upon landing here, LPs will first be asked if their control person and beneficial owner(s) are all US persons -

  2. If the control person and beneficial owner(s) are all US persons, then the LP will be shown forms to enter KYC information for these individual(s) -

  3. Finally, the LP is also able to upload any entity formation documents and photo IDs here:

  4. Once subscription documents are signed by the LP, the following are instantly KYC'ed: the LP entity, control person, and beneficial owner(s). If all pass KYC, this is immediately reflected in the Carta UI and General Partners are notified to countersign -

Timing: Rolled out to all on Aug 31, 2021

Audience: US-based Limited Partners, General Partners

Steven Camina

4 years ago8/30/2021

VC Firm Access Update

What’s new

We're updating firm permissions to be more granular for larger firms, while keeping them easy to manage for emerging managers.

Fund Admin clients on Carta will now have the ability to grant users on their accounts access to only the information they need: Investments, Limited Partner information, Fund Admin, and Fund performance data.

How it works

Admins on a VC firm account have the ability to add users and update their permissions. Permissions are controlled under Settings on a firm account. Non-admins can go to the Settings page to see who the admin on their account is.

Basic VC firm accounts on Carta will be able to grant users Admin or Investments access.

Firms that use Carta for additional services have the ability to grant users additional permissions for each fund in the firm.
Permission Grants access to
Admin - Add, update, or remove other users on the firm
- Accept securities on behalf of the funds in the firm
- Update payment information for the funds in the firm
- Complete tender offers on behalf of funds in the firm
- Use the portfolio merge tool
Investments - Company information for companies that fund has invested in
- Schedule of investments
Partners - Access to partner information, including contact information, commitment amount, and parter documents
- Access to fundraising and closings tools
Fund Admin - Access to fund administration information, including capital calls, distributions, and quarterly reports
- Ability to communicate with fund admin team through Carta
- Ability to request and approve fund admin updates
Fund Performance - Access to fund performance data
Audit - View only access to investments, partners, fund admin, and fund performance data
- Users with audit access cannot have other access to the fund

Defaults

For each user, an Admin can grant them “default” access to the firm. Defaults will automatically give users these permissions for new funds that are added to the account.

Additional Resources

Who this affects

This update affects all VC firm users on Carta. Users will not see a difference to their existing access with this change, but going forward Admins can update permissions.

Timing

We are rolling this out to a small number of firms starting on August 30 and plan to roll out to all firms within a few weeks.

Ashley Chang

4 years ago8/24/2021

[Early Access] Live Chat Support

Carta now offers Live Chat Support to Early Access Users.

Who does this affect?

Law firm users and companies in Carta Launch

What’s new?

Users can now opt to chat live with a Support Agent, in addition to the traditional Phone and Email Support.

They can simply access the Help Center by clicking on the dialog balloon at the bottom right of the screen, where the Live Agent option will be available.

After accepting the terms and conditions, the user will be connected to a specialized Support Agent.

This rollout builds upon Carta's investment in a modernized approach to how our customers receive assistance in-app, enabling easy access to multiple engagement types to fit the context of the question, including:

All within the Help Center in-app!

Nathalia Wichan

4 years ago8/23/2021

Get Help!

Carta is making it easier to get the answers our users need, when they need them. Introducing our one-click Help Center.

Who does this affect?

Company administrators and viewers, law firm users, and personal portfolio holders

What’s new?

Users can now access Carta's Help Center in one click by going to the dialog balloon icon at bottom right of the screen, where they can ask questions about the platform's workflows, products and features.

Carta's Natural Language Processing technology will find the most helpful Support Articles for that query within our knowledge base, and provide users with the right answer for their questions.

In the event a question needs to be escalated to a Support Agent, Carta users can also raise Support Cases without leaving the page, and they will have multiple support options available to fit their engagement preference.

Email Cases created through this workflow leverage user's session data and context to quickly route the Case to Subject Matter Experts, leading to faster resolution times.

When Phone is selected as the preferred method, the most appropriate phone number is displayed based on the user's type and question, ensuring users get connected to the right Support Agent for their need, without inconvenient call transfers.

Learn more about Carta's Help Center

Nathalia Wichan

4 years ago8/16/2021

New Carta Launch onboarding for early stage founders

What’s new?

Early stage founders can get self-onboard onto Carta Launch faster than ever before. Founders with up to $1M raised or 25 stakeholders or fewer can now create an account and onboard company data with ease, speed, and confidence for free.

Carta Launch is live on Product Hunt! We'd so appreciate your upvote!

How it works

Sign up and create your account

  1. On carta.com/launch, click “Get Free Access”
  2. Fill out a simple form with your company information to create your account.

Guided onboarding

  1. We designed the new onboarding experience to be friendly and guide you through each step

  2. With just Incorporation Documents and Common Stock Purchase Agreements, you can enter information about your Company, Founder Shares, and Users & Roles to complete your onboarding.

  3. Once you’ve reviewed and activated your account, you’re all set to get started on Carta.

  4. Your free Carta Launch plan is suited to fit your immediate fundraising and equity needs and set your company up for success as it scales.

Additional resources

David Zhang

4 years ago8/9/2021

Request for Information Dashboard Improvements

What’s new?

Portfolio Insights clients now have a more granular view of the requests for information they send to their portfolio companies. The request for information dashboard has been upgraded to include document type and status for each portfolio company, as well as a timestamp of the portfolio company’s last submission.

Along with making the request for information (“RFI”) dashboard more granular, it’s possible to configure exactly what is requested of each company, lessening the burden on portfolio companies and ensuring a streamlined process. Click here to learn more about RFI configuration.

It’s also now possible to cc multiple people on RFIs, ensuring anyone and everyone from your team is kept apprised of the quarterly collection process.

Questions?

For more information regarding the RFI dashboard, or Portfolio Insights, please reach out directly to your Portfolio Insights account manager or portfolio-kpi@carta.com.

Keyvan Firouzi

4 years ago7/23/2021

VC Fundraising Data Room

What’s new?

Fund Managers are now able to set up a fundraising data room as part of our VC fundraising process. The Carta platform makes it easy to run the entire fundraising process in one place – from creating your data room to closing your fund with our subscription document process.

Key features of this data room include:

How it works:

The fundraising data room is integrated into the Closings process. Any fund on Carta can use this data room with or without our subscription documents.

Setting up a fundraising data room

  1. Carta staff will create a fund and turn on Closings for you. On the Closings tab, the user will see the option to set up a data room
  2. After clicking Set up, users will see more information about what the data room offers. Then users can set a name and choose which settings to apply to this data room.
  3. After the data room is created, documents and folders can be uploaded to the data room.

Viewing / Removing access

Firm users can see which users have access, which partner they are associated with, and the option to remove access from the Access section of the data room.

Viewing Potential Investor Activity

Firm users can view LP activity, which is often an indicator of how interested they are in the fund, by looking at the Activities section of the data room.

Watermarking

If funds turn on the watermarking feature in data room, all downloading PDFs will have a watermark containing the user's name, email, and time of download.

LP access to data room

LPs can are invited to the data room through the Closings tool. They will receive an email invitation to view documents in the data room.

LPs can use the Request subscription documents button to request documents from the fund. When LPs are done viewing the data room, they can click Dismiss task to remove the task from their tasks section.

Who can use this?

All investment firms on Carta. Contact your fund administrator or investorservices@carta.com to turn this on for your fund. Read more about the details of how to use this on our support site.

Timing:

This is available to all investment firms as of July 21, 2021

Ashley Chang

5 years ago7/20/2021

Modify and Request Information From Portfolio Companies

What’s new?

Our Portfolio Insights clients can now easily request information from their Portfolio Companies. We’ve created the flexibility to select file types, KPIs, or information about the portfolio companies’ upcoming financings.

How it works

  1. Navigate to Manage RFIs under Settings and select which companies from your portfolio you’d like to make edits to:

  2. Enabled: Will request data from Portfolio Companies

  3. Fiscal Schedule: Control if your request is a standard quarter end, or +1 or +2 month end (e.g. Q2 fiscal schedule of July 30 or August 30)

  4. FND: Ask if Portfolio Company will be raising funds in the next year, if so, by when and how much.

  5. AER: Do you want to send automatic email reminders if the Portfolio Companies did not reply.

  6. Period: Request income statement figures for the last 3 months, 6 months, or 12 months

  7. Requested Files: Request between:

  8. Articles of incorporation and Cap Table (for companies that don’t manage their cap table on Carta)

    1. Financials
    2. Forecast and Board Decks.

  9. Requested KPIs: Select from the list of 40 industry standard KPIs (Users, ARR, Web Traffic, etc). Enable KPIs individually or in industry-specific batches.

  10. Toggle data collection, tailor the documents to be requested, and enable various KPI fields for a more intuitive RFI preparation process

  11. Save preferences and send your next portfolio RFI during your typical request cadence.

  12. Portfolio company upload portals will be customized accordingly, ensuring you’re only requesting exactly what you need from each logo

Suggestions

We recommend limiting KPIs to 3 or 4 to keep portfolio company upload portals from becoming overwhelming.

Limitations

Custom KPI (i.e. those that don’t exist in our drop down) functionality is scheduled to be available late Q3 2021.

Timing

The configuration page is currently released and enabled for all Portfolio Insights clients.

Questions?

For more information regarding RFI configuration, or portfolio insights, please reach out directly to your portfolio insights account manager or portfolio-kpi@carta.com.

Keyvan Firouzi

5 years ago7/20/2021

Home Screen Redesign on Mobile

Users with holdings in private companies can now view their holdings details straight from the home screen for easy access.

Who this affects

Shareholders with holdings in private companies.

Supported Platforms

What’s New

With an objective to provide insightful experiences, we’ve redesigned the home screen on the Carta app to display important holding details for each company. Company cards will now present the following information with the ability to view further details when clicked:

Kimberley Chong

5 years ago7/13/2021

Carta Total Comp Updates: Scorecard Export, Next Twelve Months Vesting and More

Check out the exciting new updates we’ve made to Bands, Scorecard and Admin pages

Next Twelve Months (NTM) Equity Ratio

Equity Ratio is now being calculated using Next Twelve Months (NTM) equity rather than Total Equity granted to the employee. The new formula for Equity Ratio is as follows:

An employee’s next twelve months (NTM) equity divided by the target annual equity for a new hire today.

Why did we make this change?

The Carta Total Comp Scorecard is designed to provide a clear view of the compensation health of your business. In order to build a score that better highlights attrition risk, we’ve changed the calculation for equity ratio to be based on unvested equity that will vest in the next twelve months.

Employees compensated below market rate are at risk of attrition, as they would be paid more in a new role than if they were to stay in their current position.

Vested equity does not incentivize employees, because it is already earned, and therefore does not help drive retention; put another way, vested equity is already “in the bank.” Calculating a health score that includes vested equity could lead to overlooking employees who are mostly vested and therefore at risk of going to work elsewhere.

The additional benefit of NTM is that it allows you to compare equity compensation on the same annualized timeframe as salary.

Additional Details

While Equity Ratio will be calculated by using NTM going forward, we will continue to show Total Equity on the company and employee Scorecard.

Scorecard Export

You can now easily download a CSV of the entire scorecard by clicking on the “Export” button. The CSV will contain all of the available columns, regardless of whether they are enabled in the column selector.

Admin Page

Review and modify employee details from the new Admin Settings page. This page has a complete view of all employees synced from the HRIS and cap table.

What’s changing?

Navigate to the Admins page from the Carta Total Comp top navigation bar. From there you can access the “Roles and permissions” tab along with the “Employees” tab

New Bands Version

You can now see the date of the most recent Benchmark version in the Plan and Bands page. With the Preview plan feature, you can review the impact that updated benchmarking data has on the Scorecard prior to applying the new Plan.

Why did we make this change?

When benchmarking data is current, it better enables you to be competitive in today's market with the offers you take to candidates and employees.

Job Area Descriptions and Example Job Titles

Our Roles and Levels are now defined in-app.

Why is this important?

Carta's leveling framework provides a foundation for your company to provide career pathing for employees and to review pay fairness for each job area and level. Without consistent leveling, companies can not accurately compare their employees to market rate data, limiting their ability to effectively hire and retain talent.

To help our customers ensure accurate and consistent leveling, we are now providing further descriptions for each job area we support, so users can make more informed leveling decisions based on commonly used job titles.

What’s changing?

We have added a “Learn more” link in the "Example title" column in the "Bands" tab. This link will launch a modal where you can see sample job titles and descriptions for roles in each job area.

David Lichtenstein

5 years ago7/8/2021

Carta has released a share activity report to help stakeholders track their public holdings

What’s new?

Public company stakeholders can now download share activity reports that capture their transaction activity and change in shares held during any period.

How it works:

By clicking on the new Statements tab, public company stakeholders enter in the start and end date that they would like to analyze:

The resulting report captures holdings at the beginning and ending of the period, and captures any transactions that cause an increase or decrease in the number of shares the participant holds.

Overall change in ownership is tracked in the Portfolio at the end of period section. Holdings are separated into shares originating from ESPP (Employee Stock Purchase Plan) and non-ESPP sources. The section shows holdings in these categories at the beginning and end of the period.

The Equity transactions in period section captures all transactions to equity (non-ESPP) shares during the period.

The following transactions are captured in this section, including the net effect of the transactions on a stakeholder's holdings

The ESPP (Employee Stock Purchase Plan) transactions in period section captures all transactions that affect ESPP holdings.

This section captures the transactions below, including the net effect of the transactions on a stakeholder's holdings

The report also captures transactions that have been entered into Carta for record-keeping purposes. These transactions do not affect holdings and typically reflect transactions where shares are held or sold at an outside brokerage.

Transactions in this section include:

Who can use this?

All public company stakeholders

Timing:

Stakeholders will be able to access this report through their portfolios starting 7/9/2021

Bryan Wells

5 years ago7/7/2021

User demographic survey for Table Stakes 2021

Announcing a new survey to collect demographic information for Table Stakes

Carta users can now elect to provide their demographic information under the user profile section of their accounts.

Why is this important?

In 2018, the #ANGELS hypothesized that the gender equity gap was worse than the salary gap. Carta collects the data to help track and analyze what they called #TheGapTable. Together, we created the first ever report on equity distribution by gender and have continued to create it every year since. Equity is the largest lever for wealth creation in Silicon Valley and beyond; we believe it should be distributed equitably. This year we are focused on bringing that data into our application and making this demographic survey more powerful than ever.

What’s new?

When stakeholders navigate to their user profile they will now have a link to a demographic survey that will be used to power the data analysis for Carta’s Table Stakes in December 2021. We encourage all users to participate as each data point contributes to a more powerful analysis.

Navigate to your name in the top right corner and then “Profile and Security” before selecting “Fill out your demographic information”

Who this is available to

All users located in the US. Users who have opted out of communications or have asked to be added to our “do not analyze” lists will not be included in Table Stakes or other analyses.

Posted on behalf of Jessica Ray who led this project.

Jared Thomas

5 years ago7/5/2021

Capital Calls on Mobile

General partners now have the ability to view and track capital calls from the Carta iOS app. Investment firms can now track the progress of on-going and completed calls along with investor details, on the go, straight from the Carta app.

Who this affects

Supported platforms

What's new

Fund Administration clients can now access their capital call details and investor information from the Carta app.

Sudeep Kumar

5 years ago7/1/2021

Instant KYC for LPs Completing Subscription Documents

Limited Partners completing subscription documents on Carta can now be KYC’ed instantly.

What’s New

If your fund leverages Carta’s KYC/AML service and you have Limited Partners (LPs) completing subscription documents in Carta, these LPs are now instantly KYC’ed on the platform.

Carta’s new instant KYC feature is made possible by Carta integrations with identity and verification databases like LexisNexis, Ekata, Socure, and more.

Limitations

How it Works

  1. As an LP completes their subscription documents, individual LPs (for funds that avail of Carta’s KYC/AML service), will now see a dedicated Know Your Customer section. Here, LPs can input the additionally required information for KYC -

  2. Once subscription documents are signed by the LP, the LP is instantly KYC’ed. If the LP passes KYC, this is immediately reflected in Carta and General Partners are notified to countersign -

Timing: Rolled out to Limited Partners on July 1, 2021

Audience: Limited Partners, General Partners

Steven Camina

5 years ago6/24/2021

Effective Dates for Post-Termination Exercise Period (PTEP)

Post-termination exercise period (PTEP) refers to the amount of time an option holder has after termination to exercise their options. It is now possible to change the PTEP to give employees more or less time to exercise. This can happen on a one-off basis, or across many grants at once.

What is new with this release?

It is now possible to enter an effective date for the post-termination exercise period in Carta. This is needed to track changes over time and to have more accurate financial reporting.

Modifying the PTEP

The PTEP can be modified for a specific grant by selecting ‘Modify post-termination period’.

The original grant and the current PTEP values are visible on the left side of the ‘Modify port-termination exercise period screen’.

Select ‘Add Modification’, then enter an effective date for this change, select a modification reason, select the new modification details, then select ‘Save this modification’.

It is also possible to update the PTEP across multiple grants at once.

More information is available in this support article.

Note: Changing the post-termination exercise periods can have tax and accounting consequences and may need board approval, so consult your legal administrators before making any changes.

Jessica Ray

5 years ago6/24/2021

Public Cash Exercising Redesign

Users: Option holders of public companies

Platform: Web (iOS and Android coming soon)

With an objective to unify the cash exercising experience between private and public companies, we've enhanced the Public "Cash" Exercising flow on Web to make the steps more seamless, intuitive and easy to follow. Implementing these changes to the exercising workflow allows users to review all the important details relating to their option grant exercise in a step-by-step manner, eliminating confusion about tax withholdings and allows them to better understand the stages of their exercise.

While our previous Cash Exercising workflow for public companies got us some great mileage, our processes and their caveats have evolved, which called for a cleaner, simpler and an overall better user experience. Below are some of the highlights that the new Cash Exercising workflow will introduce:

  1. Step-by-step procedure: Intuitive and easy to follow, allowing the user to fully understand the process
  2. Improved tax estimation/information: Targeted tax withholdings information provided to user with respect to the option grant type being exercised
  3. Cleaner UI: Revamped headings, body text, call to action, helpful support links and more!

Irteza Arif

5 years ago5/27/2021

ISO 100K Dashboard

Get the transparency you need to manage ISO/NSO splits with the new ISO 100K dashboard in Carta.

Who this affects

All Carta customers can now access the dashboard under Compliance > ISO 100K.

What's new

The 100K rule for ISOs has been a historically opaque concept in Carta - customers and their legal counsel have often found it difficult to understand how the application of the rule results in the specific bifurcation of ISO vs NSO shares in a particular option grant.

The new ISO 100K dashboard brings a new level of transparency to the way in which ISO options are bifurcated according to Carta's automatic application of the 100K rules. For specific transactions and amendments that fall outside the purview of Carta's automatic bifurcation estimates, customers and their legal counsel can request access to the dashboard's grant editor feature, which allows legal administrators to change the ISO/NSO split estimated by Carta.

Last thing to mention: we worked closely with Orrick (one of Carta's law firm partners) to make sure we were solving this problem in a way that allowed our law firm partners to better support our customers. You can read more about that here on Carta's blog.

Timing

Available now to all Carta customers.

Vince Lo

5 years ago5/25/2021

Support Partially Realized Investments

This past week we released added granularity to the Investments, Overview and Firm Overview Tracking bars for investments. The in-app tracking bars will now show

Timing: Rolled out to funds using our Fund Administration services on May 21, 2021.

Audience: General Partners, CFOs, Investment teams.

Jordan Agnew

5 years ago5/19/2021

Preview and and manage compensation plans

With the new Plans page, you can now craft and manage your compensation plan to meet the needs of a changing workforce. With Plans you can:

  1. Review your active plan or create a new plan.
  2. Edit and preview draft plans.
  3. View your plan history.

Before making modifications to your plan, preview will allow you to see how a change in peer group, band ranges, or location strategy could impact your employees' compensation targets.

Availability

David Lichtenstein

5 years ago5/11/2021

Partners' capital status included in exports

This past week we've added partners' capital status to the partners export. We know keeping tracking this is important for funds and can be a pain to do manually. Our Partners' exports on Carta now included the following information:

These updates apply to both the fund level and 'All Partners' export. We've added the following columns to the partners export.

Where to find: Log in to Carta > Select a fund within your investment firm > Navigate to the Partners tab > Select 'Export partners'

Timing: Rolled out to funds using our Fund Administration services on April 30, 2021.

Audience: General Partners, CFOs, Investment teams.

Jordan Agnew

5 years ago5/10/2021

Building your compensation plan is easy with Carta Total Comp

Streamline your compensation processes and compensate with confidence on Carta Total Comp.

Whats new?

Easily build, manage and apply your compensation strategy across your entire employee base taking both geography and custom compensation bands into account.

To adjust your Plan settings, click on the Details link on the top left of the Scorecard page.

Geo Adjustment

You can now choose either Local or Uniform to choose the right approach for your fully remote, hybrid or in-office working arrangement.

Compensation Bands

The compensation bands settings enables you to customize the width of your company's target bands for each track. Defaults are 15% for Individual Contributors (IC), 20% for Managers, and 25% for Executives.

Availability

David Lichtenstein

5 years ago5/3/2021

Reconcile Stakeholder Updates

Announcing a new feature to manage Stakeholder Updates

Carta cap table admins can now see the updates that stakeholders make in their portfolio. Admins can easily review and approve these changes made by stakeholders to update the information in the company Stakeholders ledger.

Why is this important?

The most up to date information on a stakeholder can reside in an HRIS system, Payroll system, with an employee or in Carta.

Now, stakeholder updates brings each of these sources of information together, better enabling administrators to decide what information to store and use in Carta through the reconciliation tool.

What’s new?

When stakeholders update their address, contact email, or other info in their Carta portfolio, the new ‘From portfolio’ tab under ‘Stakeholder updates’ will surface these changes and allow the admin to quickly choose which updates to reflect in the company stakeholder ledger.

Navigate to stakeholder updates from the Stakeholder tab in the navigation

Quickly identify discrepancies across systems and choose which information to store on the ledger

Details:

For more detail on making Stakeholder Updates, please find more information here.

If you are interested in setting up an HR or Payroll integration, learn more here.

Who this is available to

All Carta cap table customers

Jessica Ray

5 years ago4/27/2021

Make better compensation decisions faster

Carta Total Comp

Carta cap table customers can now access our benchmarking and planning platform to streamline their compensation processes and compensate with confidence.

What’s new?

Workflow tools built on top of the world’s largest equity data set and powerful HR integrations to help you make better compensation decisions faster. Carta Total Comp customers are now able to access the following compensation benchmarking and planning features:

Get a pulse on your org through your company Scorecard tab

Benchmark any role in the Bands tab

Availability

Additional Resources

David Lichtenstein

5 years ago4/26/2021

Fund performance metrics on Carta

We know how important Carta is in helping fund managers manage and track the performance of their funds. This month we've add a host of new features to help fund managers get and understand the metrics they need about their funds.

Here's whats new:

1. New fund performance page

Example of new Fund Performance page:

Example of traceback of TVPI metric as of 12/31/2020:

2. New Excel export:

We've added a new export on the page that includes all the metrics and details about the underlying data.

3. Support for parallel entities:

We've also added support for parallel entities (or fund families). You will be able to see all the above features at a consolidated level.

Where to find: Log in to Carta > Select a fund within your investment firm > Select the Fund performance tab

Timing: Rolled out to funds using our Fund Administration services on April 16, 2021.

Audience: General Partners, CFOs, Investment teams, Limited Partners.

Jordan Agnew

5 years ago4/20/2021

Deal Documents on Carta

Fund managers are flooded with troves of documents for every investment their fund's make. These documents house vital terms that need to be quickly referenced during deal negotiations and potential exits to answer questions like- Who has blocking rights? Keeping these documents organized and easily accessible is also key to running a stress free audit that institutional LPs can have confidence in.

What’s New

For our early access group, funds using the Carta General Ledger can now see their deal documents directly on their realtime SOI. For each portfolio company, easily access documents by asset including both new investments and the supporting documentation for subsequent valuation updates.

How it works

1. Work with the Carta team to capture all deal documents

2. Click through any asset on the realtime SOI

3. See all associated deal documents and valuation support

4. View or download the actual documents to verify any needed terms.

5. Have your Carta Fund Administrator grant your auditor access to the Carta General Ledger so they can access any documentation/support the same way.

Stay tuned as we roll this out to a bigger audience and introduce more tools to make keeping track of deal terms across a portfolio even easier. Reach out to your account manager if you would like to be considered for early access.

Timing: Rolled out to Carta Fund Administration early access clients April 2021

Audience: CFO's , Fund Managers,Auditors , General Partners

Alex Legault

5 years ago4/19/2021

Carta’s public company reporting experience has been updated

What’s changing?

The public reporting experience has been enhanced and is now more consistent with Carta’s private markets reporting. Public company administrators can now more easily run reports in Carta.

Improvements include:

A Virtual Tour is available via the Start Virtual Tour link at the top left corner of the reporting experience. For a limited time, the legacy reporting page can be visited via the Take me Back button at the top of the page.

Who this affects

Public company administrators

Timing

This feature will be available on 4/19/2021.

Bryan Wells

5 years ago4/12/2021

Run a Single Report to Aggregate Security-Level Details by Stakeholder

What's changing?

Companies can now quickly get the information they need and reduce room for error through our new report builder template. This ‘stakeholder ledger’ enables admins to pull information on stakeholders, cap table, and vesting information in a single report.

Users no longer need to combine multiple reports or run offline calculations to view vested/unvested, forfeited, excised, cost center, employee ID, and relationship in one place.

To create a Stakeholder Aggregate report on Report Builder

Click ‘Create a custom report’ on the Capitalization > Reporting page, and select ‘Stakeholder ledger’.

This will open up the Report Builder interface. From here, you can select any of the available columns. Note that not all columns are available, as some cannot be aggregated at the stakeholder level.

What’s next?

During Q2 we will be adding additional columns, starting with fully diluted ownership. We will also be adding additional filtering options, starting with specific equity plans and share classes.

Alex Chen

5 years ago4/12/2021

Private Options International Exercise- Supporting 3rd party money transfer payments

Non-US optionholders at US private companies will now be able to send exercise payments to Carta from 3rd party money transfer providers such as Wise(formerly known as TransferWise), Revolut, Xoom, Remitly etc.

We are giving optionholders the flexibility to either send payments through 3rd party money transfer providers or through wires initiated from banking financial institution.

Who this affects:

Non-US optionholders at US companies, when international exercise via wire feature is enabled by their company

What was the problem:

When we launched the ability for optionholders to wire exercise funds to support in-app money movement, optionholders were hit with bank fees, including intermediary fees, which led to holders underfunding or overfunding their exercises.

Sometimes, optionholders had to walk to a bank to wire the exercise funds as some of the banking financial institutions did not support online wire transfer.

What’s new:

Optionholders can use the same payment instructions provided after an exercise is approved and send funds via 3rd party money transfer providers.

Ensure that under "Recipient gets"  in 3rd party money transfer providers you input exact USD funds required for exercise payments. If amount required for exercise does not match with received funds, exercise will be underfunded and we will require remaining funds to complete the exercise.

Once Carta receives exact funds, we initiate outgoing payment to the company. After payment to the Company is succeeded, we generate Certificate.

This feature is an additional payment option that Carta is providing for our customers

Timing:

LIVE for companies that have exercising and settled via Carta feature turned on.

If you would like to have this feature added, contact Carta support!

Aneetha Sampath

5 years ago4/2/2021

Vesting & Exercise Status Bars

Users viewing the "Vesting schedule" tab in the security details modal will now see a new column in the "Progress" section labeled "Status" under which progress bars appear next to each vesting tranche that indicate the vesting and/or exercise status for each vesting tranche.

Who this affects

All users in all companies with securities that have vesting schedules

What's new

For security holders and administrators viewing individual security details, click on the "Vesting schedule" tab to see the new status bars (see red boxes below):

Depending on the status of a security's vesting and exercise status, you'll see the following colors:

Previously, if there was an exercise for part of a vesting tranche, you'd either see the row colored in gray if the tranche was unvested, or you'd see the row colored in blue if the tranche was vested - this was confusing since neither of these results were technically accurate.

Now, if a vested tranche is partially exercised, you'll see the dark blue exercise color overlaid on the light blue vested color (show below). If an unvested tranche is partially exercised in the case of an early exercisable option grant, you'll see the dark blue exercise color overlaid on the gray unvested color.

Timing

Live now!

Vince Lo

5 years ago4/1/2021

Exercise History - Shareholders can now centrally view their complete exercise history

Users can now access their exercise history across their entire portfolio in one spot. This makes it easy to review their activities over a defined time frame - like a tax year!

Who this affects:

What's new:

Timing:

Where to find Exercise History

Gwynne Burgess

5 years ago3/29/2021

Stakeholders from public companies can now more easily view their share and cost basis information

Who this affects:

Public company stakeholders

What's new:

Public company stakeholder portfolios now feature share lot details and transaction details tabs, capturing information about shares that are held and shares that have been sold.

Share lot details tab:

The Share lot details tab shows the stakeholder’s share lots. Stakeholders can view their acquisition date and cost basis for all share lots, as well as the source of the shares. For share lots linked to ISO awards or employee stock purchase plans, this view shows a qualifying date capturing the earliest date that the share lot can be sold in a qualifying disposition. The FMV at acquisition is also captured in the table to facilitate tax analysis.

Transaction details:

The second tab features transaction details for any sold lots. Stakeholders can view their sold share lots and their related cost basis and acquisition dates. This view also shows the disposition type if the share lot is linked to an ISO exercise or ESPP purchase. The view captures the proceeds for each liquidated share lot.

Bryan Wells

5 years ago3/25/2021

Certificates of exercised option grants are now generated and issued after funds are confirmed

For private companies, Carta will now generate the resulting certificate after the option exercise funds are sent to the company and have succeeded (may take 1-2 business days).

Who this affects:

Private companies: Admins and shareholders

What was the problem:

Previously, resulting certificates were generated after Carta confirmed the funds from stakeholder, but before the funds were sent to the Company. This created reconciliation issues for the company as they could not verify if funds were sent to the company before issuing the certificate.

What’s new:

We have now updated the flow to generate the certificate after funds are sent to the company, which may take 1-2 business days for the company to receive the funds.

This will help Company admins to reconcile exercise funds received during the exercise workflow.

Aneetha Sampath

5 years ago3/19/2021

Automated partner matching for Schedule K-1 uploads

Sending K-1s to the right Limited Partners can be a manual, error-prone process. The new K-1 uploader helps ensure that every tax document goes to the right LP. When you upload your K-1s into Carta, our system will automatically match or suggest matches for LPs based upon name and tax ID.

Who this affects

LP Portal customers, Fund Admin customers

What’s new

We have released a new tool for LP Portal customers to easily upload Schedule K-1 tax documents. This is the same tool used by Carta’s internal fund administrators.

The tool scans each K-1 to look for partner names and tax IDs, and compares them to the names and tax IDs we have on file.

If a K-1 matches with exactly one partner, the tool will automatically assign it to that partner.

If the tool is unable to definitively assign a document to a partner, it will suggest potential matches for user review.

To access the K-1 uploader, visit the Partners tab. Under Documents, select Upload documents and choose Schedule K-1.

Timing : This feature was released March 3, 2021

Ives Chor

5 years ago3/4/2021

New Equity Reporting Page

Starting 3/22, clicking on the Reporting from the Capitalization dropdown will take you to the new Equity Reporting page.

The new page contains all the equity reports you're familiar with along with significant improvements to help you access data more quickly and in the manner that you need. You'll notice:

You'll be able to switch back to the classic reporting experience via the blue banner at the top of the new Equity Reporting page until 4/5/21.

For questions or comments, please email out to reports-feedback@carta.com

Alex Chen

5 years ago2/26/2021

Pre-filling Subscription Documents for Existing LPs

If you are an LP, you’ve felt the pain of filling out subscription documents. You go through the same long investor questionnaire with the same questions for every fund investment you make. With Carta subscription documents, now you don’t have to.

What’s New

Limited Partners who have already completed a subscription document on Carta can now re-use their information for future investments. They can add their subscription information in just a few clicks.

How it works

1. Limited Partners select the portfolio for the entity they are investing through

2. The form is pre-filled with information from their previous subscription. Any questions that are specific to this investment are highlighted for the Limited Partner to answer.

3. Limited partners review and confirm their information is correct.

Check out our Q1 product webinar recap blog post to see how simple the closings process will be.

Timing: Rolled out to Limited Partners on February 24, 2021

Audience: Limited Partners, General Partners

Ashley Chang

5 years ago2/26/2021

Biometrics Login on Mobile

To provide safe and easy access to our mobile users, we are introducing biometrics login on the Carta iOS and Android apps.

This update will make it easy for users to log in to the Carta app through the use of Touch ID or Face ID on supported iOS devices, and Facial or Fingerprint recognition on supported Android devices.

Note: Only biometrics login for a single account is supported at this time.

Sudeep Kumar

5 years ago2/26/2021

Stakeholders can now more easily review their shares and tax withholdings from RSU settlements

Stakeholders can now view details about their public RSU settlements in the RSU settlement history view.

Who this affects:

Public company stakeholders with RSU awards

What’s new:

From the portfolio view, stakeholders can navigate to each individual RSU grant and view a comprehensive settlement history:

The settlement history shows the settlement type, shares sold or withheld for taxes, and the net shares that the stakeholder receives.

Stakeholders can download a Settlement details report capturing the breakdown of their taxes related to the RSU settlement, asl well as shares sold or withheld for taxes:

Bryan Wells