Carta Release Notes - Product Updates

3 years ago10/31/2022

Tagging portfolio companies within firm investment view

What’s new?

We’ve improved our investment tagging feature so you can easily categorize, filter, and view your investments by industry, geography, and more.

Investment tagging allows you to enter any custom category attached to your portfolio companies so you can personalize the information on the Investments tab of your fund dashboard. Plus, you can now easily view the performance of your investments based on category.

How it works

Category refers to the classification, like industry, while tag refers to the type of classification, like fintech.

To apply a new tag, edit an existing tag, or create a new category, navigate to your Overview tab, then click Investments. Select “+” next to the investment you’d like to personalize.

To add a new category or a new tag (not already in the dropdown), click Manage All Tags & Categories.

To add a new category, select the dropdown next to Categories and click + Add New. Enter the category, and select Add new tag category. To remove a category, select the category from the drop down, and then click Delete category.

Investment Tagging: Adding new or deleting a category

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Investment Tagging: Adding new or deleting a category

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To add a new tag within a category, enter the tag in the box labeled tag name and click Add tag. To remove a tag, select the trash can symbol next to the tag.

Investment Tagging: Adding new or deleting a tag

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Investment Tagging: Adding new or deleting a tag

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To edit a tag for an existing category, select the dropdown next to the tag, then select the new tag you’d like to apply to that investment.

Investment Tagging: Editing an existing tag

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Investment Tagging: Editing an existing tag

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To add an additional tag or category to your investment (the tag and category must already exist in the dropdown), select + Add Another Tag. To delete an additional tag or category, select - to the right of the tag.

Investment Tagging: Adding or deleting an additional tag

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Investment Tagging: Adding or deleting an additional tag

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Once your new category or tags are entered, click Submit. You will now see a more detailed view of your investments. To filter by category, select Filter, enter the filtering condition, and select Apply Filters.

Who this effects

Anyone utilizing Carta’s fund administration, LP Portal, Portfolio Insights and free firm portfolio can access this feature.

Kali Borkoski

3 years ago10/31/2022

Communication Center (Public Markets)

What's new?

Public company administrators can now utilize the brand new Communication Center to send secure communications to stakeholders in the company’s equity plan managed on Carta. This feature allows public companies to create and send timely communications to equity plan members in bulk. Recipients can be selected by relationship type and other filters to further customize the message’s distribution list. In addition, the Communication Center dashboard allows company administrators to view sent and drafted messages, and see which stakeholders have viewed a communication.

Examples of communications include, but are not limited to: instructions on how stakeholders can manage their equity at Carta, employee stock purchase plan (ESPP) offerings, upcoming trading windows, and updated disclosures.

How does this work?

Permissioned company administrators may access the Communication Center. Before sending any messages, company administrators should check that the company’s Stakeholder Ledger is up-to-date to ensure messages are sent to the correct individuals. At minimum, an individual’s Relationship, Contact Email, and Officer Code (if applicable) should be updated.

Once these steps are completed, company administrators can proceed to the Communication Center dashboard (found under the Employee tab of the main navigation toolbar).

Here, company administrators with Company Editor or Legal Administrator roles can compose, review, and send secure messages with or without PDF attachments. They can also filter for previously sent and drafted messages.

When choosing who to send a communication to, the Company Editor or Legal Administrator may send bulk messages by Relationship Type (e.g., Employee, Ex-Employee, Advisor), and then also filter recipient lists by Officer Code, Trading Restrictions, the employee stock purchasing plan (ESPP) an individual is a member of and associated status, or the outstanding security type(s) held by each stakeholder.

Company administrators will have the opportunity to review the communication, save it as a draft, remove individuals as needed, and reconfirm the recipients before sending the message.

After sending the message, stakeholders will receive an email notification that they received the secure message. They must log in to their Carta accounts to view the message, and messages on the Carta platform may not be forwarded to an external email account.

Company administrators who can view the Communication Center dashboard can monitor which stakeholders have viewed the communication.

Send secure messages and archive them safely in a centralized location with Carta’s Communication Center.

The Communication Center allows public company administrators to:

Start using the Communication Center now!

Need help with the Communication Center? Refer to this support article for detailed instructions on how to manage, view, and send out your next secure message.

Carly Perera

3 years ago10/28/2022

SEC Rule 144 Affiliate Workflow Updates (Public Markets)

What’s new?

Carta improved how public company administrators can manage and designate equity plan stakeholders as Rule 144 Affiliates. Designating stakeholders as Affiliates ensures that their trade orders get reviewed before execution through a separate SEC Rule 144 due diligence workflow and that those trades are properly captured for Form 144 inclusion. Company administrators can also now easily access and review a filtered list of Rule 144 Affiliates from their Company Summary page.

The management of Rule 144 Affiliate status has been separated from the Officer Code workflow to simplify this process and to ensure trading blackout periods for stakeholders with certain Officer Code(s) will not be impacted by one’s Rule 144 Affiliate status.

How does it work?

Company administrators can update Rule 144 Affiliate status by clicking on “Manage Employees” on the Company Summary page.

From there, administrators can click on each stakeholder’s record and view their current Rule 144 Affiliate status. Administrators can also track the Effective Date of when a stakeholder was first marked as an Affiliate without leveraging Officer Codes.

To designate an individual as a Rule 144 Affiliate, administrators can check the box within the Update Stakeholder flow:

For enhanced security, Carta put controls in place to prevent stakeholders from inadvertently being removed as an Affiliate. Please contact Carta Support to help remove a stakeholder’s Rule 144 Affiliate status.

Easily manage, review, and designate public equity plan stakeholders as Rule 144 Affiliates to ensure trading compliance via an improved workflow.

With the improved Rule 144 Affiliate workflow, company administrators can:

Start using the improved Rule 144 Affiliate status workflow now!

Do you want to update Rule 144 Affiliate status for individual stakeholders or in bulk? Refer to this support article for more information.

Bryan Wells

3 years ago10/26/2022

Optional Sections in Carta Closings

What’s new?

With Optional Sections, a new feature of Carta Closings, fund managers now have the ability to further customize their LPs subscription experience.

Create an even faster closings experience for your investors.

Our Optional Sections feature allows you to hide sections of Carta’s Standard Investor Questionnaire, such as Qualified Purchaser (QP) or Qualified Client (QC), that may not be relevant to your fund or SPV. You can also disable, make optional, or require LPs to provide their wire instructions for future distributions as part of their subscription.

How does it work?

1. On the Closings tab, select Closings Details.  Then, scroll down to Customize Sections.

2. From here, you can make your selections to hide, require, or make optional the  wiring instructions, qualified purchaser, and qualified client sections. Then click Save.

How do I learn more?

To learn more about this feature, please reach out to your account manager.

Have additional questions about Carta Closings? Check out our fund manager resource and LP support article, or request a demo.

Spencer Holton

3 years ago10/26/2022

Updated Scorecard for Total Cash Compensation

What’s new?

Carta has updated the Scorecard to feature total cash compensation targets and compa-ratios for all employees within the sales job area. These targets will leverage the total cash benchmarks in combination with the parameters defined in your Plan. These changes will be reflected in both the company and employee scorecard.

How do I enable total cash compensation targets on the Employee Scorecard?

In order to access the new total cash functionality on the Employee Scorecard the employee must be within the Sales job area, total cash targets will be displayed for these employees regardless if they have been assigned variable compensation. For more information about assigning variable compensation checkout the following support article.

How do I access total cash compensation on the Scorecard?

Carta added the following columns to the Scorecard:

  1. Total Cash
  2. Total Cash Target
  3. Total Cash Ratio

These columns are hidden by default but can be enabled by:

  1. Navigating to the Scorecard and selecting the column dropdown.

  2. Select the “Total Cash” options that you’d like to include from the dropdown.

What’s next?

Carta Total Compensation is working to refresh our salary benchmarks in order to reflect the current labor market.

Jeffrey Glusman

3 years ago10/25/2022

Introducing financial reporting custom properties

What's new?

Custom properties are now available in Carta Financial Reporting. Custom properties are a simple way to classify and organize your Stock-based Compensation (SBC) Expense and Minimum Disclosures reports.

What’s important or valuable about this change?

If a custom property field is populated for a stakeholder, there will be a column in the Tranches tab of the SBC Expense and Minimum Disclosures reports allowing users to allocate expense to individual properties.

What do I need to do?

If custom properties are already created for individual stakeholders, users will just need to run a new reporting period in Financial Reporting to see the property columns populate.

If the user has not yet added custom properties for stakeholders, the columns will not populate. To add custom properties, visit this support article.

How do I learn more or get help?

For additional support on this, contact 718@carta.com

Samantha Widman

3 years ago10/24/2022

Custom Questions in Carta Closings

What’s new?

We understand the questions fund managers need answered by their LPs can vary depending on the entity. With Custom Questions, a new feature of Carta Closings, fund managers and fund attorneys now have the ability to customize their LPs subscription experience, ensuring no question goes unanswered.

If Carta’s standard Investor Questionnaire doesn’t cover everything you or your attorney needs answered by LPs while closing your fund or SPV, Custom Questions gives you the ability to easily add additional questions to our questionnaire.

How does it work?

1. On the Closings tab, select Closings Documents, then click Edit Appendix.

2. You’ll be directed to a Get Started screen with two options:

Option 1: Enter questions from scratch

If you have not previously added questions to another entity, you’ll start here. For each question added, you can designate whether the question be answered by all LPs, just individuals, or just entities.

Option 2: Copy Questions from another fund / SPV

If you have previously added questions to another entity, there’s no need to enter these questions again. Click Start copying and select which questions you’d like to copy to your current fund or SPV.

3. Enter your question and then select how the answer should be provided by your LP (short text input, yes or no, etc.)  There’s no limit to how many questions you can add, or what you want to ask of your LPs.

Carta Closings: Custom Questions

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Carta Closings: Custom Questions

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4. Once your questions are entered you can  preview how they will appear in Carta’s investor questionnaire. After a final review, click Submit.

Carta Closings: Custom Questions

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Carta Closings: Custom Questions

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How do I learn more?

To learn more about this feature, please reach out to your account manager.

Spencer Holton

3 years ago10/12/2022

Issuer Transaction Dashboard (Capital Markets)

What's new?

Issuers running a secondary transaction, such as a tender offer, through Carta Liquidity on the CartaX ATS can now access on demand real-time seller participation data during a live transaction via the Issuer Transaction Dashboard (“Dashboard”).

How does it work?

Issuers can access their brokerage account online and click on their live transaction, where they will see their Dashboard. The “Participation overview” tab includes three key sections:

The table and charts on this page will update in real-time during the live transaction.

The “Transaction overview” tab of the Dashboard will be accessible at the close of the offering period and provides a summary of the transaction, including a breakdown of deposits made into the Issuer’s brokerage account. Issuers will be able to access and download their Trade Confirmation and Transaction Summary reports here as well.

Save time and gain real-time transaction and participation data on demand with the Issuer Transaction Dashboard

The Issuer Transaction Dashboard will:

Reach out to Carta to get the process started

Do you want to run a tender offer or other private secondary transaction with a fully-integrated cap table experience? Reach out to Carta Liquidity’s Corporate Coverage team at company_coverage@cartacapitalmarkets.com to figure out the best path towards liquidity.

Disclaimer: Carta, through its wholly owned broker-dealer subsidiary, Carta Capital Markets, LLC, offers a streamlined experience for executing pre-negotiated stock transfers, tender offers, and other secondary liquidity transactions. Carta Capital Markets, LLC is a member of FINRA/SIPC.

Ashley Haber

3 years ago10/11/2022

Introducing the ability to adjust vesting end dates

What's new?

You can now adjust the time-based vesting end dates in custom vesting plan templates.

What's important or valuable about this change?

When creating a new custom vesting plan template, you have the flexibility to customize whether vesting occurs on the same day of the month as the start date (no adjustment), on the first day of the month, or on the last day of the month.

With this new capability, you can customize time-based vesting schedules to set up more vesting clauses and align vesting dates so interests vest on the same day.

What do I need to do?

When creating a new custom vesting plan template, you can find the end date adjustment option in the Time-based vesting section. You can choose between no adjustment, last day of month, or first day of month.

How do I learn more or get help?

For more information on managing vesting templates, please visit our support site.

Des Duggan

3 years ago10/11/2022

New search bar in the Document Library

What's new?

You can now search for documents in the Document Library.

What's important or valuable about this change?

The new search bar allows you to quickly search the library for documents you’ve uploaded, such as acceptance agreements and K-1s. This is especially useful if you have a large volume of documents saved in the library.

What do I need to do?

The search bar has been automatically added to your Document Library:

You can also search for documents when adding them to an interest or interest type:

How do I learn more or get help?

For more information on document management, please visit our support site.

Des Duggan

3 years ago10/5/2022

Securely store and share documents in Data Rooms

We’ve introduced a few updates to Data Rooms to provide you with a secure and streamlined way to upload and share documents from within Carta.

Centralize document storage and sharing workflows in Carta

With the new sharing capability, you can:

Get started

Admins can manage Data Rooms by navigating to the Documents tab.

Click “Create data room.”

Name your Data Room. Additional settings that will allow you to watermark PDF files and require NDAs are coming soon.

Upload documents into the Data Room and organize them in folders.

You can share data rooms by clicking the Manage data rooms button and then Manage sharing.

Share Data Rooms  with others using their email address. You can also see who you’ve already shared the Data Room with.

People you share Data Rooms with will receive an email from Carta inviting them to log-in to their Carta account or create an account to view the Data Room.

For more information on Data Rooms, please visit our support site.

Des Duggan

3 years ago10/3/2022

In-app Management Fee Approval

Approve Management Fees in App

What's new?

You can now review and approve management fees directly from your Carta account. When it’s time to review your management fees for a select period, you will receive an email with a link, as well as a task in Carta, that will take you right to the calculations for review.

What’s important or valuable about this change?

The new feature will make it easier for you to review and approve management fees without having to email your Fund Administrator.

What do I need to do?

a) Select "Review and approve management fees" from the email sent to you by Carta (you will receive this email before the start of every quarter - contact your Fund Admin if you have any questions or concerns.

b) Or go to “Notifications” on the sidebar, under the fund you’d like to review management fees for, and click on the task that says "Review Management Fees".

Select Continue to progress through the workflow.

Review your quarterly management fees, and select the expand button on the table to see a breakdown of fees across investors, as well as which investors are new or have side letters.

If your fund admin sent a separate file with the fee schedule, you will see a link to the document that will open in a new tab

a) If the fees and the fee breakdown look correct, select "Approve Fees".

b) If the fees and/or the fee breakdown look incorrect, select “Request Changes”, specify the changes you’d like to request, and upload a supplementary document, if necessary, before submitting.

If you choose to approve fees, select which transfer option best suits you

Once submitted, you will see a confirmation

If you have any additional questions, please contact your fund administrator or account manager.

Patrick Driscoll

3 years ago9/30/2022

Introducing revamped Financial Reporting

What's new?

We launched our revamped Financial Reporting tool. The tool will now allow Carta users to apply cancellation treatments without having to upload an excel sheet.

What’s important or valuable about this change?

We made significant UI and UX improvements. Users can select, drag, and drop to apply cancellation treatments to multiple awards at once. Additionally,  users can apply cancellation treatments to all canceled awards, regardless of the reporting period run.

You will still be able to access the same information, including:

What do I need to do?

You can access Financial Reporting directly from your Carta account. Simply go to the Compliance tab and select Financial Reporting. You can apply cancellation treatments after you’ve run a report.

How do I learn more or get help?

You can read more about cancellation treatments here or contact our support team.

Samantha Widman

3 years ago9/29/2022

Audit Support Document Dashboard

Audit Support Document Dashboard Update

What's new?

Today we’re launching our internal audit support tracker. The Carta Fund Administration team can track which documents are missing for audit purposes. This helps our team provide a smoother end-of-year experience.

What’s important or valuable about this change?

This will streamline how you engage with your fund admin team, especially as the end of year approaches.

Currently we are able to track documents including:

Your fund administration team can also track partner documents, alerting you to anything that is missing when appropriate.

What do I need to do?

Continue to submit documents throughout the year. Our fund administration team will alert you if anything is missing, using this new feature.

Patrick Driscoll

3 years ago9/26/2022

Total Cash Compensation Benchmarks for Sales

What’s new?

Carta will now provide total cash compensation benchmarks for the Sales job area. Total cash compensation is defined as base salary plus target variable compensation. 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile data are accessible on the Bands page. In developing total cash compensation benchmarks we made minor adjustments to base salary benchmarks for the Sales job area. No other benchmarks have changed in this update.

How do I see total cash compensation benchmarks for the Sales job area?

You can view Total Cash Compensation benchmarks for the Sales job area by:

  1. Visiting the Bands page and selecting “Sales” under Area.

  2. Select “Total Cash” for compensation type.

  3. This will allow you to view total cash compensation bands for levels 1 - 11 for the Sales job area.

How do I update my plan to use the new benchmarks version?

You can update your compensation plan to use the latest benchmark versions either by:

  1. Visiting the Plan page and clicking on the "Update available" link in the Active Plan window.

  2. Navigating to the Bands page and clicking on the "Update" bubble in the top left.

You will have the opportunity to preview the new plan with the updated benchmarks version and assess their impact on your scorecard before accepting the new plan.

What’s next?

We will be updating the company and employee scorecards to reflect the addition of total cash compensation benchmarks

Jeffrey Glusman

3 years ago9/21/2022

Sell Long Shares on Mobile (Public Market)

What's new?

Employees of public companies supported by Carta can now sell their fully vested common shares issued pursuant to their stock equity plans from anywhere via the Carta mobile app. This release is supported for both iOS and Android mobile phones.

How does this work?

Carta now brings the ability to sell public common shares on mobile. Public employees can now easily:

Employees can now manage and sell their public company shares from anywhere via the Carta mobile app

This mobile release helps employees:

How do I learn more or get help?

For detailed instructions on how to place sell orders via the mobile app, please refer to these support articles for iOS and Android devices.

Notes:

\* Market data quotes are delayed (not real time) and should be used for indicative purposes and not necessarily for trading.

Brokerage services provided by Carta Securities, LLC, a member of FINRA and SIPC, and subsidiary of Carta.

Eric Morelli

3 years ago9/12/2022

Variable Programs in Carta Total Comp is now available

What's new?

Variable Compensation Programs

We’re excited to share that Variable Compensation Programs is now available to all users.

Bring your bonus programs into your Total Compensation workflow

Eliminate your manual bonus processes, create better alignment amongst your sales organization, and ensure compliance by entering your commission and bonus programs into your compensation plan within Carta Total Comp.

Maintain your bottom line with a well-organized variable comp program

Variable Compensation Programs adds to our compensation management capabilities. With VCP you can:

How do I create a Variable Compensation Program?

You can get started with VCP in seconds by:

  1. Navigate to the Plan page.

  2. Variable Compensation Programs can be found on the bottom half of the page.

  3. Click Create variable compensation program  to be guided through the process of creating your first variable compensation program.

How do I learn more or get help?

Visit the resource center for more details

Variable Compensation Programs (VCPs)

Have additional questions about VCP? Reach out to your Account Manager or contact our Support Team.

Jeffrey Glusman

3 years ago9/6/2022

Introducing Luxembourg SPVs

What's new?

You can now fund the next global deal from anywhere in the world.

We are introducing Luxembourg SPVs by Vauban from Carta—the easiest and most cost-effective way to launch an SPV in Europe. Following the release the first fully digital Luxembourg venture fund product, we’ve expanded our offering to service SPVs.

Our end-to-end platform handles everything from SPV formation and banking to LP onboarding and administration.

How it works?

Login to the Vauban Platform to your universe to create a new deal.

Click on + New Deal in the top right-hand corner.

Step 2:

Choose Luxembourg as your SPV Jurisdiction!

Step 3:

Set up your SPVs by providing the necessary information. We take care of the legal generation, banking, investor onboarding, and closing.

Raise internationally Luxembourg SPVs are built for international investors. Fund global deals and onboard LPs across 72 countries and 135 currencies.

Reduce costs Luxembourg is home to venture capital and private equity in Europe, but the costs of setting up an SPV can be as high as $300,000. With Vauban from Carta, you can spin up an SPV for a fraction of the cost.

Save time Our end-to-end platform allows you to skip the time-consuming regulatory and legal demands of raising in Europe. This will enable you to focus on finding unicorns and building your investor base.

What do I need to do?

To learn more about Luxembourg SPVs, click here.

If you’re interested in setting up a Luxembourg SPV, please reach out to hello@vauban.io.

Seif Salama

3 years ago9/6/2022

Introducing Session Types for Tax Advisory

What's new

Employees who have access to Carta Tax Advisory through their employer may now choose from up to four different tax advisory session types. This aims to provide transparency and flexibility so you can have the conversation that's right for you.

Who this affects

US-based employees subscribed to Carta Tax Advisory through their employer

How it works

Scheduling a session

Log in to your  Carta employee account, navigate to the Tax advice tab.

From there, click on "Book a free session" to browse different session types.

Once you're on the session type selection page, you'll see a brief outline on how to schedule and a selection of three to four different session types.

Select the session type that's right for you and click "Schedule free session" to book a time with a tax advisor.

If you're not quite sure where to start, we recommend starting with the "Understand equity basics" session type to learn about your equity and taxes at a high level.

Note: The "Discuss tender offer participation" session type only appears if your company is currently undergoing a tender offer.

Preparing for a session

Session types: Discuss tender offer participation | Create tax scenarios

Once you've scheduled a time to speak with a tax advisor, you'll be prompted to upload a few documents. Tax advisors will create personalized tax scenarios using this information so you can have the most accurate tax picture.

If you don't have these documents on hand now, you can skip this step for later. However, you must upload documents at least 24 hours before your session so advisors have enough time to prepare.

After uploading your documents, you're ready for your session.

You'll receive a calendar invite with a zoom link to attend your session at your scheduled time. You can also see this information in your tax advice tab in Carta, with the option to reschedule or cancel using the "View details" button.

Session types: Ask a quick question | Understand equity basics

Once you've scheduled a time to speak with a tax advisor, there's nothing else you need to prepare ahead of your session.

3 years ago9/6/2022

Commitment Increases in Carta Closings

What’s new?

Fund managers using Carta Closings can now easily increase their LP’s commitments directly in the Carta platform.

We made closings even easier for you and your investors

Save time by using our new, standard template that allows you to quickly execute a commitment increase for an LP who has subscribed to your Fund or SPV. Simply enter the details of the commitment change, sign, and share with you LP.

How does it work?

1. On the Partners tab, select the LP whose commitment or contribution you would like to increase.

Commitment Increase: Step 1

2. Enter the information required on our template:

Then, review and sign the document that reflects the adjustment to the commitment amount.

Commitment Increase: Step 2

3. Last, your LP will receive an email notification that the document is ready for their review and signature. They can easily e-sign the document using their LP Portal.

Commitment Increase: Step 3

After the LP signs, the commitment increase is automatically booked in the Carta platform. Plus, Carta will share the countersigned documents with all parties.

Carta makes this standard template available to all fund administration and SPV customers. You must first check with your counsel to ensure this template is suitable for your needs, and that you understand the legal and regulatory implications of increasing an LPs commitment amount prior to using this feature.

How do I learn more?

To learn more about this feature, please reach out to your account manager.

Spencer Holton

3 years ago9/1/2022

Redesigned 409A Acceptance Flow

What’s new?

We have redesigned the way you review and accept your 409A valuation on Carta. This new design presents you first with a quick summary of the analysis along with a note from your analyst letting you know the next steps in finalizing your fair market value (FMV). Once you have reviewed the report, if you have any questions you can contact our team of valuation experts through the support module in the valuation review portal. Lastly, receive board approval from within or outside of Carta to finalize the current FMV on your account.

How it Works

Once you receive an email notifying you that your valuation is ready for review, you can follow the link within that email to access the 409A ledger where you are able to review and download your valuation. Alternatively, you can navigate to the page within Carta at Compliance > 409A Valuation.

Review your valuation

From the 409A Ledger, once you select ‘Review 409A report’ you will be directed to the valuation review portal. Here you will find an overview of the analysis performed and the concluded FMV along with a note from your valuation analyst informing you of next steps and noting any details within the report that warrant extra attention. Once you have reviewed the analyst’s note and valuation summary, you can download the full report or access the support module from the valuation review portal to access support articles or get in touch with our team of valuation experts.

Get board approval

Now that you have reviewed the valuation, the next step is to send it to your board for review. You can do so using the board consent feature within your Carta account to easily track acceptance from each board member within the Carta platform. Once all board members have submitted their board approval through the platform, your valuation will automatically be accepted on Carta. If you got approval outside of Carta, that’s great too, simply select ‘My board has approved’ to accept the valuation to finalize the current FMV in your account. Once finalized, the new FMV will be visible to your option holders on Carta.

Stephanie Wittrock

3 years ago8/30/2022

Offer Letter BETA is now available

What's new?

Offer Letter is now available in BETA

Carta Offer Letter is a fully interactive offer statement that communicates the full picture of a job offer—from salary to equity, benefits, and work culture. Everything a candidate needs to evaluate their next career move.

Communicate the potential value of your equity to candidates

Carta Offer Letter will showcase your company's brand and culture, accurately reflecting each relevant job detail while concisely educating the full value of your candidate's total compensation package.

With Offer Letter, you can:

Make it easy for candidates to picture the future

Allow candidates to explore their potential total compensation over time with powerful, interactive scenario modeling tools.

Fast track your job offer process

Quickly write, extend, approve, and send your offer process with a complete administrative workflow.

Share your company's unique vision

Make winning offers using a customized letter elevating your brand, ensuring compliance, and driving higher acceptance rates.

What do I need to do?

Activate Offer Letters with a few clicks

In Carta Total Comp, navigate to the Offer Letters page, then click Start to begin sending offers.

How do I learn more or get help?

Visit the below support center articles for more details:

Setup Offer Letters

Create an Offer Letter

Candidate experience

Have more questions about Offer Letter? Reach out to your Account Manager or contact our Support Staff for further details.

Quynton Johnson

3 years ago8/25/2022

New Hire Onboarding for Tax Advisory

What's new

New hire onboarding allows new hires to access their Carta account before they receive and accept their equity grant. By creating a stakeholder record for the employee, employees receive an email to register for a Carta account. This grants them access to Carta Tax Advisory.

If you do not add new hires they will need to wait to accept their equity grant in order to access Carta resources, which can take several months to approve and issue.

New employees often have questions about their equity as soon as they join a company, Carta Tax Advisory gives them access to dedicated 1:1 support from equity tax experts from day 1 to help them understand their equity packages.

Who does this affect?

Companies subscribed to Carta Tax Advisory

US-based employees (new hires) at companies subscribed to Carta Tax Advisory

How can I give new hires access to their Carta account?

Important notes before starting:

  1. The new hire onboarding process only applies to companies subscribed to Carta Tax Advisory.
  2. Tax advisory sessions are only available to US citizens or residents
  3. Adding an employee into Carta as a stakeholder provides them access to Carta services like Carta Tax Advisory. Ensure you only add employees you intend to issue equity to.

The Stakeholder ledger allows users with Company editor or Legal administrator permissions to view and modify information for a person that holds multiple securities across the company

Navigate to Stakeholders > All Stakeholders

Under the Manage Stakeholders drop-down, admins can add stakeholders individually or in bulk

Individually add stakeholders

Select “Add stakeholder” in the Manage stakeholders dropdown list

A modal will appear requesting information about the stakeholder

Required fields:

Tax ID, Employee ID, Payroll ID, and other address fields can be input as available, but are not required before equity grant issuance

Bulk add stakeholders

Select Bulk add stakeholders from the Manage stakeholders dropdown

Download the template spreadsheet to import stakeholders’ information, save, and upload the modified file. Carta will run a check on the data entered before saving the changes

Note: Admins should not add new columns or move columns in this sheet. They must use the template as is

Required columns:

After the updated xslx sheet is uploaded, click “Submit changes” and a confirmation modal will appear

Confirm to complete stakeholder creation

3 years ago8/22/2022

Revenue Procedure 2002-50 (Company Tax and Compliance)

What's new?

Carta has made it easier for private companies running a tender offer to invoke IRS Revenue Procedure 2002-50, which is applicable to certain transactions involving the exercise of options and sale of the resulting securities during a transaction on the same day. This procedure allows for the exclusion of those same day option sales from Form 1099-B reporting if certain conditions are met. For example, this may apply to cashless exercised options in connection with a secondary transaction on Carta where there is no capital gain (Sale Price = Fair Market Value).

How does it work?

To make a Revenue Procedure 2002-50 election on an applicable transaction, company administrators may request an Officer Certificate template from Carta to complete and get signed by a Company Officer who has the authority to make decisions on the tax treatment of cashless exercises in a tender offer.

Fig 1: Sample of an Officer Certificate

__

The completed form can then be returned to Carta, who will then trigger the Revenue Procedure.

Any employee whose transactions on Carta were excluded from 1099-B reporting as a result of Revenue Procedure 2002-50 will, if applicable, receive a supplemental Disclosure Statement detailing the fees and gross proceeds on cashless exercises of options so they can complete their Form 8949 reporting. Compensatory income from cashless exercises is reported as ordinary income on the W-2.

This statement will be delivered electronically by February 15th of the following year in the same manner as all other tax documents on Carta. No such statement will be generated if the employee was not charged any fees by Carta.

Fig 2: Sample of IRS Revenue Procedure 2002-50 Disclosure Statement

The company administrator can also generate a new report of all the Disclosure Statements issued after the transaction. The Revenue Procedure Disclosure Statements Report will assist in auditing transactions ahead of the tax season to ensure completeness and accuracy for tax filing purposes. The report can be found under your Reports section in Carta.

Fig 3: Sample of Disclosure Statements Report

Make tax reporting easier for same-day option exercises and sales during a tender offer by invoking Revenue Procedure 2002-50

The Revenue Procedure feature will:

Reach out to Carta to get the process started

Is your company running a tender offer? If so, the Revenue Procedure 2002-50 will be enabled on the platform after returning a completed and signed Officer Certificate to Carta. Companies who ran a tender offer previously in 2022 can retroactively upload the appropriate Officer Certificate to benefit from this feature until the end of 2022. Please contact your CSM or Liquidity representative for more information.

Vibhu Mahajan

3 years ago8/15/2022

IT Job Area & Refreshed Salary Benchmarks

What’s new?

IT Job Area

Carta will now provide salary and equity benchmarks for the IT job area. Target salary and  equity benchmarks for the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles are accessible on the Bands page. Additionally, compa-ratios will be provided to all employees who are assigned to the IT job area.

How do I see benchmarks for the IT job area?

You can view benchmarks for the IT job area by:

  1. Visiting the Bands page and selecting “IT” under Area.
  2. This will allow you to view salary/equity bands for levels 1 - 8 for the IT job area.

How do benchmarks for the IT job area affect the Employee Scorecard?

The compa-ratio is a quick way to compare an employee's compensation to your plan's target rate for a given job area, level, and location. The compa-ratios for an employee assigned to the IT job area will now be calculated using the target compensation for IT.

Benchmarks version 2022-08-15

What changes can I expect from these benchmarks?

Benchmark changes in this release reflect a labor market that continues to see increased salaries, though potentially slowing from what we observed earlier this year across a number of job areas. While most data points moved within +/-3% versus April benchmarks, those that are decreasing by statistically significant amounts are those with either Low or Medium sample sizes.

What were the largest areas of movement from these benchmarks?

With this benchmark update we observed larger than expected movement across a few job areas, driven largely by market dynamics but also changes in our underlying sample. Many of the decreases we observed continue to be in lower valuation ranges, generally concentrated in valuations of less than $25M. We observed significant decreases in the benchmark for Support Level 1 roles across most peer groups, driven in large part by companies re-mapping employees in this role to other job areas/levels. While the underlying sample for this role has changed significantly, the updated benchmark is more recent and fits our model better than the previous version. The increases in benchmarks that we observed are more evenly distributed across peer groups and levels.

Looking by job area, we saw the largest average increases (ranging from 4% - 5%) and decreases (1%-2%) in the following job areas:

Increases:

Decreases:

How do I update my plan to use the new benchmarks version?

You can update your compensation plan to use the latest benchmark versions either by:

  1. Visiting the Plan page and clicking on the "Update available" link in the Active Plan window.

  2. Navigating to the Bands page and clicking on the "Update" bubble in the top left.

What’s next?

Carta Total Compensation is working updates and improvements to our equity benchmarks in order to reflect the current labor market.

Jeffrey Glusman

3 years ago8/9/2022

Introducing the ability to transfer interests

Admins can now easily transfer interests from one holder to another in the event of a secondary transaction or sale of shares.

Transfer interests and maintain a record of the transaction

When transferring an interest, you’ll need to input the recipient, date of transfer, price, quantity, reason, and add any acceptance documents and additional fields for issuing the new interest. Only outstanding and vested units can be transferred to other interest holders.

Once an interest transfer is completed, your cap table is automatically updated and transfer events are appended to the interest history so there is a clear record of the transaction.

Get started

Start an interest transfer by selecting items on the Interests and Interest Types page, then clicking the Actions button. Only full-administrative users can transfer interests. For more information, visit our support site.

Des Duggan

3 years ago8/9/2022

New 409A dashboard with a valuation ledger

The new dashboard provides you visibility into valuations completed by Carta, the board, or investors.

Streamline valuations and audits

The new dashboard streamlines valuations and audits by allowing you to:

Get started

Admins can find the new dashboard under the Valuations tab. For more information, visit our support site.

Des Duggan

3 years ago8/9/2022

Waterfall modeling enhancements

You can now include any option grants in the waterfall and customize vesting conditions.

Easily model future scenarios with more options for waterfall modeling

When running a waterfall, Rights and Preferences now include option grants so that they can participate in the waterfall and you can determine their payout. Option grants participate in the waterfall based on their strike price or per unit threshold value.

Additionally, you can now set the exit date when running a waterfall and choose a vesting treatment to either include all interests fully vested or only vested quantities as of exit date. Setting an exit date in the future and choosing the vesting treatment allows you to more accurately model future scenarios.

Get Started

You can find these enhancements under the Valuations tab > Exit modeling. For more information, visit our support site.

Des Duggan

3 years ago8/5/2022

Updated Form 3921 Dashboard with Consolidated 3921 Statements (Company Tax & Compliance)

What's new?

After reviewing customer feedback, Carta made several user experience enhancements in the Form 3921 dashboard.

Carta now aggregates individual Form 3921’s for ISO exercises into consolidated statements for ease of use. Individual Copy B’s are still available to download if required. These statements will be available in participant portfolios when companies generate their 3921’s.

The enhanced user experience also allows company stock administrators to download the Manage Stakeholder Details report to review all stakeholder records at once instead of in a paginated view within the Administrator Experience. Companies with 50+ stakeholders now have enhanced filter and sorting capabilities (e.g, select one or multiple years to download the Stakeholder details ledger) to better analyze historical data.

There is a new tab for “Exclude Transactions” for further flexibility if company administrators need to suppress reporting on individual option exercises.

How does it work?

The new Form 3921 Dashboard is available now to all companies subscribed to this feature.

Reach out to Carta to get the process started

Reach out to your CSM to enable Form 3921 reporting if you are interested in upgrading your subscription. Public Market companies will have this enabled by default.

Vibhu Mahajan

3 years ago8/5/2022

Participant Trade Readiness (Public Markets)

What's new?

Before Carta cap table customers take their companies public, they can allow their employees (or Participants) to begin preparing themselves to sell their hard-earned company equity using the Participant Trade Readiness (PTR) feature. This feature allows the Participants to ensure they have the proper permissions in place to sell company shares as soon as a company’s lockup period ends.

The PTR feature is a 3-step process which allows Participants to upload important personal, contact, and tax information as well as documentation required to verify their identities under current Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) requirements.

How does this work?

Companies can request Carta to enable this feature for their Participants. Once enabled, employees will see a banner at the top of their Carta account profiles with clear instructions for required tasks, a checklist, and success messages as they proceed through the process. Participants will be asked to:

Once all three steps are complete, the Participant will see a success message confirming they have finished all required tasks. Participants are now ready to trade once your company’s lockup period ends, which could be as soon as Day 1 of your IPO if your company elects to have an early lockup release.

Allow your employees to get trade ready ahead of going public

The PTR feature:

Overall, the process of taking your company public is an exciting and busy time for both you and your employees. Previously, employees did not find out they were unable to trade shares due to missing documents and signatures until after the IPO date - resulting in potentially delayed trading ability for several weeks. The PTR feature avoids these issues by streamlining collection of information well before the IPO date - guiding employees on all actions they need to take every step of the way.

Reach out to Carta to get the process started

Are you preparing to go public? Reach out to Carta’s public markets team ( carta.public@carta.com) to begin planning your IPO journey.

The Participant Trade Readiness feature can be enabled by getting in contact with Carta at the email above.

Carly Perera

3 years ago8/4/2022

Valuation Updates for SAFEs and Convertible Notes In-App

What's new?

Valuation Updates: Easily mark up or down SAFEs or convertible notes!

What’s important or valuable about this change?

We've expanded the capabilities of our valuation update flows to enable clients, where appropriate, to mark up or down SAFEs or convertible notes. We created an addition to the flow which highlights audit and other considerations clients should have when marking up or down convertible assets, and given them the ability to complete this when applicable for their use case.

What do I need to do?

Check out a step by step guide on updating your valuations in-app here.

Here is a summary of how it works:

  1. Login to Carta, navigate to investments, and click “Update Valuation”
  2. Add a new share price or holding value (the full value of your investment in the asset) for each investment you want to mark up/down
  3. Optional: submit any supporting documents like cap tables/purchase agreements
  4. Carta will check your input for accuracy and automatically post successful changes to your SOI, IRR, and financials. Otherwise, we will review the update first and reach out as needed.

As a reminder, here is a walkthrough of in-app valuation updates:

  1. Log into Carta and navigate to the fund with the investment that you want to update.
  2. Go to the Investments tab on the top navigation bar and select the Update Valuation option in the top right side of the page.
  3. Select the portfolio company (or companies) for which you want to update the asset values.

Note: Convertible assets are not able to be selected for marking up or down. For common questions about types of valuation updates, see this FAQ in the Valuations 101 support article, highlighted below,

  1. For each investment, specify the new price per share. For assets without shares, specify the new total holding value. You can observe the change in gain or loss based on the new value.
  2. Value per share vs total holdings value: Assets that have shares can be marked up or down by share price, or by total value of the asset. These include preferred and common equity.

Assets that do not have shares and change in value can be marked up by total holdings value. These include Partnership interest and membership interest. Reach out to your fund administrator if you have a specialty asset type and need assistance. 2. Document support: Supporting documentation is strongly encouraged, but may be added later by emailing your fund administrator. Stock Purchase Agreement is preferred, however any documentation from the company that indicates the new value/value per share and is credible should be included otherwise for your FA to review. For unaudited funds, a screenshot of an email from the founder, for example, can also be provided for review, in absence of other documentation. 2. Next, confirm which funds you want to apply this valuation update to. All funds in your firm that hold the portfolio company will be listed. In most cases, all funds should be selected. 3. You will repeat steps 4 and 5 for each portfolio investment you selected to update. 4. On the final review screen, confirm all the updates you made for each investment. Click Back to revise, or Submit if everything looks correct. 5. After submitting, Carta will automatically check that the update is within reasonable range. If it passes, the changes will show immediately on the investment tab. If further review is required, a task will be generated for your fund administration team. If they need more information, they will reach out directly within 3-4 business days.

Additional Resources:

FAQs for Updating Valuations

Patrick Driscoll

3 years ago8/4/2022

IFRS GA Release - Financial Reporting

What’s new

Companies using our newest version of the financial reporting tool can now report stock based compensation expense following International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).

This release of our IFRS reporting includes:

1. Tranche based valuations

2. FIN28 amortization

3. Correct relationship valuation methodology (differs from US GAAP)

4. Stakeholder country field added to reports

5. Disclosures

6. Stock-based compensation expense journal entry

7. Report error validations specific to IFRS reporting

Later releases will include:

1. In-app custom assumption overrides

2. Forfeiture rate by grouping

How it works

When going to create a new expense scenario, there is now an additional step where users can select which reporting standard they want that scenario to follow. Users have the ability to create multiple scenarios to support both IFRS and US GAAP.

Once the scenario is created users can create both SBC expense reports and disclosure reports that follow the standard and give supporting calculations.

Who this affects

Private and public companies using our newest financial reporting tool.

Jess Carthey

3 years ago8/2/2022

Carta Closings

What’s New

We revamped the entire limited partner (LP) experience of our closings product. Built with the feedback of the 20,000 LPs who have already closed on Carta, we’re excited to release Carta Closings, providing LPs the quickest and easiest way to subscribe to a Fund or SPV.

How it Works

Carta Closings guides LPs through the subscription process and ensures that all LPs, from first-time investors to experienced institutions, have a smooth experience.

Improvements include:

A Shorter & Smarter Questionnaire

A typical investor questionnaire contains dozens of questions, most of which are irrelevant to a majority of LPs. We reduced the time your LPs will spend on subscription documents by building a smarter workflow that adds or subtracts questions based on LPs responses to previous questions.

Guided Support

Investor questionnaires can contain legal and industry terms that are confusing to some LPs. Now, LPs will see a dynamic in-app sidebar that defines these terms and provides answers to frequently asked questions throughout the questionnaire.

Pre-Filled Investor Questionnaire

Once an LP fills out Carta’s Investor Questionnaire, their information is saved and will be auto-populated for all subsequent entities they subscribe to. This allows returning LPs to subscribe to new entities in seconds.

Additional improvements:

See how it works:

Carta: Closings for LPs

Who this affects

Carta Closings is an optional, free product available to all fund administration clients raising new funds or SPVs.

More Resources

Support Article for LPs

Support Article for Fund Managers Request a Demo

Spencer Holton

3 years ago8/2/2022

Cash Balances in App

Whats new?

Plaid, SVB, FRB, & Brex Cash Balances are now available in app!

We are now pulling in daily cash balances for Direct Connect (SVB, FRB), Brex, and Plaid users!

Who this affects

All customers that have relationships with Plaid, SVB, FRB, and Brex.

What's important about this change?

Cash balances help our clients answer critical questions like “Do I have enough cash on hand to invest $1M into Solana today?”

They will also be used across our application to power health checks and workflows. In the near term, we’re working on automating invoice collection and creating treasury tickets. Using cash balance, we can get ahead of problems where the fund might be unaware they don’t have enough cash on hand to pay the expense.

What do I need to do?

Ready to check your cash balances in app? It is automatically updated in your General Ledger

Patrick Driscoll

3 years ago7/25/2022

Payment Status Updates

What’s New

The Payment Status Updates on the Exercising workflow provides users a more accurate reflection of the status of their exercise during the money movement step of the exercise. Error messaging will now provide a single failure message clarifying what caused their exercise to become stuck during the money movement step of the exercise including errors around cancelation requests, bank account removal, and insufficient funds in the bank account.

Who this affects

All users exercising for private companies on Carta.

How it works

Today, users can view the status of their exercises in progress on the Holdings page and with the new Payment Status Update feature, these exercises will now display an ‘Error’ bubble beside the active step when the exercise gets stuck. Clicking the ‘View details’ button will navigate the user to the Exercise tab on the Option grant modal with user instructions to help resolve their stuck exercise.

On the Exercise tab, error messaging will provide user action to contact their company admin through the Option grant modal’s Report Issue tab, to contact Carta Support through the chat, or update their bank account information on the Payment Information page.

3 years ago7/22/2022

Revamped Employee Onboarding Experience on Mobile

Employees can now experience the new onboarding process on the Carta mobile app.

Who this affects

Employees who have been issued option grants (ISO/NSO) or Restricted Stock Units and are registering with Carta for the first time.

Supported Platforms

iOS and Android

What's New?

To allow employees to prepare themselves for transaction such as exercising, employees will be able to provide the following information upon onboarding:

What's Next?

We will be capturing phone number upon the next update

Namira Wicaksana

4 years ago7/13/2022

Introducing the ability to retract interests

Admins can now retract any interests that were issued incorrectly.

Ensure accuracy when issuing interests

Mistakes can happen when issuing interests, like inputting the incorrect contact information or interest details for the holder.

Now, if you have already issued the interest but the holder has not accepted it yet, you can retract the interest. Retracting the interest revokes the holder’s task to accept it and changes the holder sharing status to ‘unshared’ so that you can make any corrections.

Get started

If you need to retract an interest, go to the interests ledger on the Interests & Interest Types page. Then, select the dropdown on the right side of the ledger for a single interest. Once you’ve made any corrections, be sure to re-share the interest with the holder as this does not happen automatically.

For more information, visit our support site.

Des Duggan

4 years ago7/13/2022

New Acceptance Agreements tab

Admins can now easily add acceptance agreements before sharing the interest with the holder.

Easily manage acceptance agreements

It is now easier and more clear to add and gain visibility into acceptance agreements on interests. In the new Acceptance Agreements tab in an interest’s details, you can now select from the documents you’ve uploaded the ones you want the interest holder to sign when accepting the interest. Moving acceptance agreements into their own tab also makes it clear which documents a holder agreed to, or will agree to, during the acceptance of an interest.

Get started

You can continue to upload files to the Documents tab. In the Acceptance Agreements tab, select from the uploaded documents the ones you want to add to the interest so that it is presented to the holder during the acceptance process.

For more information, visit our support site.

Des Duggan

4 years ago7/13/2022

New account dashboard page

The new account dashboard page provides an overview of all entities in one place.

Gain visibility across multiple entities

The new dashboard page provides a view into each entity and the recent activities so that you can always keep a pulse on what’s happening with interests across entities. Quickly learn more about recent activities by clicking into them.

Get started

Login to Carta to see the new account dashboard page.

Des Duggan

4 years ago7/13/2022

Enhanced interest history

We’re excited to introduce enhancements to interest history which provide admins with a complete record of acceptance text, agreements, and signatures.

Streamline audits with a complete interest history

Admins can now access a detailed snapshot of the moment an Interest Holder accepts an interest , which includes:

Get started

Find these enhancements in the Interest History tab. For audits, export the interest to PDF by clicking “View as single page” from the interest detail. For more information, visit our support site.

Des Duggan