What’s new

The new fundraising feature helps founders, working collaboratively with their law firm and investors, close a priced round end to end on Carta. It provides a workflow and centralized hub that facilitates administrative tasks related to closing a deal.

Founders and their law firm will have a dashboard that provides 

• real-time fundraising benchmarks
• a snapshot of the status of their round letting them run closings-related tasks such as generating signature paperwork, building pro formas and managing the round
• ability to track signature status, send reminders and view the wire status

Investors will also get their own convenient dashboard to view the deal timeline, sign paperwork, view deal docs and wire instructions.

And after you complete a priced round, we automatically update your startup’s cap table to reflect the new investment, and issue certificates to investors.

Why this matters

Today running a priced round is complex and incredibly manual. A deal is closed mostly offline using a mix of spreadsheets, emails, phone calls, and signature applications to complete the work. There are also a number of moving parts such as signature page drafting, collecting signature blocks, sending out documents and reminders to investors, collecting signature pages from convertibles, tracking, and updating status, confirming wires etc.  

It requires a great deal of manual work by the law firm, and lacks transparency for founders and investors. Not to mention the high cost of priced rounds for all parties involved.

How can I access it

You can access the Deal Closings feature by navigating to the “Raise funds” navigation menu item if you’re on Carta’s free plan. Or navigate to “Fundraise”-> “Priced rounds” navigation item if you’re a paid Carta customer. Read more on how to use this feature here

What’s new? 

Carta has released a new tender offer issuer dashboard for company administrators, exposing the most critical actions and information during periods when sellers are placing orders.

This dashboard highlights the following information:

• Aggregate sell orders placed relative to buyer demand: emphasizes situations where sell orders exceed quantities to be purchased and must be reduced algorithmically for settlement
• Rate at which eligible sellers across customizable stakeholder categories view the offering and place orders
• Sell orders placed over time, highlighting spikes in trade activity or large order cancellations
• Better organization and management of in app seller data

How do I use this tool?

Log into your Carta administrator account during an active tender offer order period and navigate to the Secondaries menu. Select an active tender offer event and you will land on the dashboard.

What’s next?

This release covers the issuer experience for the  period during tender offers when sellers can enter orders. In the near future, we are expanding this dashboard to provide an improved issuer experience both before a tender offer launches and after it closes:

• Pre launch: information and configuration experience prior to the start of a tender offer
• Post close: key transaction information and improved administrator experience

Questions?

If you have any questions about Carta liquidity, please contact us at company_coverage@carta.com

Data is critical for founders to make informed decisions when fundraising and hiring. We are now offering early stage founders benchmark insights on early stage rounds and first engineering and marketing hires. 

What’s new?

A centralized hub makes it easier for founders to access and interact with fundraising and hiring benchmarks.

Fundraise insights provides information on early stage SAFE and priced round market terms and how they compare to other companies in related stages, regions, and industries.

• Percentiles for company valuations over the last year
• Median cash raised per round over the last year
• Calculations of the dilution on your cap table based on market round terms

Hiring insights provides information on how much to pay early marketing and engineering hires.

• Option pool size across seed, Series A, and Series B companies
• Percentage of total company equity in initial 4-year grant
• Available for New York/San Francisco.
  
  *More job areas, levels, and locations are available on Carta Total Compensation

Why this matters:

These updates enable founders to navigate fundraising and hiring strategies with precision and insight. This resource enables founders to make data-driven decisions and strategically plan for their company's growth, optimize their fundraising strategies and ensure their hiring packages are competitive, setting their teams up for success.

How can I access it?

Market Insights is available on all Carta plans. Find it under Essentials>View market insights. For more information visit our support article.

What's new?

As part of our ongoing efforts to enhance accuracy and reliability, we have transitioned our Canceled and Returned report to Carta's Equity Reporting Suite service.

What does the new report offer?

• Consistent Date Formatting: All date columns are now displayed as MM/DD/YYYY for consistency across reports.
• Standardized Security ID Field: The "Security ID" field is now uniformly formatted across all new reports, facilitating easier reconciliation.
• Uniform Quantity Columns: All quantity-related columns, including "Quantity Issued," "Quantity Canceled," "Quantity Forfeited," "Quantity Repurchased," and "Quantity Transferred," are now displayed consistently to simplify reconciliation.
• Detailed Transaction Type Field: The new "Transaction Type" field replaces the old "Reason for Cancellation" field. This new field offers more detailed transaction discrimination and resolves previous issues with reconciling shares returning due to grant life expiration (now tracked under "Lifetime Ended"). It also tracks options canceled due to repricing.
• Termination Date: A new "Termination Date" field has been added to further streamline reconciliations.

How can I access it?

To access the new Canceled and Returned report, click on Run reports under Essentials or navigate to Cap table and select Run reports.

Where can I learn more?

For more information on Carta's equity reports, please refer to our dedicated support article.

Investors can now request access to their QSBS Attestation letter from portfolio companies using the QSBS product.

This feature allows you see which of your portfolio companies has received a QSBS Attestation by Carta, and allow you to request access to your QSBS Attestation letter for your eligible securities.

What do I need to do?

This feature is available to users who are admins for an investment firm on Carta. To find your QSBS eligible investments, visit your 'Investments' page and filter to the QSBS eligible investments.

If you have any questions reach out to your assigned Carta account team or qsbs@carta.com to learn more!

Starting today, Carta is enabling you to easily determine how much equity to grant employees and when to grant it via new tools such as the Hiring Planner, Refresh Grant Planner, and Equity Pool Forecast.

Only Carta can help you: 

• Minimize manual work using a single platform
• Take a proactive approach to thinking about impacts of equity grants on your equity pool
• Conduct accurate forecasting using integrated benchmarks from Carta Total Compensation

What’s new?

With our new suite of Employee management tools, administrators have access to four new features:

1. Manage Employees hub: See the tools, required steps, and resources to help you hire, manage and retain your team.
2. Hiring Planner: Add potential new hires to see recommended equity and cash compensation based on market data, and export plans to share with your team and investors.
3. Refresh Grant Planner: See which employees are completing vesting soon, and plan out refresh grants to tenured employees to help retain top performers
4. Equity Pool Forecast: Visualize your equity grants, hiring, and retention initiatives and their impact on your equity pool over time.

Who is this available for?

All Corporation founders and administrators who can view their company’s cap table.

How do I use it?

You can access these flows by going to your Carta account, and going to Manage Employees in the side navigation. From there, you can easily access all of the additional tools.

View a demo walkthrough of this feature.

Anything else I need to know? 

If there is anything you wish to see here, use the feedback form that will show up when you first visit the Manage employees page. If you have already responded and have additional feedback, or cannot find the form, you can reach out to your CSM or provide feedback via Carta Community.

We are making it easier for companies to keep cap tables up to date after a new round of investment.

What’s new?

Our new Share Class Manager can extract information from Incorporation Documents and Stock Purchase Agreements, saving company administrators time when issuing investor shares after fundraising.

Who is this available for? 

All company administrators can upload and extract data from Incorporation Documents. Administrators from companies reflecting their first priced round can upload and extract data from Preferred Round Stock Purchase Agreements.

Main Value Proposition

The new Share Class Manager powered by document extraction saves you time, money, and makes sure your cap table data matches the legal documents after a new round.

How do I use it?

1. Navigate to Securities, then Manage Share Classes
   
   
   
   
2. Click "Update Share Classes", then select "Add new filing date"
   
   
   
   
   
3. Upload documents, and wait on screen for the extraction
   
   
   
   
   
4. Review data and save

Anything else I need to know? 

Any company can upload incorporation documents and have new share class data automatically ready for review, but only companies on their first priced round can upload Purchase Agreements. 

Carta’s Financial Reporting  tools automatically generate the expense and minimum disclosure reports that auditors need so that you can easily comply with US GAAP and IFRS 2 accounting standards.

Early-stage companies now have a Financial Reporting product designed just for them. Standard Financial Reporting includes automatic expense tracking for equity spending and an audit package with all the supporting evidence and documentation auditors need for stock-based compensation (SBC) expense reporting. 

Features included:

• Automatic 409A valuations data ingestion

  • FMVs and Peers
• Annual reporting
• Audit package including SBC expense report, Minimum Disclosure report, and an audit guide detailing the assumptions we make and formulas we use
• Premier audit support
• Stock split support

Who is this available for?

Standard Financial Reporting is available to all Carta cap table customers, but specifically designed for early-stage companies preparing for their first few audits

Main Value Proposition

Automatically track your equity spending with Carta’s Standard Financial Reporting. Key benefits include:

1. Accurate, automated expense tracking: Tracks stock-based compensation expense, ensuring all cap table transactions are accounted for.
2. Time saved: Get your stock-based compensation (SBC) report, minimum disclosure report, and audit guide in 5-10 minutes, saving 1-2 weeks of manual calculations.
3. Compliance: Ensures compliance with the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) requirements for booking SBC expense upon first issuance.
4. Historical expense calculation: Provides a one-time adjustment for historical expenses in your financial books.
5. Simplified auditing: Download an audit package with all necessary documentation, ready to send to your auditor.

In just a few clicks, Carta’s tool manages your stock-based compensation expenses, making your audit process seamless and efficient.

How do I use it?

• Go to Compliance > Financial Reporting
• Before getting started, make sure your cap table is up-to-date with all historical transactions including issuances, terminations, and cancellations.
• Click “Get started” and enter your financial statement end date. Then click “Generate expense.”
• Wait a few minutes while we do the complex accounting for you.
• Once expense is done generating, book your inception expense as a one-time adjustment in your financial books.
• Book your first FY expense in your financial book.
• When it’s time for your audit, download your audit package and send it to your auditor.
• If there have been any backdated adjustments made to your cap table, you can recalculate your expense before downloading your audit package for the most updated value.

Anything else I need to know?

All questions can be answered through our Financial Reporting support team, contact them via email 718@carta.com

Financial Reporting is making an improvement to the way we pull in cap table data, achieving data consistency with the cap table products for vesting schedule tranche values.

What's new?

Previously, Financial Reporting used our own First-In First-Out (FIFO) allocation method to assign exercised quantities to ISO/NSO security type tranches. This method did not always match the cap table, as the logic slightly differed. In order to provide consistent data between cap table products, such as equity reporting, equity awards ledger, equity award details, and Financial Reporting, the Securities team created API services, specifically Vesting and Options for award and tranche level quantities. With Financial Reporting’s integration of the Vesting and Options API service, the tranche values displayed in Financial Reporting reports will be improved to match other Carta products, achieving data consistency. 

Who is this available for?

All Financial Reporting customers will benefit from this new method Financial Reporting will be using to achieve data consistency with cap table products and equity reporting. More specifically, companies with ISO/NSO security types will have matching tranche quantity allocations with their cap table!

Main Value Proposition

Fully rely on Financial Reporting for your equity roll forwards! With a few clicks, Financial Reporting will provide accurate equity roll forwards and stock-based compensation expense for your financial statements and audits. Carta’s products talk to one another, which means you can easily rely on Financial Reporting to have accurate tranche quantities that match our other products.

How do I use it

No action required on the customer side. Customers will just continue to generate their financial reporting periods and the reports will correct themselves without disrupting the opening and closing balance of prior reporting periods. 

Anything else I need to know?

If you have any questions or want to talk to an expert about this new change, reach out to 718@carta.com

What's new?

To improve reporting for cases where stakeholders have a smaller percentage of ownership, we have enhanced the Stakeholder Ownership Details report to display the full amount of decimal places under the "Fully Diluted Ownership %" and "Outstanding Ownership %" fields.

Why are we changing this?

Previously, the ownership percentages in the Stakeholder Ownership Details report were limited to two decimal places. For example, if a stakeholder owned 0.0135% of the company, the report would have shown 0.01%. This made a small difference for large holdings but could be more significant for smaller ones, like those of employees.

With this update, the report will now show the full ownership percentage including all decimal places, such as 0.0135%, ensuring greater precision in the reporting of individual stakeholder ownership.

How can I access it?

To access the Stakeholder Ownership Details report, navigate to Essentials > Run reports.

Where can I learn more?

For more information on Carta's equity reporting suite, refer to our dedicated support article.