What’s New

When a user’s bank account does not have sufficient funds to pay for the exercise via ACH, Carta will warn the user when reviewing the exercise. The user will have the option to change the selected bank account, lower the amount of options to exercise, or proceed with the exercise.

Additional improvements to the review exercise page better highlight key details of the exercise, reducing the need for scrolling. The UI also now explicitly states that the total represents a cost to the user.

Users choosing to proceed are then given a final message that an underfunded exercise may be canceled.

Who this affects

This feature is available to employees who have set up their ACH bank account on Carta through Plaid. 

How it works

Carta is using Plaid Balance to confirm the available balance of the associated bank account prior to submitting the exercise request. No account balance information is stored on Carta. This feature does not block users from submitting exercise requests, rather warns them about the potential risk of a canceled exercise.

What happens if the selected bank account doesn’t have enough money for the exercise? 
We now warn users that their account doesn’t seem to have enough money to cover the exercise cost. We allow them to proceed anyway, as they could potentially add funds to the account before Carta attempts to pull the funds. If it turns out there are insufficient funds, we will cancel the exercise.

How does Carta know how much money is in my bank account?
By connecting a bank account through Plaid, we can use Plaid’s APIs to retrieve real-time balance information at the time of the exercise request. Checking the accounts available balance represents the predicted balance net of any pending transactions. This type of information is often used to protect against overdrafts and non-sufficient funds fees. For more information on Plaid Balance, see here.

What if I manually connected my bank account?
Users can always connect their bank accounts manually instead of using Plaid. For these users we cannot know their available balance and they will not receive any warnings about insufficient funds.

Timing

• 12/21/2022 - Released to 25% of users, with general availability by the end of January

How do I learn more or get help?

Visit Carta Support for more details on Exercising Using ACH and Setting Up Your Bank Account

Who This Affects

Users without a verified secondary email address

What’s New

Additional emails are required to assist users with providing a secondary login credential in case access to their primary email address is lost. As part of our efforts to improve our clients' account security, we are updating the process of adding and verifying your additional email address. 

As part of this release, we will be notifying all users without a verified additional email address to add or verify the email they have listed. This subset of users will be receiving an email notification, as well as an outstanding task in their Carta account’s task manager. 

Timing

• This update is available to 25% of randomly selected Carta users
• General availability for all users by the end of Q2

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

• iOS (Android coming soon)

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:

• Total number of shares held
• Total holdings value
• Net holdings value

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.

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

• iOS & Android

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:

• Total number of options held, number of options vested and exercised 
• A vesting progress bar comparing the number of vested and exercised options to the total options granted
• Summary of securities displaying types and quantities for each held

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

• Option exercises, including the effect of any shares sold to cover option cost and taxes
• RSU settlements, including any shares sold or withheld to cover taxes
• Shares sold
• Shares transferred in to Carta
• Shares transferred out from Carta

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

• ESPP purchases
• Sale of ESPP stock
• ESPP shares transferred in
• ESPP Shares transferred out

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:

• Option cashless sale or hold transactions facilitated by outside brokers (where shares are sold or held outside of Carta)
• Option exercises where shares are delivered or held outside of Carta
• RSU settlements where shares are sold or held by outside brokers

Who can use this?

All public company stakeholders

Timing:

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

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.

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:

• Shareholders who have exercised a private company option grant

What's new:

• Find all exercise details in one location - Within Exercise History you can see a report of all your exercises across your entire portfolio. This makes it easier to get an at-a-glance view of your exercises activity.
  
   
• Filter for specific companies or date range - Narrow your report by company or date range to customize your report.
  
  
  
  
  
• Customize your report - Choose which fields are relevant for a given report.
  
  
  
  
• Export your report - Download and view your report in a portable CSV format.
  
  
  
  
  

Timing:

• Released March 2021
• Support for all public company exercises coming Q2 2021

Where to find Exercise History

• When viewing your portfolio, select the Account drop down menu to find Exercise History
  
  

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.

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: