As a CFO, your cap table probably isn’t something you worry about on a daily basis—but you must get this record in line long before you need to rely on it.
A cap table is the document which describes who has equity within your company. It’s essential to have a central log of the co-founders, investors and employees who own your business, and under what terms, in order to take important financial decisions.
Cap table management software helps you get this record in order, so that this legal info is less overwhelming when you don’t need it—and actually possible to find when you do. Here’s our picks for some of the best options out there, and which kind of businesses might benefit from them.
Do I need cap table management software?
Like almost every financial process in business operations, if you were incredibly organized, you could manage your cap table with just a spreadsheet. After all, a cap table is just a record of your legal agreements—in theory, a huge excel doc could handle it.
The trouble is that your cap table will change in complex ways as you assign equity to new investors or stock options to staff members. If you’re planning to scale your business, it makes no sense to hire a lawyer every time you need to issue share option grants in line with local regulatory requirements.
What’s more, a tidy cap table can help you raise funds, since it’s reassuring to investors to see that you’ve got your ducks in line, in a single source of truth.
This document will become extremely important when your company makes it, IPOs or gets sold—and if there’s several spreadsheets floating around, you may need to pay thousands to get a lawyer to reconcile them.
What’s more, most cap table management software also includes features to help you issue stock options to employees, which can help you retain talent and encourage your team to work their hardest.
In summation, if you’re a bootstrapped business with no plans to take on investors or grant equity to staff members, then no—you probably don’t need cap table management software. However, if you’re a startup with ambitions to scale then yes, a cap management tool would be a sensible investment in your company’s financial operations.
What does cap table management software do?
Cap table management software can help you:
- Error-proof your calculations—when your company is divided between more and more shareholders, calculating equity dilution can get complex and shares can get lost due to rounding errors. Software reduces mistakes from manual calculations.
- Ensure compliance—by keeping you maintain accurate records, and stay up-to-date with local regulatory requirements. They can also help you get your paperwork ready if you’re planning to IPO.
- Streamline legal support—many platforms will pre-fill necessary legal documents with your details. Some even offer access to legal support via the platform itself.
- Automate admin related to your cap table—such as handling ownership documentation for shareholders.
- Guarantee a source of truth for your cap table—so there are no discrepancies or disagreements when it comes to liquidation.
- Fundraise faster—having a clear view of ownership percentages and voting power within the company helps potential investors feel your business is transparent and trustworthy.
The best cap table management software: 5 leading options
With those benefits in mind, here’s our rundown of some of the best cap management tools available, who they’re suitable for, and why they might be right for your business.
1. Ledgy
Founded in 2017, Ledgy manages cap tables for thousands of companies, including well-known startups like Tide, BeReal and Qonto. It offers:
- A digital version of your cap table—and every transaction that pertains to it, including issuances, valuations and stock splittings.
- A scenario modeling tool—to help you see what, say, a future funding round or liquidity event might do to the value of your company.
- A stakeholder engagement feature—which allows you to show a version of Ledgy’s investor dashboard with key stakeholders, so your investors can see performance metrics.
- Well developed features for companies to offer stock options—Ledgy really excels for companies who wish to offer stock options to their employees. It allows you to issue grant types to employees in bulk, and whilst meeting the legal requirements of whichever country they are in. The ‘employee engagement’ feature allows your employees to see updated information about their potential returns.
Cost: 0$ up to 25 stakeholders, 3$ per stakeholder per month for up to 50 stakeholders, or more stakeholders and pricing on request.
Regions it serves: global
Best for: Those who want to issue employee equity to international teams, and know the compliance is taken care of.
USP: “The best employee dashboard on the market: use equity to inspire and motivate your team.”
2. Carta
Carta seems to be the most feature-rich and prestigious cap table management software, with over 40k customers including leading companies like Calendly, Plum and Trustpilot. It offers:
- A digital cap table feature—which allows you to track, manage and update equity distribution among stakeholders, issue new shares, change ownership percentages, and optimize equity for fundraising rounds.
- The option to get a growth share valuation in the platform—you can request a valuation from their in-house experts in 3 to 5 days. In fact, they claim to be the world’s leading provider of 409A valuations. Depending on which membership tier you’re on, a certain number of valuations will be included in your plan, which could equate to a significant saving for startups who require this service.
- Scenario modeling tools—Carta provides reports on what financing rounds and exit events could look like for your company, including waterfall tiers, liquidation charts, stakeholder proceeds, and dilution modeling.
- A tool for forming and administering SPVs (special purpose vehicles)—If your company is of the size where you’re looking to create a subsidiary to offset financial risk, then Carta can streamline the admin. Its tools can help you deploy your SPV in 48 hours.
- A feature for setting up an Enterprise Management Incentives (EMIs) share plan–if you wish to grant equity to employees, Carta can offer you customisable template documents to help. It can also generate region-specific compliance documents.
Cost: Available on request
Regions it serves: Global
Best for: Companies in the finance, healthcare and HR industries. Large and international companies. Scaleups looking to raise funds. VC funds.
USP: The most robust and feature-rich cap table management tool.
3. Vestd
Vestd is a cap table management platform specifically designed for the needs of UK-based companies, who must share up-to-date equity information with Companies House, the UK government’s central registry of business’ equity and financial operations. The platform offers:
- A digital cap table tool—which will be updated automatically whenever any share capital activity takes place on Vestd.
- Scenario modeling tools—Vestd provides calculators on what your share capital might look like if scenarios like investment rounds and option grants take place. There’s also the option to upload your share movement history to make predictions more accurate.
- Everything you need to streamline all admin related to Companies House—directly updates information in the UK’s central business registry. They also offer support to help you incorporate a new company, create share classes and add directors, and send this information to Companies House on your behalf. Finally, Vestd can help you with all things related to confirmation statements, creating them, storing them and sharing with Companies House.
Cost: from £500 a year for zero-value companies who just want to figure out co-founder equity splits and prenups, to £3,900+ a year for fast-growing companies who need cap table reviews, multiple valuations and the ability to add unlimited shareholders.
Regions it serves: UK
Best for: SMEs based in the UK
USP: The only platform that pulls data from Companies House—if you’re purely based in the UK, this looks to be a compliance life hack. Cheaper than the industry average for cap table management.
4. Astrella
Astrella is a dedicated cap table management tool under the Equiniti group. It can provide:
- A digital cap table—which is entirely customizable. Unlike many competitor tools, there’s the option to add your own branding to your cap table. Their solution offers everything you need to prepare for 409A valuations, which, if you’re a startup, will happen regularly.
- Scenario modeling tools— Astrella can help show what exit modeling, waterfall distributions and next round information might look like for your business. Whilst other tools use software to calculate probable outcomes, Astrella’s calculations are validated by an external US accounting firm.
- White glove service—it seems that Astrella’s product is less off-the-shelf and more centered around implementation managers who offer financial consultancy.
- Automate note taking at board meetings—-as a nice side perk, Astrella provides a feature called BoardNotes which can take minutes at your board meetings, which is a regulatory requirement in many places.
Cost: Their lower tier is $5 per stakeholder, per month (with discounts when you hit more than 25 stakeholders). Their Pro tier is $10 per stakeholder, per month (with discounts when you hit more than 25 stakeholders).
Regions it serves: Mostly US-based, but also GDPR compliant and has sales offices in UK and Israel
Best for: Those who want to be walked through their cap management systems by a human.
USP: “Full, in-person training provided according to your schedule.”
5. Pulley
Trusted by 3000+ startups, Pulley is an award-winning cap table management platform for companies based in the US.
- A digital cap table—for getting real-time visibility into who owns what in your company. You’ll get a dashboard that can be customized with different views, so that employees and investors see what they need to see.
- Fundraising modeling tool—you can accurately model out complex funding rounds, and see the ownership and numbers of shares of each founder, employee, current investor, and future investors, so you can understand how much you will own.
- Tool to get a 409A valuation in five days or less—which can be an advantage if you’re a startup and need to do this often.
- Features to manage employee equity—send out offer letters to employees, calculate the exact value of what they’re owed and allow employees to electronically exercise options via ACH.
- Account manager to onboard you—in 7 to 10 days, supported by AI to streamline the work of uploading all your documents.
Cost: On request, but as a guide a team of 40 would pay $3,500 in their first year.
Regions it serves: US
Best for: US-based startups from seed to scale.
USP: “The fastest-growing cap table management software”
Hats off to the best cap table tools
It’s a cop-out answer, but it’s true: the best cap table management software for your business depends on your needs.
Cap table management feeds into a lot of financial operations—legal compliance, employee equity, valuations—so most platforms offer other features too. When deciding which tool is the best fit, it’s worth also considering which services adjacent to your cap table you might make use of.
Most cap table management tools are quite reluctant to disclose how much their service costs, preferring to provide case-by-case quotes. To understand the price of this service, you’ll have to hop on some sales calls.
If you’re worried about overpaying, Cledara can help. Our software spend benchmarks feature reveals exclusive data about what other companies of a similar size to you pay for a particular software tool. Get started for free and learn what you should be paying.
