Cap table management services

Make sure your cap table starts right - and stays right.

Cap table management services from CFOs who live and breathe startups and scaleups.

We see A LOT of cap tables. Our role as startup finance specialists and acting as fractional CFOs raising capital means we can safely tell you that a mindblowing 90% of them are wrong – or at the very least inconsistent.

Our cap table management services are aimed at giving you peace of mind to make sure your cap table is right.

Let’s take a look at where you may be missing the links to maintain accurate information, and remember – we’re here to help.

We’ve included more information below, but in summary, our cap table management services are:

Review

$1,000

For up to 10 shareholders

$2,000

For up to 50 shareholders

Update

~$1,000 - $3,000

(estimate subject to review)

Maintain

From

$5/stakeholder/mth for 1-9 stakeholders

See below for more

Advise

We’ll quote you

Note: If you need us to do ASIC updates, we’ll need to be your ASIC agent for $20/month

Where is your share/option information?

90% sounds huge, but when you have a think about it, it’s really not surprising. Because there are typically 4 (yep, count ’em) places that you might see share or option information.

Cake Equity or other cap table management platform: don’t get us wrong – we use and love them – with their shareholder and employee communication tools, management of option vesting schedules, and increasingly sophisticated cap table modelling tools, they’re genuinely awesome – as long as the information in them is right and agrees with these ⤵️

ASIC (Australia) or Companies House (UK): shows your shareholding (but not note or options), and is generally seen as the source of truth by lawyers if you’re looking at any capital raising or M&A activity.
Spreadsheets: software platforms and PDFs from the regulators are fine, but there’s not a single deal that happens without your cap table being shared in spreadsheet form. (The ‘trick’ if you’re using a cap table management platform is to make sure it’s up to date there first, and then export it).
Accounting system: what has been received in terms of cash? You definitely recorded these correctly as equity or liabilities…right?

If you’re sure you’ve cross-checked all of the above and they’re consistent, you’re in the 10% category and your job is done. Nice. However, if you’re not in that certain (and maybe slightly smug) group, then we can help, and rest assured it won’t be at lawyer’s rates.

Our offerings: review, update, maintain

The last thing you want is for an inconsistent cap table derailing a deal after all the hard work you’ve put in. Taking the time to look over your cap table is a wise choice, and will give you real peace of mind later on. Standard Ledger’s cap table management services are more akin to financial and corporate secretarial services (see below), along with our fees – and please note, that we are not lawyers.

While all due care is taken to extract any necessary information from any legal documentation you provide, you or your lawyer should review any work completed for accuracy. We reserve the right for additional charges where additional queries or rework is required.

Here's what we’ll do:

Review:

One-off review of your cap table/s (Cake Equity, ASIC, spreadsheets, Xero)
ASIC is always regarded as the primary source of truth for shares issued by lawyers in any transaction, and we will compare your ASIC records to any/all of the following:
Your Cake Equity cap table management platform
Any cap table spreadsheet you have
Any cash-related equity or convertible/SAFE note transactions recorded in Xero
Any board approvals regarding the establishment of an option plan

We will provide you with a report that summarises our ﬁndings and any anomalies about shares, notes and options, along with recommendations for any required actions. We will also provide an estimate of our fees to make any corrections on your behalf if you would like us to complete this work.

To do this we require access to your ASIC records, Cake, Xero, and any cap table spreadsheets you have, as well as any supporting legal documentation for shares, notes or options.

We quote and in most cases will charge a fixed amount of $1,000+GST for our piece of mind cap table review, for up to 20 shareholders and $2,000 for up to 50 shareholders.

Where the information provided and/or the effort required for the review is deemed unusual, we reserve the right to provide a quote for any excessive work required.

Update:

We will ﬁx any inconsistencies that arise from the one-off review, including any or all of:

Updating ASIC for any share issues or corrections
Updating Cake for shares, convertible/SAFE notes or options: our preference is to update Cake as the source of truth, and then extract that information into a spreadsheet (if you’re not yet at the stage of using Cake Equity, we can update any cap table spreadsheet you may be using)
Correcting Xero for the $ amounts received, and treatment as share equity or liabilities

As you can see there are a few inter-related factors that may need to be updated which can make it hard to provide a deﬁnitive ﬁxed price here, so to provide a rough guide we think about this in a few ways: if we’ve conducted a review for you, we’ll provide you with an estimate for the work required. Alternatively, if you or your lawyer provide clear instructions (often in spreadsheet or document form) on the updates required, then we can make those changes.

Fees for straightforward updates are as follows:

Updating ASIC $50/shareholder change: we’ll include updating Cake at the same time if you’re using that
Updating Cake $30/change: for share, note or option change where separate changes are advised (examples could include adding new option holders vesting, acting on exercise notices, handling employees that leave, adding convertible/safe notes and any conversion to equity) each would incur a $30 change fee
Updating Xero can vary depending on what’s needed but you’d typically budget $300 – $700
To produce cap table spreadsheets we normally recommend updating Cake as the source of truth then exporting, we can also manually create or update separate cap table spreadsheets if needed, typically you’d budget $300-$700 for this

If you’d like us to update (and maintain) ASIC we’ll need to be nominated as your ASIC agent. For $20/mth we’ll monitor your ASIC obligations, and also provide unlimited company or director updates (ASIC fees may be required for some changes).

Whenever we have completed an update we will send you a summary of what we’ve done, and while we endeavour to have correctly interpreted your instructions and made the necessary updates it is still your responsibility to cross-check this summary, and advise us if there are any corrections required. Note that any rework may incur additional fees.

Maintain:

Ongoing maintenance of your cap table/s
We’ve provided the above individual pay-as-you-go transaction type pricing, but we know it can be tricky to stay across this and ﬁgure out what it may cost, so if it works for you, great. If it doesn’t that’s ﬁne too – simply let us know of the updates you need us to make, and we’ll charge you as appropriate
As an alternative we also offer ‘per stakeholder pricing’, under this model you pay a ﬁxed amount each month based on the number of stakeholders in Cake (equity, note or option holders), and we’ll ensure that these are correctly created AND maintained across all of ASIC, Cake and Xero

So how much will this peace of mind cost? Here’s a breakdown of the costs, and a comparison for reference:

$5/stakeholder/mth for 1-9 stakeholders (i.e. $45/mth or $405/yr for 9)
$4/mth for 10-19 (19:$152/mth, $1,824/yr)
$3/mth for 20-29 (29: $174/mth, $2,088/yr)
$2/mth for 30+ (50: $250/mth, $3,000/yr)
Addition of new stakeholders will be charged at (a discounted) $20/addition, then the above fees will apply from that point

You’ll still need to let us know of changes so we can update these across ASIC, Cake and Xero as necessary. Where these changes include exercising, conversions etc we’ll simply make the changes, where you’re issuing new shares, notes or options (i.e. new stakeholders) we’ll go ahead and add them to ASIC, cake or Xero, and charge you the $20/new stakeholder fee and increase your monthly billing from that point. No messing around with variable update pricing.

When you're raising capital

There's also a lot going on at this time across shares, notes and options. But don’t fret; we've got you (along with your lawyer) but we can't lock in fixed pricing for the work that's likely to be required and often needing to be done in a very timely manner.

You've already got a sense above that our service pricing is startup friendly (where possible, we’ll provide you with an indicative quote beforehand) but we’ll focus on getting on with what's needed, and bill you.

Our offerings: review, update, maintain

While tools like Cake Equity are growing ever more sophisticated (check out their convertible note and round modeling functionality), sometimes you just need a real life person to guide you through the process and bounce off.

With our experience acting as CFOs for startups raising capital or exiting, we can advise you on all your cap table questions. Along with your lawyer we’re on your side – and always here to help. Get in touch below to chat about how we can help.

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Cap table management services