Skip to main content
All CollectionsOwnershipCap table
How do I import my cap table?
How do I import my cap table?

If you want to import your whole cap table or just the last few years of data, this article can help guide you through the process.

Support Team avatar
Written by Support Team
Updated over a week ago

What you need before you start:

  • A list of all your stakeholders

  • The current cap table

  • Read the getting started guide to understand the basic concepts of Ledgy

If you have numbered shares: Go to "Company Settings" (left-hand menu panel) > General, then under "Equity management Settings", click the Edit icon and enable numbered shares.

Assigning nominal value: Go to "Ownership" > Share Classes, then in the "Nominal value per share" tile, click the Edit icon and change the nominal value.


Importing the whole history of your cap table

1. Start by adding all of your share classes

The most important is to add all your share classes so you can use them later in the cap table import. You don't have to add all of the information, such as liquidation preference, dividend right, etc. immediately, you can do that later.

2. Add the stakeholders
​
Read more in the stakeholder-specific article here.

Before you start:

  • Copy-pasting works best from spreadsheets. You can copy and paste the whole column at once.

  • Make sure the first and last names are in the same cell. If they're not, concatenate them in one cell.

  • If you want to be 100% sure that no one can see the cap table before it's ready, don't add emails to the stakeholders. Without emails, they can't be invited.

Importing:

You can either import stakeholders one by one or with the bulk importer. The bulk importer is much faster.

The Group column:

The group column assigns stakeholders to a specified group. You can group stakeholders into as many groups as you want. Stakeholders with the same group name will be grouped together, so it will be easier for you to find them and, for example, send them group-specific reports.

Examples of groups: Employees, Founders, Series A Investors...

The Legal entity column:

The legal entity column specifies whether the stakeholder is a legal entity or not. The importer specifies that it's a natural person automatically. You can change that by double-clicking the cell, this will change the text to say legal.

3. Add your first cap table transactions

The best practice is to start with the earliest transactions, for example, incorporation.

To add the incorporation event, go to Ownership > Transactions and click "Add transaction".

Then select Financing round. In the spreadsheet that opens, add all the stakeholders that participated in the incorporation event and assign them shares.

Give the financing round a name that will make it easy for you to recognize it later. It can be anything, we would recommend naming it 'Incorporation'.

4. Add the rest of the transactions

You can add transactions in whichever order you want, Ledgy will automatically sort them by date.

Convertible loans or SAFE notes are reflected with a "Convertible loan" transaction.
​Secondaries are reflected with a "Transfer" transaction.
​Valuation or a share price at a point in time is reflected with the "Valuation" transaction.

5. Customize the invitation email

Before you start inviting your stakeholders to join Ledgy, you can customize the invitation email they'll receive. Go to "Compnay Settings" (in the left-side menu) > General, and click on the Review button inside "Email Templates".

6. Publish transactions to go live

So far, everything you have done in Ledgy was only seen by you and other admin users. To make information available for all other users, you have to publish the transactions on the Transactions page. By pressing the Publish button, you also invite all stakeholders that have an email address associated.

Note: If none of the stakeholders have an email associated, published transactions will not be available to them, since they will not be invited.


Importing without the complete cap table history

If you don't have the complete history, you can still organize the cap table from the data you do have.

Steps 1 and 2 for creating share classes and importing stakeholders are the same as for the complete cap table import above.
The importing of an incomplete cap table is only different in the way you add the first transaction.

3. Adding the first transaction

Because you're starting your import "in the middle" of the cap table history, you can establish the baseline with a snapshot. A snapshot gives you the possibility to add information about the ownership structure as of a certain date.

Go to Ownership > Transactions > Add transaction, and then choose Snapshot.
If the spreadsheet doesn't have all of the share classes you need, go back to the Share classes page and add them before continuing.

4. Adding the rest of the transactions

After you've added the snapshot, you can start adding the rest of the transactions by going to the Transactions page.

5. Customize the invitation email

Before you start inviting your stakeholders to join Ledgy, you can customize the invitation email they'll receive. Go to "Company Settings" (in the left-side menu) > General, and click on the Review button inside "Email Templates".

6. Publish transactions to go live

So far, everything you have done in Ledgy was only seen by you and other admin users. To make information available for all other users, you have to publish the transactions on the Transactions page. By pressing the Publish button, you also invite all stakeholders that have an email address associated.

Note: If none of the stakeholders have an email associated, published transactions will not be available to them, since they will not be invited.

Did this answer your question?