Introduction
Importing your cap table into Ledgy involves adding share classes, stakeholders, and transaction history to build an accurate record of your company's equity structure. This guide walks you through the import process step-by-step, including how to prepare your data, add transactions, and publish your cap table to stakeholders.
What you'll need before starting
Before importing your cap table, make sure you have:
A complete list of all your stakeholders
Your cap table transaction history
An understanding of Ledgy's basic concepts (you can review our getting started guide)
If you have special requirements:
For numbered shares: Go to "Company Settings" in the left-hand menu panel > General > "Equity Management Settings" > click the Edit icon and enable numbered shares
For assigning nominal value: Navigate to "Ownership" > Share Classes > "Nominal value per share" tile > click the Edit icon to change the nominal value
Importing your cap table history
1. Create your share classes
First, add all your share classes to use them in your cap table import. You can add detailed information like liquidation preference and dividend rights immediately or complete these details later.
This step is crucial as you'll need these share classes available when importing transactions.
2. Add your stakeholders
You can add stakeholders individually or use the bulk importer for faster processing.
Tips for stakeholder imports:
Copy-pasting works best from spreadsheets, and you can copy and paste entire columns at once
Ensure first and last names are in the same cell (concatenate them if needed)
If you want to keep your cap table private until it's fully ready, don't add stakeholder emails yet (without emails, they cannot be invited)
When using the bulk importer:
The "Group" column assigns stakeholders to specific groups (like Employees, Founders, Series A Investors), making it easier to find them and send group-specific reports
The "Legal entity" column specifies whether the stakeholder is a legal entity or a natural person (the importer defaults to "natural person" - double-click to change to "legal")
3. Add your first cap table transaction
Best practice is to start with the earliest transaction, typically incorporation.
To add an incorporation event:
Go to Ownership > Transactions
Click "Add transaction"
Select "Financing round"
In the spreadsheet that opens, add all stakeholders who participated in the incorporation
Assign shares to each stakeholder
Name the financing round something recognizable (we recommend "Incorporation")
4. Add the rest of your transactions
You can add transactions in any order - Ledgy will automatically sort them by date.
Different transaction types serve different purposes:
Use "Convertible loan" transactions for convertible loans or SAFE notes
Use "Transfer" transactions for secondaries
Use "Valuation" transactions to record share price at a specific point in time
5. Customize the invitation email
Before inviting stakeholders to Ledgy:
Go to "Company Settings" in the left-side menu > General
Click the Review button inside "Email Templates"
Customize the invitation email to your preferences
6. Publish transactions to go live
Until now, only you and other admin users can see what you've added to Ledgy. To make information available to all users:
Go to the Transactions page
Press the Publish button
This action also invites all stakeholders who have an email address associated with their profile.
Note: If stakeholders don't have associated email addresses, they won't be invited and won't be able to access the published transactions.
Note: If none of the stakeholders have an email associated, published transactions will not be available to them, since they will not be invited. |