Solutions
Family and friends fund
An informal pool of capital contributed by a small group of related people.
No credit card. Nothing is charged until your first 30 days are over.
What this kind of fund is
The fund that started as a spreadsheet and a group chat. Ten or twenty people who trust each other, which is exactly why the numbers have to be right: there is no institution to blame if a share is wrong, only you.
What the administration actually involves
This is the fund that grew out of goodwill. Ten or twenty people put money in because they trust whoever is running it, there is no custodian and no administrator, and the whole record lives in one file on one laptop. It works fine while the amounts are small and everybody joined on the same day. It stops working the first time somebody wants to put more in halfway through a year, or take some out.
The trust is exactly why the numbers have to be right. There is no institution to point at if a share is wrong. FundFlow gives this fund the same unit accounting, monthly price and reconciliation checks a professional fund runs on, at a scale of eight participants rather than eight hundred, and produces a statement per person you can send without editing anything by hand.
What makes it hard
Deposits at an undefined price
If there is no monthly price, a deposit halfway through the year is a negotiation. Whatever number you agree on, somebody is diluted, and nobody can check by how much.
Withdrawals that leave a residue
Paying out a typed amount rather than redeeming a holder's actual units leaves a few euro behind in an account that should be closed, and that residue never resolves itself.
A screenshot as a statement
Sending round a picture of a spreadsheet row is what most of these funds do. It carries no history, no fee breakdown and no record of who was told what.
How FundFlow fits
Grown-up administration at a small scale
Unit accounting, a monthly koers and reconciliation checks are not reserved for large funds here. The same engine runs whether you have eight participants or eighty.
Deposits and withdrawals without arguments
A deposit issues units at the month's entry koers, and the app tells you which month's koers that is before you commit. A full withdrawal redeems every unit at the close, so rounding never leaves someone owed four euro.
Something to send round that is not a screenshot
A personalised PDF per person, in Dutch or English, sent from the app with a record of who received it.
Questions managers ask
Is this overkill for twelve friends and a brokerage account?
The engine is the same one a fund with several fee series runs on, but the work is proportional to the fund: one series, twelve participants, one balance to enter each month. What you get for that is a defensible entry price, shares that always sum to the fund, and a statement per person instead of a screenshot.
What does it cost for a small pool like ours?
149 euro per month for the fund, whatever its size, and the first 30 days are free with no card. There is no per-participant charge, so twelve holders cost the same as three.
Read how these parts work
The parts of FundFlow this kind of fund leans on most.
Give the group something better than a screenshot
Set the fund up, enter everyone's current stake as an opening position, and close one month. Then send the statements and see what the group says.
In your first session
- Create the fund with one fee series, and add each person as a participant.
- Anchor the opening position at the price and unit counts you have now, so nobody's history is lost.
- Close a month, then mail everyone their own PDF from the app rather than forwarding a screenshot.
No credit card. Nothing is charged until your first 30 days are over.