Why FundFlow
Your fund’s month deserves better than a spreadsheet
Spreadsheets are extraordinary tools. They are also the only part of a fund’s operation with no audit trail, no validation and no way to stop you sending a month that does not add up. This page is the comparison, without the marketing.
No credit card. Nothing is charged until your first 30 days are over.
Spreadsheet versus FundFlow
Nine things that differ. Not features: properties of the two ways of working.
| What matters | The NAV spreadsheet | FundFlow |
|---|---|---|
| Arithmetic | Binary floating point. A total of 99,994.26 shows up as 99,994.26000000001 and the difference compounds down the column. | Exact decimal arithmetic in the database. The same inputs give the same answer, to the cent, every time. |
| Where the formulas live | In thousands of cells, copied down, each one able to drift from its neighbours. | In one place, applied identically to every participant and series, covered by an automated test suite. |
| Checking the month | Manual. A check column that someone has to remember to look at. | Four reconciliation checks run on every calculation, and a failing one blocks the lock. |
| Closing a month | Save as version 5.1 and hope nobody edits 5.0. | The month is locked and the database refuses to change it. Reopening is admin-only and needs a written reason. |
| Knowing what changed | Nothing, unless someone kept notes. | Participant changes are written to a searchable history; period events are recorded as they happen. |
| Two-person review | Emailing the file and asking someone to look. | An optional setting: the person who prepares the month cannot be the one who locks it. |
| Working from anywhere | A desktop, and a file that is on it. | Designed for a phone first. The whole close works on the device in your pocket. |
| Investor statements | Copy, paste, mail merge, and no record of what was sent. | Personalised per participant with a PDF attached, and a delivery record per recipient with retry. |
| Explaining a number | Click the cell and read the formula bar, if you can still follow it. | Tap the number for the explanation, the formula, the exact inputs and the month. |
Where a spreadsheet is still better
Being straight about this is more useful than pretending otherwise.
Anything ad hoc
If you want to model a scenario, try a different fee structure or answer a one-off question, a blank sheet beats structured software every time. FundFlow administers the fund; it does not replace your thinking tools.
Data that is not a fund
FundFlow knows about funds, series, participants, units and periods. It is not a general ledger and it is not a portfolio management system: it tracks fund-level assets and unit positions, not individual securities and trades.
Months before you start
FundFlow does not reconstruct your history. You anchor one opening month and go forward from there; everything before it stays where it is today.
Migration
Bringing a fund that already exists
Most funds looking at this have years of history. You do not need to re-enter it, and you should not try.
Pick your anchor month
Usually the last month you closed in the sheet. Everything from the month after it onward will live in FundFlow.
Enter the koers per series
The closing unit price of each series at that date, and its high-water mark if you track one.
Enter each participant’s position
Either their value or their unit count: the other side is derived as you type, and the review step foots the totals per series and for the fund.
Close the next month normally
From here the engine takes over. Your first in-app close should produce the same numbers your sheet would have.
The honest limitation: the anchor month itself reports no return, because there is no month before it to compare against. Your in-app track record starts the month after.
Run both for one month
Close the month in FundFlow and in your sheet, and compare. If the numbers disagree we want to know why as much as you do.
No credit card. Nothing is charged until your first 30 days are over.