How should a small fund ops team plan the quarter-end close so the LP report goes out within 45 days?

Work backward from day 45 and set a date for each handoff. Marks are the bottleneck, so start them before the quarter ends. Collect founder numbers in the first two weeks, book the valuation committee for week three, and give the fund admin a locked set of inputs by week four. Leave the last two weeks for review.

I'm writing this in late October, which is exactly when Q3 closes go sideways. Most fund ops people I talk to don't miss the deadline because of one big failure. They miss it because five small handoffs each slip by a few days, and nobody owns the calendar that connects them (it lives in someone's head, usually the CFO's).

Why 45 days is hard for a small team

At a large fund, the close is a process with a team behind each step. At a small fund, it's often one ops person, a part-time CFO and a fund administrator, who all depend on founders replying on time.

The work also stacks up in a fixed order. You can't finish NAV until the marks are final. You can't finish the marks until you have the founders' numbers. The fund administrator can't send capital account statements until NAV is locked. One fund finance newsletter published a close-checklist prompt this month that names the valuation committee as the task blocking 13 of 20 downstream steps. That matches what I hear: the marks are the long pole.

Liquidity makes it harder this year. Few portfolio companies have raised a fresh priced round, so more marks need judgment and evidence rather than a simple roll-forward to the last round price.

Step 1: Write the calendar backward from day 45

Start from the date the report goes out and set the handoffs before it. Here's a rough version for a quarter that ends on the 30th:

When	What	Owner
Week −2 (before Q end)	Send founder requests, pre-fill what you already have	Ops
Week −1	Flag marks that need judgment, start their evidence	Ops, CFO
Days 1–14	Collect and review founder numbers	Ops
Days 10–20	Draft marks and memos	CFO
Day ~21	Valuation committee	Partners, CFO
Days 21–28	Lock inputs, send to the fund admin	CFO
Days 28–38	Fund admin produces NAV and capital account statements	Fund admin
Days 30–42	Draft and review the letter	Ops, GP
Day 45	Send	GP

Put the committee date on everyone's calendar at the start of the quarter, not after the numbers come in. If it moves, everything moves.

Step 2: Start the marks before the quarter ends

Most of the time goes into the marks that aren't a simple roll-forward. You know which ones those are before the quarter ends: companies that raised a long time ago, companies whose plan changed, companies near a down round or a sale.

Make that list two weeks out. For each one, start the evidence file now: the latest board deck, the latest investor update, cash and runway, and any news. The AICPA's guide on valuing portfolio company investments expects you to calibrate each mark back to the last transaction and explain what has changed since. That memo is much easier to write on day 10 than on day 25.

(We wrote about the year-end version of this in how to prep for an audit when most marks are stale. The quarterly close is the same work, done four times a year.)

Step 3: Ask founders only for what's missing

Founder data is the first dependency, and it's the one you control least. The fastest way to get it is to ask for less.

Before the quarter ends, fill in what you already have from board decks, updates and emails. Then ask each founder only for the gaps, with the definition next to each metric. A request that says "we have your revenue and headcount, can you send cash at month-end?" gets a faster reply than a 20-field form.

Then review what comes back against each company's history before it goes into a mark.

Step 4: Hand the fund admin one locked package

Many closes slip in the handoff to the fund administrator. Inputs arrive in pieces, a mark changes after the admin already ran NAV, and the admin's clock restarts.

Pick one lock date. On that date, send a single package: final marks with their memos, any capital activity, expense accruals and anything unusual. After that date, changes go into next quarter unless they're material, and a named partner signs off on any exception.

Step 5: Draft the letter in parallel, not at the end

The letter doesn't have to wait for NAV. Most of it is portfolio news, new investments and what you're seeing in the market. You can draft that in weeks two and three, and then add the fund-level numbers when the admin delivers.

If your LPs ask for the ILPA reporting template, set up the file early in the quarter. The updated template applies to funds still investing as of Q1 2026. Its fee and expense detail is easier to fill in from the general ledger as you go than to rebuild in week six.

Is 45 days a rule or a target?

For most venture funds it's a target, not a law. ILPA's Principles recommend quarterly reports within 45 days of quarter end and annual reports within 90 days. ILPA's older reporting standards treat 45 days as the target and 60 days as the expected outer limit.

Your LPA or side letters can make a deadline binding, so check them. The SEC's private fund adviser rule would have required quarterly statements, but a federal appeals court vacated it in 2024. For registered advisers that rely on the audit route under the custody rule, audited annual financials must reach investors within 120 days of fiscal year end.

Why does the valuation committee hold up the whole close?

Because nearly everything after it depends on the marks. NAV, the capital account statements, performance figures and the letter all wait for final fair values. If the committee meets late, or asks for evidence that nobody gathered, every step after it slips by the same amount.

The fix is boring. Book the meeting early, send the memos two days before, and agree on which marks need discussion and which are roll-forwards. A committee that only debates the five hard marks takes an hour. One that debates all forty takes a week of follow-ups.

Can AI speed up the quarter-end close?

Yes, for the parts that are reading and drafting: pulling numbers out of founder updates, building the close checklist, and drafting the letter. It doesn't replace the marks or the sign-off.

A survey of a few hundred VC firms this year found they expect AI to have far less impact on LP reporting and portfolio monitoring than on sourcing. I think that's right for now, and the reason is data. A model can only draft a good letter from numbers that are already clean and traced to their source. At Cura, every number we pull from an email or a deck links back to where it came from, so the reviewer checks the source instead of retyping it. The sign-off stays with a person.