Check each submission against the company's own history, not on its own. Put the new number next to the last few periods, flag big jumps, confirm the unit and period, and link every value to the email or deck it came from. Then send the founder one short question per flag before anything reaches an LP.
I've had this conversation a lot lately with fund finance and platform people, right as Q3 numbers land. Getting founders to reply is a solved-ish problem for them. Their real worry is the number that looks fine on its own and is wrong in context, and how it slips into a quarterly letter without anyone noticing (usually because the one person who'd notice is on holiday).
So this post is about the review, not the request.
Why checking is harder than asking
Asking is a fixed task. You send one email per company and follow up with the ones who go quiet. Checking scales worse, because each number needs context to judge. "Revenue: 410" means nothing until you know it was 120 last quarter, that the founder used to report monthly, and that this deck says "ARR" in small print.
Most tools make this worse by showing you the new submission on a screen of its own. If the history lives in a different tab, or in last year's spreadsheet, nobody compares. The error gets caught by an LP, or by the auditor in February.
The stakes are going up too. The 2025 IPEV Valuation Guidelines expect funds to document the inputs behind every mark and to calibrate at each measurement date. They apply to quarterly periods starting on or after April 1, 2026. Founder-reported revenue and cash are often the main inputs. If they're wrong, the mark is wrong.
Step 1: Agree on definitions before the quarter starts
Most "wrong" numbers are really definition problems. The founder reported exactly what they track. It just isn't what you asked for.
Before you send the request, write down the definition behind each metric you collect: revenue (recognized, not booked), burn (net, monthly), cash (on hand at period end), headcount (full-time employees). Put that line in the request itself, next to each metric, so the founder sees it where they answer.
Keep the list per company. A marketplace and a SaaS company shouldn't get the same ask. ILPA is refreshing its portfolio company metrics template right now, and definitions are a big part of that work. Even if you never adopt the template, it's a useful checklist of what to pin down.
Step 2: Put every new number next to its history
This one habit catches most errors. For every company, look at the new value beside at least the last four periods, and beside the same period last year if you have it.
A simple table per company is enough:
| Metric | Q3 last year | Q4 | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 (new) | Change vs Q2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | … | … | … | … | … | … |
| Burn | … | … | … | … | … | … |
| Cash | … | … | … | … | … | … |
If you ask for monthly figures, you can also compare the same month across years. That's the main reason some teams ask for monthly numbers once a quarter, rather than a single quarterly total.
Step 3: Flag on rules, not gut feel
Don't rely on someone noticing. Write down a few rules and run them every quarter:
| Check | What it usually catches |
|---|---|
| Change of more than ~3x or under ~⅓ vs last | Annualized vs monthly mix-ups, a misplaced zero |
| Value identical to last period | A number copied from the last deck |
| Drop in cash doesn't match net burn × months, after new funding | Missing raise, wrong burn definition, stale cash |
| Label changed ("ARR", "bookings", "GMV") | A definition switch that breaks the trend |
| Currency or unit differs from history | Thousands vs units, EUR vs USD |
| Period doesn't match the request | Year-to-date reported as quarter, fiscal vs calendar |
The thresholds are a starting point. Tune them per company: a three-person seed company can legitimately triple revenue in a quarter, and a growth-stage company probably can't.
A flag isn't a verdict. Plenty of big jumps are real (a big contract landed, a raise closed). The point is that a human looks at each one before it goes anywhere.
Step 4: Link every number to where it came from
When a partner or an LP asks "where does this come from?", the answer should take one click. For each value, keep a link to the email, deck page or call note it came from.
This matters most when a number gets corrected. If the founder sends a revised figure two weeks later, you want to see both versions and know which one went into the LP letter. Auditors will ask the same question. The AICPA's guide for venture and private equity funds is built around showing how each valuation input was derived.
It's also how you stop asking founders twice. If the revenue figure is already in last month's investor update, you don't need it again in the quarterly request. Ask only for what's missing.
Step 5: Send one short question per flag
When something looks off, write to the founder from your own inbox, in plain text. Requests from no-reply addresses tend to land in a promotions or updates tab, and founders don't reply to them. A note from a person they know gets read.
Keep it specific:
Hi Sam, quick check on Q3. You reported revenue of 410, and last quarter was 120. Is that monthly, or annualized? Happy to update it on our side either way.
One question, one number, an easy answer. Don't send the whole template back.
Step 6: Lock what went into the report
Once the numbers are reviewed, take a snapshot: the values, their sources and who signed off. Make it the version the LP report used. If a number changes later, you add a new version. You don't overwrite the old one.
It sounds like bureaucracy, but next quarter's comparison starts from it, and so do next year's audit questions.
What are the most common errors in founder-reported metrics?
The usual ones are a mix-up between monthly, quarterly and annualized figures, a metric whose definition quietly changed (bookings reported as revenue, gross burn as net burn), a number copied from last quarter's deck, and the wrong currency or units. Most of them show up the moment you see the new number next to the old ones.
Less common but more painful: a cash balance that hasn't been updated for a quarter or more. Founders under pressure sometimes resend an old figure. A cash check against burn catches most of these.
Should you ask founders for monthly or quarterly numbers?
Ask for monthly figures once a quarter, if founders already track them that way. Monthly data lets you compare the same month year over year and spot a bad month that a quarterly total hides. For metrics that only exist at quarter end, such as cash on hand, a single quarterly number is fine.
Don't force it. If a company only closes its books quarterly, asking for monthly numbers gets you estimates dressed up as actuals, and that's worse than a clean quarterly figure.
Can AI check portfolio metrics for you?
AI is good at the first pass: pulling numbers out of updates and decks, lining them up against history and flagging what looks off. It isn't good enough to be the last check. It will miss some errors and invent the occasional one, so a person should review every flag and sign off before numbers go to LPs.
I'd rather catch most errors with a fast first pass and a human review every quarter than chase a system that claims to catch all of them. At Cura, every extracted number links back to its source, and unusual ones land in a review queue. That queue doesn't hold numbers out of reports, though, so the sign-off before anything goes to LPs is still yours. Fund finance writers testing AI on close checklists and LP letters land in a similar place: build a "what to check" step into every prompt, because the output sounds right even when it isn't.
Auditors and LPs have started asking about this directly: how a number was produced, and whether there's a trail. If you can't explain how the AI got a figure, you can't use it.
Sources
- International Private Equity and Venture Capital Valuation Guidelines, 2025 edition: Q&A on the update, Lincoln International
- Valuation of Portfolio Company Investments of Venture Capital and Private Equity Funds and Other Investment Companies, AICPA
- New guidance on valuing portfolio company investments: calibration, Elliott Davis
- ILPA launches process to refresh the Portfolio Company Metrics Template, ILPA
- ILPA Reporting Template, ILPA
- AI in the fund finance stack, NVCA
- Top AI prompts for fund CFO workflows, The Fund CFO