FAQ

FundCount is back-office accounting and investment analysis software that integrates portfolio, partnership and general ledger accounting on a single platform. It delivers operational efficiency and insight to family offices, fund administrators, hedge funds, and private equity firms.

FundCount’s primary markets are single and multi-family offices, fund administrators, hedge funds and private equity firms. These are institutional applications with sophisticated needs and FundCount is “big” software to meet these needs. The average entry license fee (an annual subscription) is approximately $25,000 USD. This includes customer support and ongoing maintenance releases and upgrades.

Fund administration software offers accounting, analysis, reporting and online tools that are critical for meeting the needs of a fund administrator’s hedge fund and private equity clients. The software should support a wide range of asset types and provide investment and partnership accounting through an integrated general ledger.

Fund administration software will have shareholder registry/transfer agency capabilities, calculate management and incentive fees and allow for many transaction types and corporate actions. Automated data import/export and workflow capabilities facilitate integration between third-party software applications. The software should also include extensive report customization.

Hedge fund accounting software offers accounting, analysis, reporting and online tools that are critical for meeting the needs of portfolio managers at, and the individuals or institutional investors of, hedge funds. Hedge fund accounting software must account for and analyze the global investments that form the core of hedge fund investing — equities, derivatives, currencies, swaps and fixed income.

The software should include a general ledger and be able to capture all fund-related income/expenses to produce a fund’s net asset value (NAV). Flexible reporting – including tax reporting – is also key. The ability to provide “shadow accounting” of the fund administrator’s books using independent hedge fund accounting software is often required by larger hedge funds.

Private equity software generally takes one of two forms:
  • Heavily “front office” focused, defined by investor relations and marketing needs. This type of software is oriented toward CRM, client/prospect communication and reporting that depends on importing data from investment accounting systems.
  • Mid-to-back office accounting/analysis systems that track all components and the entire lifecycle of a private equity fund. This includes managing multiple investor capital accounts and calculating different management, performance and other fee structures across any number of partnership investment vehicles.

Both front- and back-office software systems should help the firm meet ILPA and other reporting standards.

Absolutely. Since most clients come from a spreadsheet-only environment, we have designed a report writer that makes it easy to translate spreadsheets into FundCount reports.

For spreadsheets that are extremely complex or unique, FundCount offers FC Custom Control. This optional module provides total customization for reports and output to make your firm unique. FC Custom Control allows you to:

  • Use Excel® to create your templates
  • Integrate your design and calculations within FundCount
  • Link data directly from FundCount
  • Create export files for use with other systems
  • Create custom algorithms or formulas to:
    • Calculate complex waterfall structures
    • Handle unique fee structures
    • Run proprietary portfolio analysis reports
  • Save time through automation and reduce input errors
  • Have an audit trail for every change and every user
No, FundCount’s multicurrency general ledger is fully integrated with its partnership and portfolio accounting. Accounts and sub-accounts for each partner and investment instrument are automatically and dynamically added into the general ledger in real time. Debit/credit journal entries from portfolio and partnership transactions are automatically posted to those accounts, bringing further operational efficiency to the accounting process. User-define custom accounts can also be added.
No. FundCount’s general ledger is fully integrated with portfolio and partnership activity so there is no need to take the additional step of manual reconciliation. The general ledger is the foundation of FundCount’s accounting – all transactions, accounts and investments are automatically and dynamically set up in the general ledger when these are entered elsewhere in FundCount. Trial balance reports instantly show if there are any issues with the portfolio and partnership data.
Yes, FundCount has interfaces with dozens of banks, brokers and custodians. FundCount uses its proprietary ETL (Extract-Transform-Load) Importer to import data in virtually any format. Typically, the source data are in Excel, QuickBooks or other systems, and can easily be translated to CSV or text. These formats and XML can be imported into FundCount.
No, all reporting is real time since FundCount doesn’t use a “closing-the-books” approach. Data is available on an as-of-date basis at any time. FundCount supports all industry-standard data safeguard processes such as accounting period locks, user permissions, audit trails, etc.
Absolutely not. FundCount gives you total control over reporting. All data in FundCount is accessible and users have full control over reporting in virtually any format. From basic tabular to mixed table, chart and graph reports and complex visualizations, FundCount users can produce any information for even the most demanding colleague or client. FundCount’s Report Encyclopedia, which is available to our client community, offers hundreds of samples that can be added to your library.
If, after demonstrations and speaking with referrals, there is a need for more in-depth access to FundCount, we offer a Proof of Concept (POC). A POC allows you to test your data and reports in FundCount. You can take FundCount on “test drives” in guided sessions with us. We will do everything possible to give you objective insights to the system and your prospective life using it.
FundCount can be deployed both as installed, on-premises software or as a hosted option. Hosting is available through our hosted and managed services or via private or commercially available hosting services such as IV Desk, Azure, Rackspace and Amazon. FundCount is host-agnostic, and users enjoy the same rich end-user interface regardless of deployment mode.
No. Although FundCount is an integrated portfolio, partnership and general ledger system with three available versions: FC Portfolio, FC Partner and FC Integrated, features can easily be turned “on” or “off,” so you only need to license the system that meets your investing profile.
FundCount has a three-tier architecture: an SQL database, application server and a thin client. The software is written in pure Java. It can run on any platform, including Microsoft, Unix/Linux or Mac.

The desktop-like application, with multi-windows and multi-tasks, provides a very rich end-user experience. The software can be run over the internet via a web browser, without installing any plug-ins locally on a user’s machine.

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