How the platform supports formal compliance and investor scrutiny.
Short answer: yes. Equidam-built valuations rest on a published methodology aligned with IPEV guidelines, benchmarked inputs drawn from a database of 160,000+ companies and 30,000+ public-market comparables, and a single consistent framework applied across the portfolio. Those are the three things auditors weigh most heavily when reviewing private-company fair-value marks.
One clarification up front: Equidam is not a third-party valuer. It’s the platform your fund uses to calculate your portfolio valuations — by structuring the methodology, benchmarking the inputs, and producing the documentation. What the auditor reviews is your valuation, built on Equidam. That’s the point: your team holds the pen, and the methodology and data behind every number are visible and challengeable.
Funds already use Equidam to produce valuations that have passed external audit. The platform doesn’t replace your auditor or your judgment. It gives your audit trail the structure, documentation, and defensible assumptions that turn the review from an archaeology project into a routine check.
What auditors actually check
When an auditor reviews a VC or PE fund’s portfolio valuations, four questions come under scrutiny:
- Methodology — Is the approach explainable and consistent with recognised standards (IPEV, IFRS 13, ASC 820)?
- Reasonableness of assumptions — Are discount rates, growth rates, multiples and qualitative scores benchmarked against the market, or pulled from thin air?
- Consistency across the portfolio — Are similar companies valued in comparable ways, or is each analyst doing their own thing?
- Documentation and audit trail — Can you show what was valued, when, by whom, with what inputs — and reproduce the result?
Everything Equidam does on the investor side is built around those four questions.
1. Methodology: published, standards-aligned, not a black box
Equidam’s methodology is publicly documented and compliant with IPEV (International Private Equity Valuation) Guidelines — the primary reference standard most European auditors apply to private fund valuations.
Every Equidam valuation blends five established methods chosen for early-stage and growth companies:
- DCF with Long-Term Growth and DCF with Multiple — the standard income approaches, so the fundamental “what cash will this generate” question is always answered in two independent ways.
- Venture Capital Method — captures expected exit economics and investor returns, which auditors expect to see for growth-stage assets.
- Scorecard Method and Checklist Method — quantified qualitative frameworks, so pre-revenue and early-stage assets aren’t left as gut calls.
The blending rules are fixed and applied the same way to every company in a portfolio. That matters for audit defensibility: consistency removes the “why did you weight this one differently?” question before it gets asked.
2. Reasonableness: benchmarks are the whole point
This is where most internal DCF models break under audit. An analyst plugs in a discount rate and a growth rate that feel right, and the auditor asks where the number came from.
Equidam pre-populates every assumption with a documented benchmark:
- Discount rates derived from country risk premiums, industry betas, and size premiums — tailored to 90+ countries and 136+ industries (see data sources).
- Revenue and EBITDA multiples drawn from a searchable database of 30,000+ public companies, with an Advanced Multiples tool for building custom comparable sets when a fund prefers its own peer group.
- Growth, margin and working-capital ranges benchmarked against peer cohorts from a database of 160,000+ valued companies.
- Qualitative scores anchored to defined criteria, not freeform ratings.
Any parameter an analyst changes becomes an override against a documented benchmark. Auditors can see exactly where a valuation diverges from the market-wide default and ask targeted questions — instead of reverse-engineering the model.
3. Portfolio consistency: one framework, not thirty
A recurring audit finding on private-company books is inconsistency — different analysts using different templates, different multiples sources, different weighting schemes across the same portfolio. Even when each individual valuation is reasonable, the portfolio looks uncontrolled.
Running a portfolio through Equidam produces:
- The same five methods applied to each company.
- The same data sources, benchmarks, and vintage across the portfolio at a given date.
- The same report structure, section by section, so an auditor — or an LP — can compare any two companies in minutes.
- A single place to maintain a tiered valuation policy: recent-round companies held at round price, mature companies updated via multiples only, early-stage companies re-run in full each quarter.
4. Documentation and audit trail
A defensible audit trail has to answer, for every line on the NAV: what was valued, as of when, using what inputs, by whom, and what changed since last time.
Equidam’s reporting layer covers that directly:
- Audit-ready PDF reports — typically 35 pages — bundling methodology, assumptions, benchmark references, sensitivity analysis, and the final value. The report is self-contained: an auditor can review it without logging into the platform.
- Excel export of the full portfolio for sampling, analytics, and custom audit schedules.
- Company history tracking changes to inputs and assumptions over time.
- Custom branding so the output becomes the fund’s own work product, not an external quote.
- Data collection templates that standardise what you request from portfolio companies, so the underlying inputs are themselves consistent.
How funds typically use Equidam in an audit cycle
A practical pattern for funds running annual or quarterly valuations:
- First cycle: roughly two hours per company — data collection, method selection, assumption review, report generation.
- Subsequent cycles: around twenty minutes per company, because the structure, historical inputs, and policy decisions are already in place.
- Quarterly cadence becomes realistic for funds that previously could only justify annual valuations — itself a best-practice signal to auditors and LPs.
- Tiered policy in one place: the platform handles “keep at round price,” “update multiples only,” and “full re-valuation” tiers inside the same portfolio view, so the policy isn’t just documented — it’s executed.
Does Equidam replace the auditor or the fund’s judgment?
No — and it shouldn’t. Equidam is infrastructure for producing defensible valuations, not a sign-off. The fund’s partners remain the economic owners of the numbers. The auditor still audits. What changes is that the work being sampled is built on a published methodology, benchmarked assumptions, and a portfolio-wide consistent framework — so the audit becomes a review of judgment calls, not an investigation of where the numbers came from.
Frequently asked questions
Is Equidam compliant with IPEV guidelines?
Yes. Equidam’s methodology is designed to comply with the International Private Equity Valuation guidelines, the primary reference standard most European auditors apply to private fund valuations.
Does Equidam support IFRS 13 / ASC 820 fair-value reporting?
The platform produces fair-value outputs built from market-observable inputs (public-company multiples, country and industry risk premia) and model-based inputs (DCF, VC method) that map onto the fair-value hierarchy auditors use under IFRS 13 and ASC 820. The final classification of inputs into Level 1 / 2 / 3 is a decision for the fund and its auditor, but the source and derivation of every input is documented in the report.
Can an auditor review an Equidam valuation without a platform login?
Yes. The PDF report is self-contained and includes methodology, assumptions, benchmark references, and the final calculation. Most audit reviews happen on the report rather than inside the platform. Read-only access can be provided to auditors who want to drill in further.
Can we include externally-valued companies in the same audit pack?
Yes. Companies valued outside Equidam — for example, held at the price of their most recent primary round — can sit alongside Equidam-valued companies in the same portfolio view and reporting pack. Upload and import capabilities for external valuations are being extended; check the current feature set with the team.
Can the methodology be customised to our fund’s policy?
Yes, within limits. The valuation policy (which companies get full valuations, which get multiple-only updates, which are held at round price) is the fund’s decision and is configured per-portfolio. Parameter-level overrides — discount rate adjustments, qualitative scores, custom multiples comparables — are fully supported and flagged as deviations from benchmark, which is what an auditor wants to see.
Does Equidam provide an opinion on the valuation?
No. Equidam provides the platform, methodology, and benchmark data. The valuation is the responsibility of the fund’s partners; the audit is the responsibility of the auditor. Equidam stands behind the methodology and the data sources — nothing beyond that.
How often should a fund re-value portfolio companies for audit purposes?
Best practice — and the direction most auditors push — is quarterly valuation for material assets, with a full cycle at year-end. Equidam is designed to make that cadence feasible without a dedicated in-house valuation team.
Which funds use Equidam for audit-grade reporting?
More than 1,600 investors use Equidam across 90+ countries, including funds that have successfully closed external audits using the platform as the backbone of their valuation work. Customer references are available under NDA on request.
What happens if an auditor challenges a specific assumption?
Every Equidam assumption has a documented source: a benchmark, a dataset, a published methodology choice. If an auditor questions a number, the answer is in the report. If they question a method, the answer is in the methodology document. If they question an override, the platform shows who made it and when.
Getting started
If a VC or PE fund audit is your concrete deadline, the pragmatic path is:
- Schedule a portfolio valuation call — we’ll walk through the exact report format your auditor will see.
- Review the public methodology document and a sample report with your audit partner before you commit.
- Pilot on a subset of the portfolio in parallel with your current process for one reporting cycle.
The audit review itself will tell you more than any sales call.