Carried Interest Administration

The most sensitive compensation program at your firm is probably running on a spreadsheet.

Carried interest is employee compensation. The people in the program have real economic stakes, real vesting schedules and real questions about what they've earned and what it’s worth. The CFO has a spreadsheet only they fully understand with every grant, every allocation, every vesting schedule, every forfeiture manually maintained. The chief people officer has grant documentation in email threads, if it exists at all. And the partners in the program receive statements infrequently, through a portal that doesn't exist, from a system that was never built for this work.

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Participant portal and grant register with financial summaries and program details for James Park.

The problem we're solving

A compensation program this important shouldn't run on institutional memory and manual controls.

The typical carried interest program at a mid-market PE firm looks like this. A spreadsheet that has been modified so many times only one person can navigate it. Grant documentation scattered across executed side letters, email confirmations and deal memos that may or may not reflect the current terms. Vesting schedules tracked informally, forfeitures handled on a case by case basis, allocation changes made without a change log. Participant statements that go out once a year when the operation allows.

Person in navy blue suit interacting with a laptop on a table in an office.

The data inside that spreadsheet is among the most sensitive at the firm. It's compensation. It reflects what every partner, every principal and every carry participant has earned, or stands to earn, across every fund, every vintage, every deal. When it's wrong, the consequences aren't operational. They're personal. A misallocated carry point. A vesting date that doesn't match the grant document. A distribution that doesn't tie to what the participant was told they'd receive.

The HR and people function carries its own exposure. Grant documentation that was never formalized. New participants onboarded without a clean paper trail. A carry program that grew organically as the firm grew without the governance infrastructure to support what it became. When a partner asks what they're owed, the answer requires manual research, not a login to a system.

The program is real. The economics are real. The people in it are real. The infrastructure running it was not built for what's at stake.

How it works

The full carried interest lifecycle. Administered end to end.

Every capability runs from the same platform. Grant setup through vesting, scenario modeling, participant reporting and distributions. No spreadsheet maintained alongside the system. No separate model for the calculations. The program is administered with the same institutional rigor as the fund books it connects to.

01・Grant Administration

Every participant. Every grant. Every term. In one place.

Carried interest grants are discretionary and the documentation behind them is often the weakest part of the program. Archway creates and maintains the grant record from the beginning. Participant details, grant amounts, fund-level or deal-level participation, vesting schedules and the governing terms that define each grant. Complex vesting structures aligned to the documents that authorized them.

Every grant change, every amendment, every new participant onboarded with a clean paper trail. The program has a system of record. The CFO is no longer the system of record.

02・Vesting, Allocations & Distributions

The carry pool is calculated at the fund. What happens next is where most programs break down.

Archway takes the carried interest pool from the fund waterfall and allocates it to participants based on their individual grant terms. Commitment amounts, vesting schedules, fund-level or deal-level participation and the discretionary decisions the GP has made about how economics are distributed. Every allocation is traceable to the grant document that authorized it. Every vesting event is processed automatically against the terms of each grant. Forfeitures handled with documentation and a clear audit trail.

For participants, the reporting reflects not just what they've been allocated but what their interest is worth as the fund performs. Dollars at work, not just grant percentages on a page.

Distributions paid to participants directly or coordinated with the fund's treasury function depending on the engagement model. Every distribution tied to the allocation that produced it.

03・Scenario Modeling & Change Control

The program changes. Every change should be modeled before it's made and documented after it is.

Carry programs evolve. New funds launch, new participants join, allocation percentages shift, vesting terms get amended. Archway's scenario modeling environment lets the CFO or Chief People Officer model any change in a sandbox before it goes live. New grant structures, allocation modifications, vesting amendments tested against the existing program before a single record is updated.

One-click publishing once the change is approved. Full audit history of everything that happened before it was published . Who proposed it, who approved it, when it took effect and what it replaced. No version of the program that exists outside the platform. No change that can't be traced or explained.

04・Participant Portal & Reporting

Every participant knows exactly what they've earned and what it's worth. Without asking the CFO.

Secure, on-demand portal access for every carry participant. Grant documents, vesting status, allocation history, distribution notices and statements available the moment they log in. Each participant sees their own data and nothing else. No calls to the CFO. No waiting for the annual statement that may already be out of date.

The platform generates statements on a defined schedule, not assembled manually when the quarter allows. The cadence is set at the outset and holds regardless of what else is happening in the operation. For firms that want Archway's team to run the reporting function, that option exists on the same platform.

When GP entity administration runs on the same platform, the reporting goes beyond the carry grant. Participants with co-investments, GP interests, loan programs or broader compensation elements see an aggregated view across all of it, not just their carry allocation in isolation. For senior partners who think about their economics holistically, the portal reflects that. For junior participants building toward their first carry event, the vesting progress is clear and current.

05・Governance, Audit Trail & Fund Integration

The controls that make the program defensible. The integration that keeps it accurate.

Carried interest administration carries real organizational risk with compensation decisions, allocation changes, distribution calculations that will be scrutinized by partners and participants at some point in the life of the fund. Archway builds the governance infrastructure into the workflow rather than treating it as a reporting function that runs afterward.

Clear approval and ownership of every grant change and allocation decision. Auditable calculation logic with full change history from the moment the program was set up.

Carried interest administration runs two ways. As a standalone service, Archway receives the quarterly carry pool value and market value data from the current fund administrator and administers the participant allocations, vesting, reporting and distributions from there. For firms running fund administration on Archway, the carry program sits as a nested structure within the overall fund accounting. The carry pool flows directly from the fund waterfall, participant allocations post to the same general ledger as the fund books, and there is no reconciliation step between the carry program and the fund close.

Either way, the governance controls are the same. The audit trail is complete. The program is defensible

Grant record summary for Sarah Chen with grant details and vesting schedule for profits interest.

Three ways to run the portal

The model changes who runs the program.
The platform doesn't change.

Every carry program runs on the same platform, the same governance controls, the same audit trail, regardless of how you choose to deploy. The two models reflect different operational arrangements, not different tiers of access.

Technology

Your team runs the carry program. Archway provides the platform.

Your team manages grant administration, vesting, scenario modeling, participant reporting and distributions through the Archway platform with full access to every capability it carries. Archway provides implementation, ongoing platform support and a dedicated client team. The institutional governance controls, the audit trail and the participant portal are all yours to run. The infrastructure is ours.

Managed Service

Archway's team runs the carry program. Your team retains full visibility.

Archway's carried interest administration team manages grant setup, vesting processing, allocation calculations, scenario modeling, participant statements and distribution coordination — on the same platform your team logs into. You review, approve and sign off before anything reaches a participant. The program runs on a defined schedule. The governance controls are embedded throughout. The carry program is yours. The operational burden isn't.

FAQ's

The questions we hear most. Answered directly.

Can you administer our carry program as a standalone without your fund administration?

Yes and most clients start this way. Archway administers the carry program standalone, receiving the quarterly carry pool value and market value data from the client or their existing fund administrator. Grant administration, vesting, scenario modeling, participant reporting and distributions are all administered on the Archway platform regardless of where the fund books sit. No requirement to move fund administration to Archway to get institutional carry governance.

How do you get the carry pool data if you're not our fund administrator?

The client or their fund administrator provides the quarterly carry pool value and market value data on a defined schedule. Archway ingests that data, applies it to the participant allocations and runs the reporting from there. The process is straightforward and doesn't require a deep integration with the fund administrator. A structured data file on a regular cadence is sufficient. For firms that move to Archway for fund administration, the carry pool flows directly from the fund waterfall without a manual data handoff.

How do participants access the portal and what do they see?

Each participant receives a branded, secure, on-demand access to their own data including grant documents, vesting status, allocation history, distribution notices and statements. Nothing from another participant's record is visible. Access is configured by the firm to define who sees what, at what level of detail before the portal goes live. Participants log in on any device. Statements are available the moment they're produced, not distributed by email on an ad hoc basis.

How does scenario modeling work in practice?

The scenario modeling environment is a sandbox. A separate instance of the carry program where changes can be modeled without affecting live data. A CFO evaluating a new grant structure, an allocation change or a vesting amendment models it in the sandbox first. The impact on every affected participant is visible before a single live record is touched. Once approved, the change publishes to the live program with one click. The full history of what was modeled, who approved it and when it took effect is maintained in the audit trail.

What does implementation look like for an existing program?

Implementation starts with a data gathering exercise to understand existing grant documents, participant records, vesting schedules, historical allocation and distribution data. Archway's implementation team maps the existing program into the platform, configures the vesting logic and allocation structures. For programs that have been running on spreadsheets, the implementation process often surfaces gaps in the documentation that the platform then formalizes.

How does the carry program connect to the GP entity and fund books if we're also on Archway for fund admin?

When fund administration and carried interest administration both run on Archway, the carry program sits as a nested structure within the overall fund accounting. The carry pool flows directly from the fund waterfall without manual data handoff, no separate model to maintain. Participant allocations post to the same general ledger as the fund books. GP entity accounting, fund accounting and carry administration all run from the same source. The reconciliation step that most firms run manually every quarter doesn't exist because there's nothing to reconcile.

How is pricing structured?

Carried interest administration is priced based on the scope of the engagement. Number of funds, participant count, carry structures and service model. Not on AUM. Not on the value of the carry pool. Pricing is agreed upfront and doesn't move as the program grows. Specific figures follow an initial conversation.

Start the conversation

Carried interest is too important to run on institutional memory and manual controls.

Tell us about your carry program — the structures, the participants, the complexity you're managing today. We'll come to the conversation with a point of view on how Archway fits, not just a demo of what the platform does.

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