LP Reporting

What is LP reporting?

LP reporting is the recurring set of statements a fund manager delivers to its limited partners: a quarterly capital account statement and fund-level package, quarterly fee, expense and carried interest detail, capital call and distribution notices as they occur, and annual audited financial statements plus a Schedule K-1. It is a contractual obligation, not a regulatory filing.

What are LP reporting requirements?

Three separate sources create them, and confusing them is the most common error in this area.

The limited partnership agreement is the real mandate. ILPA, describing its own templates, says plainly that they are intended to supplement the quarterly reporting provided by general partners as part of their standard reporting package, including audited and unaudited financial statements prepared in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, international financial reporting standards or another comprehensive basis of accounting, as mandated by a fund's limited partnership agreement and other governing documents or jurisdictional requirements. Read your own agreement's reporting covenant; it sets the deliverables and the deadlines you are actually bound to.

Adviser regulation adds a small number of hard obligations rather than a full reporting standard. Under the custody rule, an adviser to a limited partnership can satisfy certain requirements by having the partnership audited at least annually and distributing audited financial statements prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles to all limited partners within 120 days of the end of its fiscal year.

Is there an SEC rule that dictates what goes in a quarterly LP report?

No, and there nearly was. On August 23, 2023, by a three-to-two vote, the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted a final rule whose quarterly statement component required private fund advisers to prepare and distribute quarterly statements containing detailed fund-level information about performance, adviser compensation and other fund fees and expenses, with additional requirements for illiquid funds including disclosure of both levered and unlevered returns, meaning with and without the impact of fund-level subscription facilities. On June 5, 2024, in National Association of Private Fund Managers v. SEC, No. 23-60471, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated that final rule in its entirety. Everything that would have been mandatory is now, again, a matter of contract and market convention.

What is LP reporting in practice: the calendar

• Quarterly, within the window the agreement specifies: capital account statement, fund-level financial statements, a portfolio schedule with cost and fair value per position, and fee, expense and carried interest detail.
• Event-driven: capital call notices and distribution notices, each with the per-partner amount, the due date and the purpose of the call.
• Annually: audited financial statements and the partner's Schedule K-1. A partnership must furnish each partner a copy of the required return information on or before the day the partnership return is due, so the K-1 calendar is set by the return deadline, and venture funds routinely extend because portfolio company data arrives late.
• Annual meeting and, where one exists, limited partner advisory committee materials.

The ILPA templates, named exactly

ILPA maintains four templates, and naming them correctly matters because their scopes do not overlap.

• The ILPA Reporting Template promotes more uniform reporting practices related to fees, expenses and carried interest. Version 2.0 was developed through 2024 and released in January 2025 as a deliverable of ILPA's Quarterly Reporting Standards Initiative. It is intended to replace the 2016 ILPA Reporting Template on a go-forward basis for funds still in their investment period during the first quarter of 2026 and for funds commencing operations on or after January 1, 2026; general partners may continue to provide the 2016 template for funds that are no longer in their investment period as of the first quarter of 2026.
• The ILPA Performance Template, new in 2025, was developed to standardize return calculation methodologies by creating a framework for capturing performance metrics and the corresponding contributions and distributions. It exists in two versions, a Granular Methodology for managers who use fund-to-investor cash flows and itemize each capital call, and a Gross Up Methodology for managers who use fund-to-investment cash flows or do not itemize calls. It should be used on a go-forward basis for funds commencing operations on or after January 1, 2026.
• The ILPA Capital Call and Distribution Template was refreshed later in 2025 and aligned with the Reporting Template and the Performance Template. ILPA says the updated template gives users an enhanced framework for capturing the accounting details within capital call and distribution notices.
• The ILPA Portfolio Company Template offers comprehensive reporting about the individual companies held by a fund. It is being refreshed so that it meets investor data needs without being overly burdensome, and ILPA says the final product will be released in January 2027.

That sequencing is the single most useful thing to know about LP reporting right now: fee and performance standardization landed in 2025, the capital call and distribution template was refreshed later the same year, and company-level standardization arrives in January 2027.

A worked example: reading a capital account statement

Figures are hypothetical. A limited partner with a 6,000,000 dollar commitment receives a statement for the year ended December 31, 2026.

• Opening capital account at January 1, 2026: 4,100,000 dollars
• Plus contributions during the year: 900,000 dollars, giving 5,000,000 dollars
• Less distributions: 600,000 dollars, giving 4,400,000 dollars
• Less management fee allocated: 150,000 dollars, giving 4,250,000 dollars
• Less other fund expenses allocated: 40,000 dollars, giving 4,210,000 dollars
• Plus net realized and unrealized gain allocated: 1,050,000 dollars
• Closing capital account at December 31, 2026: 5,260,000 dollars

Cumulative contributions since inception are 3,400,000 dollars, so unfunded commitment is 6,000,000 minus 3,400,000, or 2,600,000 dollars. Cumulative distributions are 1,000,000 dollars, so distributions to paid-in capital is 1,000,000 divided by 3,400,000, or 0.29 times. Residual value to paid-in capital is 5,260,000 divided by 3,400,000, or 1.55 times. Total value to paid-in capital is 1,000,000 plus 5,260,000, divided by 3,400,000, which is 6,260,000 over 3,400,000, or 1.84 times, and 0.29 plus 1.55 ties to the same 1.84.

The three checks worth running every quarter: contributions plus distributions reconcile to the call and distribution notices you actually received, the management fee line matches the rate and basis in the agreement, and unfunded commitment on the statement equals your commitment less cumulative contributions with no unexplained adjustment.

Where LP reporting goes wrong

• Performance presented one way in the report and another in the fundraising deck. Whichever figure an investor sees first becomes the benchmark every later number is judged against.
• Subscription line effects left implicit. A facility that delays capital calls shortens the apparent holding period, so a since-inception return computed over the drawn cash reflects the facility as much as the portfolio.
• The portfolio schedule that shows fair value but not cost, which makes it impossible to see what has actually been marked up.
• Fee detail that nets rather than grosses. The point of the ILPA Reporting Template is that fees, expenses and carried interest are shown as separate, uniform lines.
• Late K-1s treated as a tax problem rather than a reporting problem. The delivery date is set by the partnership return deadline, so a slipped close becomes a partner-level compliance issue.

Dedicated reporting and portal software exists and most managers past a first fund use some of it, but the deliverable, the calendar and the reconciliation are the manager's obligation regardless of the tooling.

How it relates to adjacent terms

The capital account statement is the single document at the center of LP reporting; everything else either feeds it or explains it. Net asset value is the input that determines the residual value half of every multiple in the package. Distribution waterfall is what the report must make legible, because a limited partner who cannot tie the carried interest line back to the waterfall in the agreement has no way to check it.

Related tools and reading

• Dilution Calculator
• Fund Size Calculator
• LP Reporting Software
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