Simplify share scheme management for your clients

Last updated: 19 April 2024

If you're an accountant, a fractional CFO, a lawyer, a share plan issuer or practitioner, this one's for you...

Your clients want to set up a company share scheme. Good for them!

While you salute your clients for wanting to reward their teams with equity, the thought of chasing information and sifting through shareholder agreements is enough to give anyone a headache.

Not only that, but the cost of non-compliance can be dear, not just for your client but for your reputation. It's crucial to get every detail just right.

No one wants a misunderstanding to come back to bite them, but all too often, that’s exactly what happens. 

Eliminate the chaos with equity management software. Vestd makes managing share schemes a whole lot easier and a whole lot safer for you and your clients.

Here's how:

Effortless equity management

Compliance by design

Authorised and regulated by the FCA, Vestd is also fully synced to Companies House. That means you can automate filing and kiss goodbye to paper for good.

But, more importantly:

• Eliminate human error: dramatically reduce the risk of mishaps and missing docs.
• Fulfill legal obligations: ensure statutory records are up-to-date.

Or as one satisfied customer puts it:

It's great to know the link to Companies House will mean we stay on top of all our reporting requirements.

A single source of truth

A common mistake we see is directors, for instance, filing a confirmation statement to Companies House and then assuming that will have updated the company’s shareholder records - without completing the transfer instruments that actually make changes like that possible (and legal), e.g. stock transfer forms.

Throw in a poorly managed cap table spreadsheet, and you can see how easily companies can end up with multiple sources that say different things.

Because of the two-way connection to Companies House, Vestd can be your single source of truth.

The platform features a legal share register, which can act as a share register as long as the addresses of all shareholders have been added to the platform.

Alternatively, customers can use Companies House as their legal share register. Either way, the platform helps keep everything in line. And whoever logs in can see a digital cap table that's 100% accurate.

Manage multiple clients and schemes

More than one client? More than one share scheme? No problem!

Through the platform, clients (or authorised persons) can authorise new option pools, grant new options and design employee share schemes digitally. And generate items like share certificates and confirmation statements with the click of a button.

Vestd also offers flexible user permissions, which means customers can give specific individuals sight of certain areas of the platform. And create bespoke mailing lists to keep relevant individuals up-to-date.

Digitise existing agreements

You can help your client digitise an existing share scheme or start a new one using your expertly drafted documents as a template. 

Our specialists will review the documentation and shareholder structure, check the cap table is in order and then upload the existing agreements to a secure vault.

Once that's done, you need never worry about inaccurate cap tables or missing docs again.

Shareholder dashboards

As well as giving you and your client total visibility of company ownership, whoever's enrolled on their share scheme can access a dashboard specially made for them.

Each shareholder can see their shares vest over time and model the future value of those shares. Rather than rifle through the filing cabinet to find the original agreements to try and work it out for themselves.

Empowering shareholders in this way makes equity rewards feel real.

Helpful reminders

Vestd makes sure you receive reminders in good time, so you can sleep easy knowing that you’ll never miss an important HMRC deadline again.

Your clients can also use Vestd to automatically update shareholders every time their options vest - so they receive sweet reminders of what they stand to gain.

Your time is valuable

The quicker your clients can digitise their equity management, the better. It’ll make their lives easier later down the line, and yours!

Not only can clients manage shareholders digitally, but also leavers, exercise windows and so on - addressing their needs as their businesses grow.

As you probably already know, there's more than one way to share ownership beyond plain old ordinary shares.

Vestd can accommodate Enterprise Management Incentives (EMIs), Company Share Option Plans (CSOPs), growth shares and unapproved options.

We know that share scheme management can be a daunting task. But it doesn’t have to be, not when you do it digitally. Save yourself and your clients time, money, pain and paperwork.

Book a free consultation today to find out more. And do check out our partner programme.

Meet with Vestd