Resources·for PE firms
The 100-day reporting plan post-close
What to standardize in a portfolio company's finance function in the first 100 days after an investment, such as chart of accounts mapping, KPI baseline, and covenant calendar setup, roughly in that order.
The reporting habits a portfolio company forms in its first 100 days as part of the fund tend to persist for the rest of the hold. Get the chart of accounts mapping wrong at the start, and every KPI built on top of it inherits the error. Skip a proper covenant calendar in month one, and the fund finds out about a compliance issue from a lender letter instead of from its own monitoring.
This is not the same plan as the 100-day operational or commercial plan most deal teams already run. It is narrower and more mechanical: get the finance function reporting the right things, in the right format, on the right schedule, before the first board meeting, not after it.
Days 1-30: chart of accounts mapping
Before any KPI can be trusted at the portfolio level, the fund needs to know how the portco's own chart of accounts maps to the fund's reporting categories. This is unglamorous, and it is the single highest-leverage task in the first month.
| Task | Why it comes first |
|---|---|
| Map local chart of accounts to fund categories | Revenue, COGS, opex, and EBITDA add-backs need a defined mapping before any comparison to other portcos is meaningful. |
| Agree the EBITDA definition in writing | One-off items, management fees, and normalisation adjustments are exactly where post-close disputes start. Get this signed off, not assumed. |
| Confirm the accounting system and export format | Whether it's Xero, local ERP, or a bookkeeper's own spreadsheet, the fund needs to know what data is available and how often. |
| Identify who owns monthly reporting | Many SMEs have no dedicated finance lead. If that's the case here, decide now who is accountable, such as the CEO, an external bookkeeper, or a newly hired controller. |
Days 31-60: KPI baseline
With the mapping in place, the next 30 days should get most of the way toward establishing what "normal" looks like for this company, the baseline every future month gets measured against. Treat day 60 as a target for substantial completion, not a hard deadline. One of the tasks below routinely takes longer than the rest.
| Task | Why it comes second |
|---|---|
| Reconstruct 12-24 months of history in the new format | Trend lines and LTM figures are useless without history mapped to the same categories agreed in phase one. |
| Pick the 6-10 KPIs this company will report monthly | Not every KPI framework fits every business. Agree the specific set now, rather than adding metrics ad hoc after every board meeting. |
| Set the budget the company will be measured against | If the investment case included a budget, formalise it as the reporting baseline. If not, build one now, before month three, when variance commentary starts. |
| Agree the reporting pack template | Fix the format the board will see every month, so month two's pack looks like month eleven's, comparable, not reinvented each cycle. |
The task that regularly runs long is restating history. If pre-close bookkeeping was incomplete, inconsistent, or simply not kept to a standard that survives scrutiny, common in exactly the SME and lower-mid-market deals this plan is written for, reconstructing 12-24 months of clean history can itself require a cleanup pass first: resolving opening balance issues, chasing missing invoices, reclassifying items that were never booked correctly. When that's the case, don't let it block phase three. Covenant calendar setup can run in parallel with a slower history restatement, as long as the KPI definitions and reporting pack template are locked first.
Days 61-100: covenant calendar setup
The final phase turns covenant compliance from something checked reactively into something monitored on a fixed schedule.
| Task | Why it comes last |
|---|---|
| Inventory every covenant across all facilities | Lender covenants and investor covenants from the shareholder agreement, listed together with thresholds and test dates. |
| Confirm each covenant's formula against the KPI baseline | This only works once the KPI definitions from phase two are settled. Net debt / EBITDA means nothing until EBITDA is defined. |
| Build the test-date calendar | Quarterly certificate deadlines, annual audit requirements, and any springing covenants tied to drawn amounts, all in one calendar, not scattered across facility agreements. |
| Set an internal review cadence ahead of each test date | Review headroom at least one full reporting cycle before each formal test, so a drift toward breach is visible while there is still time to act. |
| Name an owner for ongoing covenant monitoring | Decide whether it's the portco's own CFO or the fund's ops team who watches headroom between test dates. The deal team that built the calendar won't be the one monitoring it in month eight. |
The 100 days at a glance
Where funds usually cut corners
Skipping straight to KPIs before the mapping is settled
A KPI dashboard built on an unmapped chart of accounts looks precise and is wrong. Every restatement after the fact erodes the board's trust in the numbers.
Treating the 100-day plan as the deal team's job alone
The portco's own finance function has to own this going forward. If the deal team builds it and hands over a finished spreadsheet, nobody at the company understands how to maintain it after month four.
Waiting for the first board meeting to define the reporting pack
By the time the first board pack is due, there usually isn't time left to agree a format calmly. Fix it in week one instead, even if it's provisional.
Assuming a first read of the facility agreement catches every covenant
Springing covenants and cross-default clauses often only activate under specific conditions and get missed on a first pass. See common covenant failure modes for what else regularly gets missed.
Standardize this once per portfolio company, not once per fund
New portfolio companies onboard onto AHQ Financials with the same KPI framework and covenant structure every time. Your fund sees each one land in AHQ Insights already reporting consistently. No separate 100-day spreadsheet project for every new investment.