How VC Quarterly Reports Work: 45-Day Deadline, ILPA Template, and What LPs Actually Read

ILPA recommends VC funds deliver quarterly reports within 45 days of quarter-end, yet the average LP spends real attention on maybe 3 of a report's 15-25 pages: the cover letter, the TVPI/DPI table, and the top markup list.

That's the short answer. The longer answer is that the gap between what GPs spend two weeks producing and what LPs actually absorb is enormous, and it's gotten more pronounced since ILPA rewrote its Reporting Template in January 2025 to standardize the data every fund is supposed to hand over. I've sat on both sides of this letter — writing them as a GP and reading a stack of them every quarter as an LP — and the mechanics rarely match the mythology founders and first-time managers assume.

How VC Quarterly Reports Work: The Actual Mechanics

A VC quarterly report is a package a fund's GP sends every three months to its LPs, combining a narrative letter, a capital account statement showing what that specific LP has called and owes, and fund-level performance metrics like IRR, TVPI, and DPI. Most funds build it on a 45-day cycle: data lock around day 30, a draft by day 35, GP and fund-admin review by day 40, and delivery to LPs by day 45 — the same window ILPA recommends as best practice.

The report itself typically runs 15-25 pages and stacks in a predictable order: a GP letter (1-3 pages), fund-level performance metrics (1-2 pages), a capital account statement specific to that LP (1 page), portfolio company updates (5-15 pages depending on portfolio size), and a schedule of investments or cap table appendix. Funds using a third-party administrator like Carta, Standish, or Gen II generate the performance and capital-account sections automatically from the fund's books; the GP letter and portfolio narrative are the only parts a partner actually writes from scratch each quarter.

The 2025 ILPA Reporting Template Rewrite

ILPA released an updated Reporting Template in January 2025 as the flagship deliverable of its Quarterly Reporting Standards Initiative — a year-long process in 2024 that pulled in hundreds of LPs, GPs, and service providers to standardize what a capital account statement and performance summary should actually contain. The new template applies by default to any fund still in its investment period as of Q1 2026, or to funds that launched on or after January 1, 2026; funds already past their investment period can keep using the older 2016 template or switch voluntarily.

Figures blended from ILPA's Reporting Template guidance (ilpa.org, released January 2025), Carta's VC Fund Performance Q1 2025 and Q1 2026 data releases, and standard LPA reporting-covenant ranges cited by fund administrators including Gen II and Citco.

What LPs Actually Read in a VC Quarterly Report

This is the part GPs consistently overestimate. An LP managing a portfolio of 20-40 fund relationships isn't reading every portfolio company update line by line every quarter — they're triaging. In practice, three sections get real attention, and everything else gets a skim or a skip:

The GP letter — read in full, every time. This is the one section a partner writes fresh each quarter, and LPs use it to judge candor as much as content. A letter that leads with the honest headline — a down round, a write-off, a slower fundraising market — gets more trust over time than one that buries bad news on page 9 of a portfolio appendix.

The capital account and performance summary — read in full. IRR, TVPI, DPI, and the LP's specific called/uncalled capital numbers are the section institutional LPs pull directly into their own internal tracking systems, which is exactly why ILPA standardized this section first. Funds using a mismatched or non-standard format here create real friction for LPs running multi-fund portfolios.

The top markups and write-offs — read closely. LPs scan for the 3-5 biggest valuation changes in either direction, since that's where real signal about portfolio health lives quarter to quarter.

The full portfolio company grid — skimmed at best. A 15-page appendix listing every portfolio company's status, last round, and one-line update gets scanned for names an LP recognizes and otherwise archived unread. Funds that assume every LP is reading every company update are, in practice, writing for an audience of one — themselves. Our VC performance dashboard tracks the same headline IRR/TVPI/DPI benchmarks LPs pull from these reports, by vintage year.

Why DPI Is Eating TVPI's Lunch in 2026 Reports

The single biggest shift in how LPs read quarterly reports over the past two years is a hard pivot from TVPI to DPI as the number that actually matters. TVPI includes unrealized markups — paper gains that can reverse before an exit ever happens — while DPI is cash an LP has actually received back. Markups climbed for nearly every vintage from 2017 through 2024 over the past six quarters per Carta's data, but the cash hasn't caught up: roughly a third of 2021-vintage funds and just under a quarter of both the 2022 and 2023 vintages have distributed any DPI at all as of Q1 2026.

For a mature 2017-vintage fund, a median TVPI of 1.72x is still carrying 0.27x of realized DPI and 1.45x of unrealized markup nearly a decade in — a reminder of how long venture capital takes to convert paper to cash even in a good vintage. That's why sophisticated LPs increasingly ask GPs to lead the quarterly letter with a DPI and realized-proceeds line rather than a headline TVPI multiple, and why funds that keep leading with TVPI in a distributions-starved market are getting more pointed questions on their next annual meeting call.

How to Write a VC Quarterly Report LPs Will Actually Read

Given what actually gets read, the practical playbook for a GP is straightforward, even if most funds don't follow it:

Lead the letter with the headline, good or bad. One paragraph, plain language, before any market commentary. LPs read this section closely enough to notice when a fund buries the real news.

Put DPI next to TVPI, not below it. In a market where cash distributions lag markups by years, showing both numbers side by side signals a GP isn't hiding behind paper gains.

Use the ILPA template format if you can. Institutional LPs running multi-fund portfolios pull data directly from a standardized capital account statement; a bespoke format creates friction that costs a fund goodwill it doesn't need to spend.

Cap the portfolio grid at what's actually material. Highlighting the 3-5 companies with real news and summarizing the rest in a single table respects that most LPs are triaging 20-plus of these reports every quarter, not reading yours as their only fund relationship.

The cost of getting this wrong compounds. A fund that consistently ships late, buries bad news, or reformats its capital account statement every quarter isn't just annoying an LP — it's generating the exact friction that shows up on a re-up decision two years later. LPs I've talked to on our own diligence calls say a chronically late or sloppy quarterly report is one of the few reporting-only signals that can independently sink a Fund II conversation, separate from the fund's actual return numbers. Consistency and candor compound the same way returns do; they just take longer to show up on a spreadsheet.

The Bottom Line

VC quarterly reports run on a 45-day clock, follow an increasingly standardized ILPA format as of the January 2025 template rewrite, and get read far less completely than the hours GPs spend producing them would suggest. LPs consistently open the cover letter, the capital account and performance summary, and the top markup list — and skim the rest.

The DPI-over-TVPI shift is the real story inside the reporting mechanics right now: with only about a third of 2021-vintage funds and roughly a quarter of 2022-2023 vintage funds showing any cash distributions as of Q1 2026, LPs are reading every report with cash conversion as the lens, not paper markups. Funds that adapt their reporting to that lens — lead with the headline, put DPI next to TVPI, standardize the format — are the ones building the trust that gets a Fund II raised faster.