How to keep a single source of truth for your equity
Spreadsheets drift. One version lives in your inbox, another on the lawyer's drive, a third in a board deck from two rounds ago, and by the time someone asks "who actually owns what?", no one is sure which one is right. A single source of truth fixes that: one record, always current, that everyone reads from. That is what your Cap Table is in Cake, and it is the difference between equity you can hand to an investor with confidence and equity you have to reconcile first.
Everything in one place
Your Cap Table holds every instrument together: shares, stock options, RSUs and RSAs, SAFEs and convertible notes, and warrants. Signed documents and certificates are stored against the stakeholder and the security they belong to, so the paperwork never lives in a separate folder from the record it proves. Nothing to cross-reference, nothing to hunt for.
Always up to date
Every time you issue, transfer, convert, or cancel a security, your Cap Table updates with it. Because the record changes as events happen, there is no separate "master" spreadsheet to keep in sync by hand, and no quiet drift between what happened and what your numbers say happened.
The right view for each person
One record, but not one view. Everyone sees what is relevant to them, and nothing they shouldn't:
Admins manage everything in the company view.
Investors and employees see only their own holdings in the My Cake portal.
This is what keeps a single source of truth usable: the underlying record stays whole while each person gets a view built for them. See Understanding company view vs My Cake portal.
Keep it accurate over time
Accuracy is not a one-time setup, it is something you can prove on demand:
Use the audit log to see every change, who made it, and when. See Audit log.
Generate a Cap Table report for any date to check ownership at a point in time. See Generate Cap Table reports by date.
What happens next
When everything lives in one accurate record, the hard moments get easier. You can share a clean Cap Table with an investor, pull a report for a board meeting, or open up for due diligence without rebuilding anything from scratch. That is equity you are never embarrassed to show.