Who signs off a portfolio figure, and how a correction carries into the next review

1. Assign each kind of correction to an approver

Corrections to portfolio figures come in three kinds, and each kind goes to the person who owns the judgment behind it.

• Reading corrections. The figure came from the wrong line, period, unit, or currency. The associate or analyst preparing the review fixes it against the source document, and a second reviewer confirms the fix.
• Judgment corrections. The figure was read correctly and your firm treats it differently from management, as with a rejected add-back, a reclassified one-off cost, or a different revenue cut-off. The deal partner or investment director who sits on the company's board approves these. Operating KPIs tied to the value creation plan, such as on-time delivery or plant utilization, go to the operating partner who owns that plan.
• Rule corrections. Your firm changes a definition or method for every company the rule covers. The fund CFO, or whoever owns the reporting rulebook, approves the new version, and the deal teams confirm its effect on their companies.

A common mistake is letting the person who extracted a figure approve their own judgment call on it. The associate fixes reading errors and routes every judgment call to the deal team.

2. Keep these judgments with the investment team

An investment professional keeps every call that changes what the committee believes about a company:

• whether an item management labels one-off is one-off
• whether a miss against plan is a timing difference or a change in the business
• whether to accept management's restatement of a prior period
• the valuation mark and the rating the company carries into the committee
• any conclusion about the management team

An agent assembles the evidence for each of these calls and routes the call to its named owner with the decision open. In Saphenia, the agent marks each call reserved for a human and names who makes it.

James Alan Miller at TechTarget describes the risk in this handoff: "If the reviewer does not understand the evidence behind the recommendation, human oversight can become a rubber stamp." To avoid that, put the evidence beside the decision, so every approval is a judgment on that evidence.

3. Record every correction with six fields

A correction record holds the figure, the source, the rule, who approved it, when, and why.

Take a made-up portfolio company, Orsby Packaging, whose March 2026 monthly management report shows adjusted EBITDA of €4.1m, including €0.5m of add-backs labeled one-off restructuring. The investment director on Orsby's board accepts €0.3m of severance as one-off and rejects €0.2m of consultant fees, which recur under a 24-month advisory contract. That puts the firm's adjusted EBITDA for March at €3.9m.

4. Attach evidence to every conclusion that reaches the committee

Every figure and every conclusion in an investment-committee pack carries its evidence: the document, its version, the exact place in that document, and the period the figure covers.

When Orsby's pack states that March adjusted EBITDA of €3.9m is €0.3m behind the investment case, that sentence carries three pieces of evidence:

1. The March 2026 management report, version received April 14, 2026, page 6 and note 3 on page 11.
2. The correction record approved on April 22, 2026.
3. The final bid model, version submitted June 9, 2025, sheet "Base case", row 42, March 2026 column, which shows €4.2m.

A technical reviewer traces the claim back to the bid model and the monthly management report by opening each locator and finding the figure it is cited for. Keep the bid model and every version of each management report in the document archive the review reads from, so a locator still opens two years later. Send any conclusion that carries a figure without a locator back to the preparer.

For two sources that disagree on a figure, see how to settle reports that disagree, and for assembling the pack, see preparing a portfolio performance review.

5. Carry the correction into the next review

To keep an approved correction in force, have each later draft cite the correction record wherever management's report repeats the item. Orsby's April report again lists €0.2m of consultant fees as a one-off add-back, so the April draft excludes them and cites the March correction record. The approved March figure of €3.9m also feeds every year-to-date and trailing twelve-month total that includes March.

If April's note 3 says the advisory contract ended mid-month, the fact behind the correction has changed, and the item goes back to the investment director for a new call.

6. Change a rule by adding a version with an effective date

A new rule version governs from its effective date. The old version keeps governing every earlier period, so prior-period comparisons keep their meaning.

Orsby's firm issues rulebook v4, effective July 1, 2026. Under v4, adjusted EBITDA is reported before IFRS 16 lease adjustments for every portfolio company. March and April keep their v3 figures as approved. Where the July pack compares July with earlier months, it shows each earlier month twice: the original v3 figure and a v4 restatement, each labeled with its version. Rulebook v4 also adds a version-label rule, and the July pack refuses any comparison that mixes versions without the label.

The Invest Europe Investor Reporting Guidelines (2024) ask managers to disclose changes in valuation or accounting policy. A versioned rulebook gives you the dates and wording for that disclosure. For a portfolio company that redefines their own KPI, see changed KPI definitions and missing facts.

7. Store each review with the rules and sources it used

An auditor who asks which rule and source version produced an earlier review needs a snapshot of every rule version, source document version, correction, and approval that review used. Keep that snapshot with the review.

Give every fact two dates: the period it describes and the date your firm recorded it, so you can answer exactly what the firm knew on April 30 about March. If Orsby's management restates March in September, the April review stays readable as it stood, and the restatement enters the record as a new fact under its own date.

How to tell a review is ready for investment-team approval

A review is ready for approval when every claim in it lands in one of four outcomes, each with its record, as in Orsby's July pack:

• Fulfilled with proof: March adjusted EBITDA of €3.9m, with its locators and the April 22 correction record.
• Refused by a rule: a trend line that set July under v4 beside March under v3 without restating March. The refusal cites the version-label rule in rulebook v4.
• A named gap: July net debt, because the July bank statement for the revolving facility was never received. The gap names the missing document.
• Reserved for a human: a new one-off add-back in July's management report, routed to the investment director.

A pack where every claim resolves into these four outcomes is decision-grade. Sofia Brandt spends her review on the reserved add-back and the net debt gap, since every other claim already carries its record.

What an auditor or LP asks to see

Expect four requests from auditors and LPs:

• one reported figure traced to the exact place in the document it came from
• the rule and rule version that produced it
• every correction to it, with approver, date, and reason
• the dated history of any change in definition or policy

The Invest Europe guidelines also ask for reconciliations of audited accounts and pro-forma figures to the reported ones. The guidelines mark where they align with guidance from the Institutional Limited Partners Association. Treat both as reference points. Your fund documents, your auditors, and your counsel set what you owe your LPs.

Where Saphenia fits

Saphenia runs this method as decision logic for portfolio company reviews. Saphenia reads the reports behind the review from your systems of record, and it applies your reporting rulebook before the review goes out. Hard rules pass or fail outright, while soft preferences apply by default and every override is recorded.

Your investment team reviews and corrects the agent's work, and every correction an expert approves carries into every later review. Changing a rule adds a new version to a governed record of your firm's decision logic. A proof carries the facts, the rule, its version, and the date. Each run pins the source pack, rules, exceptions, and approvals it used, so the run itself is the step 7 snapshot.

The corrections, rules, and decision history sit in your firm's own record, in the environment you choose. If you leave Saphenia, that record leaves with you. Saphenia never trains on your data. Saphenia builds the decision logic in days, and the first decision ships in weeks. Your portfolio monitoring platform keeps collecting and storing reported figures while Saphenia works on the review built from them, as portfolio monitoring software and AI explains.

I'm Charlotte Werger, and I founded Saphenia after running the data organization at H&M as Chief Data and AI Officer. For the rest of the product, see what Saphenia does, and to test it on your own reports, see evaluating a portfolio review pilot.