How to Track PE Distributions: Cash-In Date and Carry

How to track PE distributions is a cash-in ledger, not a quarterly NAV screenshot. ILPA’s 2011 Capital Call & Distribution Notice Best Practices treat a distribution notice as the basis for the LP’s monitoring, not a substitute for your own book. Raziel’s capital-call tracking guide is the cash-out side of the same dated ledger: calls leave, distributions arrive. Both need a date, a type, and an amount you can still find. This page is the wire, not the three-column performance line.

Cash-in date, not the PDF date

ILPA’s 2011 template wants two dates on every notice: issue date (date of notice) and due date (settlement date). Post the cash on the settlement date — the day the wire landed or the stock settled — not the week the PDF hit email and not the quarter-end on the capital-account statement. Without that date, an IRR calculator is guessing.

Copy at least these fields, even when the letter is thin:

• Issue date and settlement date

• Fund legal name, currency, and your commitment

• Net amount to you, plus each component (holding name; return of capital vs. gain vs. income)

• Whether any slice is stock: security name, ticker, share count, value at the distribution date, cost basis, settlement location

• Unfunded commitment, cumulative contributions, and cumulative distributions before and after the notice

ILPA’s glossary: distributions are cash and/or securities paid out to limited partners from the partnership. The 2011 cover-letter guidelines for stock ask for ticker, shares, historical cost, current value, settlement location, and sale restrictions. Value the shares on the settlement date the notice uses, then leave that cash-in row alone when the market later moves.

ILPA’s Capital Call & Distribution Template v2.0 (September 2025) is a supplement to the existing GP notice, not a replacement. Keep the PDF. Then post the cash on the settlement date, in the categories the notice uses.

Recallable vs. not

ILPA’s glossary: recallable is the total amount of distributions that may be recalled by the fund at a future date. A non-recallable distribution is cash the GP cannot call again. Mix the two and you will treat a temporary return as harvested capital.

ILPA’s 2011 transaction types already split this. Dist: Temporary Return of Capital – Investment (or Fees/Expenses) can be called again. Dist: Return of Capital – Cash cannot. Template v2.0 removed standalone Recallable Distribution types. ILPA’s September 2025 guidance: whether a line is recallable is inferred from its impact on LP unfunded commitment, and GPs should still note in the Transaction Description field if a distribution, or a portion of it, is recallable. A recallable distribution is still a distribution, with a corresponding increase to unfunded. Do not net a later recall against the original cash-in row. Two events, two dates.

The updated template is built gross-of-recallables. GPs who capture cumulative cash flows net of recallable distributions should disclose that in the footnotes. Your ledger should match the notice: if unfunded went up, the distribution was recallable. Flag it on the row.

Carry already taken out

The amount that hit your account is often already net of carried interest. ILPA’s 2011 best practices: with each distribution, the GP should disclose the exact amount of carry taken and provide a build-up to the carry calculation. Dist: Carry is the GP’s share of distribution proceeds, as an offset to the distribution. Dist: Clawback is a return of excess carry, as an offset to Carry.

ILPA’s Performance Template, for funds commencing operations on or after January 1, 2026, is built to capture distributions to limited partners as net-of-carry, then add carry back when calculating gross performance. GPs who display distributions as gross-of-carry, then subtract carry to get net, should disclose that in the footnotes. Log both figures if the notice prints them: gross proceeds and net to you. IRR on the cash you actually received uses the net wire. Do not paste a gross distribution into a net DPI column.

The v2.0 template still has an optional Supplemental Calculations section for waterfall/carry and clawback questions. If the GP fills it, attach it to the row. If they don’t, store the net amount and a note that carry detail was not on the notice — do not invent a 20 percent haircut.

The DPI bump

ILPA’s glossary, citing GIPS: DPI is the ratio of money distributed to limited partners by the fund, relative to contributions. Any recallable distributions should be included in the numerator. Any reinvested capital (resulting from recallable distributions) should be included in the denominator. A recallable distribution still bumped DPI. If that capital is called again, paid-in rises. That is the bump this page exists to catch: cash-in that can be recalled is still in the DPI numerator until it is recalled.

Raziel’s TVPI vs DPI vs RVPI page is how to read the three columns once the cash is posted. This page is the posting. A private equity spreadsheet that holds commitment, called, unfunded, NAV, and the multiples is the book; the distribution row is the cash-in line that makes DPI move.

Same ledger as the calls

Calls and distributions are opposite directions on one cash-flow table: date, direction, ILPA-style type, amount, unfunded delta, recallable flag, carry already taken, and a link to the notice. Spreadsheets work while the book is small. They break when a recallable return, a net-of-carry wire, and a stock distribution hit the same commitment and you only kept a running “distributions to date” cell.

Raziel markets an alternative-asset dashboard that tracks IRR, MOIC, and capital calls. The honest input on the way back is still that dated cash-in row. Raziel Holdings, Inc. does not provide financial, tax, or legal advice. When someone asks what you have actually received, send the settlement dates, not a headline DPI.