Module 1: What is Portfolio? — Portfolio for Dummies

The Elevator Pitch

Imagine you manage a private equity fund. You've raised $100M from a dozen investors. Over the next 10 years, you'll call their capital in installments, invest it into companies, harvest returns, and send distributions back. At every step, each investor wants to know: how much have I put in, what is it worth now, and what have I gotten back?

That's what Portfolio does. It's an investor-facing portfolio monitoring and reporting platform. It tracks capital commitments, transactions, valuations, and calculates the performance metrics (IRR, TVPI, DPI) that investors care about.

Think of it this way

Portfolio is the scoreboard, not the game engine. It records what happened (subscriptions, capital calls, distributions) and computes metrics from those records. It doesn't originate deals, process payments, or handle investor onboarding — those happen elsewhere in the Delio/Verivend ecosystem.

What Portfolio Does

Let's break down the module's capabilities into three layers:

Layer 1: Data Store

Records the facts of fund activity

Investors — who has committed capital
Assets — the funds and direct investments being managed
Transactions — subscriptions, capital calls, distributions, transfers, fees
Cash Flows — the individual financial records within transactions (what the calc service actually reads)
Valuations — point-in-time asset NAVs (net asset values)

Layer 2: Calculation Engine

Computes performance metrics from raw data

Committed / Called / Uncalled Capital — where is the money?
DPI (Distributions to Paid-In) — how much has come back?
TVPI (Total Value to Paid-In) — what's the total return multiple?
RVPI (Residual Value to Paid-In) — what's still unrealized?
XIRR — annualized rate of return, accounting for timing of cash flows
Allocation breakdowns — by geography, sector, vintage, strategy

Layer 3: Reporting & Presentation

Surfaces data to users through dashboards and documents

Dashboard widgets — capital overview, valuation bridge, allocation charts
Tables — investors, investments, ledger, transactions (with Excel export)
PDF generation — quarterly performance reports, capital call notices, distribution notices
Multi-currency — display in any supported currency with exchange rate conversion

What Portfolio Does NOT Do

Portfolio is frequently compared to tools it was never designed to compete with. Here's the boundary:

Capability	Portfolio?	Where It Lives Instead
Track investor commitments & transactions	Yes	-
Calculate IRR / TVPI / DPI	Yes	-
Generate quarterly performance reports	Yes	-
Double-entry accounting / general ledger	No	Fund admin systems (Allvue, Investran, eFront)
Waterfall / carried interest calculations	No	Fund admin systems
Process actual payments (ACH, wire)	No	Verivend payment infrastructure
Investor onboarding / KYC	No	Delio Core / Verivend
Deal origination and management	No	Delio Core
Chart of accounts	No	Not built anywhere yet
ILPA-compliant reporting templates	Partial	Gap area — covers metrics but not the standard template format
Master-feeder / parallel fund structures	Partial	Asset hierarchy exists, but not purpose-built for complex structures

Portfolio Is Not a General Ledger

A PE-grade GL has double-entry journals, a chart of accounts, multi-basis reporting, and audit-grade controls. Portfolio has none of that. It is a portfolio tracker and reporting tool — a read-heavy system optimized for showing investors where their money is, not an accounting system of record.

The Three User Types

Portfolio serves different views to different users. Understanding who sees what is fundamental:

The GPs and their operations teams — the people managing funds and sharing portfolio data with investors. They have the most access:

Create and manage assets (funds, direct investments)
Create and manage investor records
Record all transaction types (subscriptions, capital calls, distributions, etc.)
Upload bulk data via XLSX import
Run valuations and generate reports
Configure platform settings, report branding, fee display
See the full "Group View" — all investors across all assets

Permissions are granular: can-create-portfolio-asset, can-add-investor-transaction, can-delete-investor-transaction, can-use-import-tool, etc.

Limited Partners viewing their own portfolio. They see "My View" — scoped to their investments only:

Dashboard with their committed capital, paid-in, distributions, and performance metrics
Their investments and current valuations
Their documents (capital call notices, distribution notices, quarterly reports)
Their transaction history
Can request redemptions or asset transfers (which enter an approval workflow)

Investors cannot see other investors' data, create transactions, or modify anything. They can only view and make requests.

Wealth advisors and relationship managers who oversee a subset of investors:

See the portfolio overview and their assigned investors
Read-only access — cannot create or modify data
Useful for wealth management firms where advisors need to see their clients' positions

Where Portfolio Fits in the Ecosystem

Portfolio doesn't stand alone. It's one service in a larger platform:

Delio Core

Deals, Users, Onboarding

→

Portfolio

Transactions, Metrics

↔

Calc Service

gRPC / Go

Delio Frontend

React UI

Horizon

Auth, Users, Permissions

Service Rates

FX Rates DB

Here's how data typically flows:

Delio Core creates an investor and a fund — sends them to Portfolio via the Machine API
An admin uploads transaction data (subscriptions, capital calls) via XLSX bulk import or enters them through the UI
When someone views the dashboard, Portfolio asks the Go Calculation Service (via gRPC) to compute metrics from the raw data
The calc service reads directly from the same PostgreSQL database, crunches the numbers, and returns results
Portfolio caches the results in Redis and serves them through widgets, tables, and charts in the React frontend

Why a separate calculation service?

Financial calculations (especially XIRR) are computationally expensive and benefit from Go's concurrency model. The Go service fires parallel goroutines for each calculation type, uses worker pools for large datasets, and handles all the decimal precision and currency conversion. Keeping this separate from the Laravel app means neither blocks the other.

Multi-Tenancy: One Codebase, Many Clients

Portfolio uses a schema-per-tenant architecture in PostgreSQL. Each client (organization) gets their own isolated database schema with the exact same table structure. There's also a "landlord" database that tracks which tenants exist.

This means:

Client A's investors, assets, and transactions are completely invisible to Client B
When you configure settings (reporting quarter, currency, report branding), it only affects that tenant
Schema migrations run against every tenant — there's no "this client has different tables" situation
The Go calc service receives the schema name with every gRPC request and queries against that specific schema

Key Terminology

You'll encounter these terms constantly. If you already know PE basics, skim this. If not, bookmark it.

Term	What It Means in Portfolio
Asset	Any investment vehicle — a PE fund, a direct equity position, a real estate holding. The broadest container.
PE Fund (Private Equity Fund)	A pooled vehicle where LPs commit capital that gets drawn down over time. Has capital calls, distributions, and NAV tracking. This is the more complex asset structure.
Direct Investment	A direct stake in a specific company or project. Simpler model: invest, hold (track value), exit. No capital call cycle.
Sub-Position	A child asset within a fund — share classes, underlying investments. Creates a hierarchy.
NAV	Net Asset Value — the current valuation of an asset or fund.
VPU	Value Per Unit — NAV divided by total units outstanding.

Term	What It Means in Portfolio
Subscription	An LP joining a fund — committing capital. Three flavors: Drawdown (pay later), Units Assigned (get units now), Fully Paid Up (pay everything upfront).
Capital Call	The fund asks LPs to wire a portion of their committed capital. Usually a percentage of commitment.
Distribution	Money flowing back to LPs — dividends, redemptions, or other income.
Redemption	An LP getting capital back by surrendering units. The value gets split into return-of-capital vs. capital gain.
Asset Transfer	Moving ownership from one investor to another (secondary market activity).

Metric	What It Tells You	Formula
DPI	How much cash has come back relative to what went in	Distributions / Paid-In
TVPI	Total return multiple (realized + unrealized)	(NAV + Distributions) / Paid-In
RVPI	How much unrealized value remains	NAV / Paid-In
XIRR	Annualized return rate, accounting for cash flow timing	Numerical solver (Newton/Secant method)
Capital Gains	Value created beyond what was invested	NAV + Distributions - Paid-In

Knowledge Check

Question 1

A client asks: "Can Portfolio calculate our carried interest waterfall?" What's the right answer?

Yes — it handles all fund performance calculations

No — Portfolio calculates investor-level metrics (IRR, TVPI, DPI) but not waterfall distributions or carried interest. Those require a fund accounting system.

Maybe — it depends on the fund structure

Correct! Portfolio tracks what went in and what came back, and computes return metrics from that data. But the GP economics — carry, hurdle rates, clawbacks — are outside its scope.

Not quite. Portfolio is a portfolio tracker, not a fund accounting system. It calculates investor-level return metrics (IRR, TVPI, DPI) but does not handle waterfall mechanics, carried interest, or GP economics.

Question 2

Where do the DPI, TVPI, and XIRR numbers actually get calculated?

In the Laravel Portfolio app's PHP code

In the React frontend using JavaScript

In a separate Go microservice that the Laravel app calls via gRPC

Correct! The heavy calculation work — XIRR, TVPI, DPI, allocation breakdowns, valuation bridges — lives in a dedicated Go gRPC microservice called portfolio-calculations. The Laravel app handles data storage and business logic, then calls the Go service when metrics are needed. The Go service reads from the same PostgreSQL database and returns computed results.

Not quite. While the Laravel app orchestrates the process and caches results, the actual financial calculations (XIRR, TVPI, DPI, etc.) are performed by a separate Go microservice (portfolio-calculations) communicating over gRPC. We'll cover this architecture in detail in Module 2.

Question 3

An investor logs into Portfolio. What can they see?

Everything — all investors, all assets, all transactions

Only their own portfolio — their investments, documents, transactions, and performance metrics. They can view and request (redemptions, transfers) but not create or modify data.

They can see all assets but only their own transactions

Correct! Investors see "My View" — scoped entirely to their own data. They can view their dashboard, investments, documents, and transactions. They can request redemptions or asset transfers (which enter an approval workflow), but they cannot create transactions, modify data, or see other investors.

Not quite. Investors see a strictly scoped "My View" — only their own investments, documents, and transactions. They cannot see other investors' data or the full "Group View" that fund managers access.

What's Next

Now that you know what Portfolio is (and isn't), the next module dives into how it's built. You'll map the architecture — the Laravel app, the Go calculation service, the multi-tenant PostgreSQL setup, and the three API surfaces that feed data in and out.