A fund's NAV guide and a founder's stock guide are not one

The record

Separate from the compensation-focused guide above, the AICPA publishes a distinct Accounting and Valuation Guide, Valuation of Portfolio Company Investments of Venture Capital and Private Equity Funds and Other Investment Companies. The AICPA's own product page, catalogued as AVGPCI19E, states the guide was developed for preparers of financial statements, independent auditors and valuation specialists, and a companion resources article dated 31 December 2018 names the AICPA PE/VC Task Force as its author. This reflects both pages as retrieved on 16 September 2026.

What the sources establish

The AICPA describes this guide as nonauthoritative guidance for entities within the scope of FASB ASC 946, Financial Services, Investment Companies, including private equity funds, venture capital funds, hedge funds and business development companies, and states it may also be useful to non-investment-company vehicles such as corporate venture groups, though those were not contemplated in preparing it. The article page states the guidance is focused on measuring fair value for financial reporting purposes. The product page lists sixteen case studies addressing unit of account, transaction costs, calibration, the impact of control and marketability, and backtesting a prior valuation against a later transaction, all framed as fund-level fair value questions rather than the compensation valuation the companion guide addresses.

Scope and revision

This is a distinct document from the compensation-securities practice aid: different task force, different scope, and a different intended reader, preparers of a fund's own financial statements rather than a portfolio company's compensation committee. Both guides describe themselves as nonauthoritative professional guidance rather than an accounting standard in their own right; ASC 946 and ASC 820 remain the actual accounting and fair value authorities the guide is written to help apply. The article's December 2018 date and the product catalogue's 2019 designation indicate this edition postdates the compensation guide's last full release, so a fund citing it should specify which edition informed a given valuation.

The decision in front of you

This is editorial: an LP or analyst reviewing a fund's NAV should not assume a citation to AICPA valuation guidance means the same document regardless of context; a manager valuing its own fund's portfolio company holdings is applying this guide, while a portfolio company valuing stock it grants to employees is applying the separate compensation guide, and the two produce figures that answer different questions.

• Does the disclosure specify which AICPA guide, fund-level or compensation, informed the cited valuation?
• Which of the sixteen case-study issues, such as calibration or backtesting, does the fund's own methodology note address?
• Is the guide being applied to an entity actually within ASC 946's scope, or to a vehicle the guide itself says was not contemplated?

Two AICPA guides can sit on the same shelf and answer different questions; conflating a fund's portfolio-company mark with a company's own compensation valuation treats two distinct professional exercises as one.