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Settings — Overview & Concepts
Settings is where you set up your firm in Cairn: its profile and reporting defaults, its funds, who's on the team and what each person can do, your plan, and your security policies. Open it from Settings at the bottom of the sidebar.
Your personal settings (your profile and the organizations you belong to) live separately, under My account.
What problem it solves
As a firm grows, not everyone should be able to change everything, and not everyone should see every fund. Settings is where you decide that, and where Cairn is set up to report the way your firm does.
| Feature | The problem | What Cairn does |
|---|---|---|
| Organizations | People who work with more than one firm mix up data | Each firm is a separate organization with its own data; switch between them in one click |
| Roles | Anyone can change anything, including capital calls | Admin, Partner, Analyst, and Viewer roles, with buttons hidden for actions a role can't take |
| Fund access | An analyst on one fund sees every fund's LPs and companies | Limit a member to specific funds, and they only see those funds' records |
| Reporting defaults | Every page shows dollars and US dates, whatever your firm uses | Your base currency, number and date formats, and the metrics you report, applied everywhere |
| Security | No control over how people sign in | Require two-factor authentication, set a session timeout, and limit invitations to your email domains |
| KPI alerts | A company running low on cash is noticed only when someone happens to look | Alerts under the bell at the top of every page when a company crosses your firm's thresholds for runway, revenue, burn, or missing figures |
| Audit log | Nobody can say who changed what, or when | A record of sign-ins, exports, permission changes, settings changes, confirmed financials, and LP portal activity (invitations, sharing, and downloads) |
The examples below use a made-up firm and companies to show how each feature is used.
Example: bringing on an analyst for one fund. A firm hires an analyst to work only on Fund II. An Admin invites them as an Analyst with access to Fund II only. The analyst can add Fund II's portfolio companies and read their board packs, but doesn't see Fund I's LPs or companies, and doesn't see the buttons for capital calls (Partners and Admins only). Their invitation, and any later role change, appear in the audit log.
Example: a European firm. An Admin sets the base currency to EUR, the number format to 1.234.567,89, and the date format to 14 Oct 2026, and turns off IRR until the firm has enough history to report it. Every page and table follows these settings from then on.
What's in Settings
| Page | What it covers |
|---|---|
| General | Firm profile, reporting defaults, Cairn Intelligence's AI provider, and the danger zone (transfer ownership, delete the organization) |
| Funds | Your funds: name, vintage, committed capital, currency, and status |
| Team | Members, invitations, roles, and which funds each person can see |
| Roles & permissions | What each role can do, as a read-only table |
| Notifications | Portfolio KPI alerts: which alerts are on and their thresholds |
| Billing | Your current plan and usage |
| Security | Sign-in policies, your active sessions, and exporting all your firm's data |
| Audit log | A record of sign-ins, exports, permission changes, settings changes, LP portal activity, and other events |
The Settings home page also shows a short setup checklist for a new firm.
Organizations
Each firm is an organization. Everything in Cairn — funds, deals, portfolio companies, LPs, documents, and the team — belongs to one organization and is never shared with another.
You can belong to more than one organization, for example if you work with two firms. Switch between them with the organization switcher at the top of the sidebar. Your role can be different in each one.
Roles
Every member of an organization has exactly one role. Everyone can view everything they have access to; the role decides what they can change.
| Action | Admin | Partner | Analyst | Viewer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| View portfolio and dashboards | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Create and edit deals | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Edit portfolio companies and cap tables | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Run Cairn Intelligence | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Approve IC memos | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Generate LP reports | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Send capital calls and distributions | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Manage LPs | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Manage funds | ✓ | |||
| Manage integrations | ✓ | |||
| Manage team, billing and security | ✓ |
Buttons for actions your role can't perform are hidden, so different members can see slightly different screens. The same table is always available under Settings › Roles & permissions.
Fund access
Admins can also limit a member to specific funds. A member with access to some funds only sees those funds and the records that belong to them: their LPs, capital calls, distributions, statements, and the portfolio companies linked to them.
"All funds" access includes funds you add later.
Key terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Organization | One firm in Cairn, with its own data, team, and billing |
| Owner | The person who created the organization, or to whom ownership was transferred. Only the owner can transfer ownership or delete the organization |
| Role | Admin, Partner, Analyst, or Viewer: decides what a member can change |
| Fund access | Which funds a member can see: all funds, or a chosen list |
| Reporting defaults | Your firm's base currency, number and date formats, and the metrics shown on dashboards and LP reports |
| Audit log | The firm's record of who did what, and when |