At a financing or an acquisition, investor counsel asks for the corporate records package. Historically that's a folder of PDFs, half from email and half from a filing cabinet, reconciled by hand under deadline. The compliance dossier in Octelligence assembles the package in one click: cap table, every certificate, the minute book, the registers — and it's verifiable, so the recipient can confirm the file hasn't been altered after the fact.
Plan requirement. The compliance dossier is a Scale-plan feature, also included on Portfolio Licensing. On Growth and below, use the individual exports — cap table PDF, certificate PDFs, minute-book document downloads — and assemble manually. The dossier is the one-click version.
What's in the dossier
A generated dossier is a single PDF containing:
- Cover page with corporation name, the "as of" date, who prepared it (your firm or the corporation itself), and a verification URL with the dossier's SHA-256 hash
- Cap table at the as-of date, with totals by share class, holder detail, and fully-diluted ownership
- Share certificates — every active certificate with full detail; revoked and superseded certificates are listed for completeness
- Share register with the chain of title for every active position
- Minute book table of contents with every resolution, meeting minute, and authorizing document keyed to the entries they support
- Directors register — current roster and historical entries with appointment and resignation dates
- Officers register — same structure as directors
- Board members register — including investor designees and observers if tracked
- Options register — granted, vested, exercised, cancelled, expired, with grant agreements referenced
- Warrants register — same structure
- SAFEs register — including conversion status at the as-of date
- Filings history — annual returns and statutory filings completed, with dates and confirmation references
- Activity log excerpt — relevant entries since the last dossier, for context
Step-by-step
Open Compliance Dossier
From the corporation's workspace, open Compliance Dossier. The page lists every dossier you've previously generated for this corporation with date, prepared-for line, and a download link.
Generate a new dossier
Click Generate dossier and enter:
- As-of date (optional) — the date the dossier should be dated. Defaults to today. Backdate when you need the record as of a closing date.
- Prepared for (optional) — the recipient line on the cover page, e.g., "Series Seed Investor Counsel" or "Acme Co. acquisition team."
- Firm name (optional) — your firm's name if you're a law firm or accounting practice preparing the dossier on behalf of a client. Defaults to the corporation's own name.
Click Generate. The dossier is queued and built asynchronously — typical turnaround is 1 to 3 minutes for a clean corporation, longer for portfolios with extensive history.
Wait for the build to complete
The dossier moves through statuses: queued → generating → ready. The page polls automatically; you can leave it and come back. If generation fails, the status becomes failed with a note about what went wrong (almost always a partial record that needs to be cleaned up).
Download and share
Click Download. The PDF is fetched from secure storage via a short-lived presigned URL. Save it to the dataroom or send it directly to counsel.
The cover page includes a verification URL of the form /verify/dossier/{reference}. Anyone with the URL — Octelligence account or not — can confirm the PDF's SHA-256 matches the original. If a recipient suspects the document has been altered, they can verify in seconds.
Regenerate after material changes
The dossier is a point-in-time artifact. If the corporation issues shares, accepts a director resignation, or files an annual return after generation, regenerate the dossier so what counsel reviews matches what's in the system. Older dossiers stay in the history; the verification URLs remain live for each.
When to use a dossier vs. live access
Two patterns work well, depending on the engagement:
- Dossier — for a discrete review window. A single financing diligence, an audit, an M&A confirmatory pass. The dossier is dated, signed, watermarked with the recipient, and revokeable in the sense that you simply don't share newer versions. Use this whenever the engagement has a defined end.
- Live access — for ongoing review by a long-standing advisor (outside counsel, regular accountant). Invite them as Viewer (see Invite team members). They get refreshed data automatically and you avoid regenerating dossiers every week.
For most financings and M&A deals, the dossier is the right call. Live access is appropriate when the relationship is permanent and the workload is continuous.
Verification
Every dossier carries a manifest of section-level SHA-256 hashes and an overall PDF hash on the cover page. The verification URL surfaces these so a recipient can confirm independently that the file they received is the file Octelligence generated. The verification page is public and unauthenticated; it shows the corporation name, as-of date, who prepared it, and the hashes.
This matters in M&A: an acquirer can compare the dossier their target sent against the verification page and confirm nothing was rewritten in transit. It's the corporate-records equivalent of the QR-verified share certificate.
Common gotchas
Generating before the closing transactions are entered. The dossier captures whatever is in Octelligence at the moment generation runs. If you generate during the closing call, before the issuances are recorded, the dossier shows pre-close state. Enter the closing transactions first, then generate.
Backdating the as-of date without backing the records. If the as-of date is yesterday but new records have been added today, the dossier will exclude today's additions — but won't somehow undo today's changes to existing records. For an accurate historical dossier, take the dossier on the actual closing date, not weeks later.
Treating a stale dossier as current. Once a material change happens (issuance, transfer, board change), regenerate. A six-month-old dossier in the dataroom while the corporation has done two financings since is the kind of finding that delays a deal.
Sharing the verification URL publicly. The verification page reveals corporation name, as-of date, and recipient line. Treat the URL like the dossier itself — share with the intended recipient, not on a public webpage.