Fund data management: moving beyond the spreadsheet

Picture a distributor rejecting a share class feed on a Thursday afternoon. The fee in your spreadsheet is right. The fee in the published factsheet is wrong, because someone re-keyed it weeks ago and nothing flagged the change. Fund data management on spreadsheets rarely survives that kind of pressure.

Each fund you run produces hundreds or thousands of data points. In our Asset Managers Report 2026, 69% of investment managers said the speed and accuracy of that data now shape which distribution partners choose to work with them.

Taking control of fund data for growing investment managers whitepaper, shows how to fix it.

Five signs your spreadsheets are holding you back

The same ISIN, fee or benchmark is maintained in more than one place.
Month-end reporting starts with reconciling versions, not analysing numbers.
An error has reached a published document or platform feed, and you traced it to a spreadsheet.
Only one or two people understand a critical workbook.
A fund launch or registration has slipped while someone chased data.

What spreadsheets really cost

Spreadsheets never appear as a line in the technology budget, so the costs land elsewhere.

Many firms effectively pay a full-time salary to key, check and re-check data that validation rules could handle at the point of entry.
A wrong fee or stale registration status flows into factsheets, key information documents and filings. With no audit trail, finding the cause becomes an investigation.
65% of investment managers say fragmented fund data is preventing operational efficiency. 62% say newer products, such as exchange-traded funds and private markets, are increasing costs.

Why firms stay on spreadsheets

A full data mastering implementation takes 16 to 20 weeks. For a lean team with the governance expectations of a much larger firm, that is hard to justify. So the spreadsheet stays, by default rather than by choice.

Master your fund data without a project

Product Mastering Core is the off-the-shelf edition of our Product Mastering platform. It gives you:

An openfunds-aligned model for umbrella, fund, share class and registrations, with 600+ ready-to-use fields
Validation at the point of entry, an approval workflow and a full audit trail
Data pre-mapped into the FE fundinfo ecosystem, ready to feed regulatory document production and fund data dissemination
10 hours of consultancy and training, and no implementation fee

You can be live in days. If your needs grow, Product Mastering is one step up, and your data, configuration and workflows carry forward.

Taking control of fund data whitepaper

“With Product Mastering Core, we have one reliable source of fund data to work from. This improves consistency, significantly reduces manual effort, and gives us greater confidence in meeting our regulatory and reporting requirements.”

—Cameron Smith, Head of Investor Disclosure, Valu-Trac Investment Management Limited

Speak to an expert

Frequently asked questions

Fund data management is the process of creating, validating, approving and maintaining the data that describes your funds, share classes and registrations. A product master gives every team one governed source to work from.

Spreadsheets apply no governed validation or approval workflow and keep no audit trail, so errors surface late. They also concentrate knowledge in one or two people.

A full enterprise implementation takes 16 to 20 weeks. Product Mastering Core is pre-configured with no implementation project, so you can be live in days, depending on how ready your data is.

Product Mastering Core is the off-the-shelf edition with a fixed data model and pre-configured rules. Product Mastering adds bespoke configuration, editable rules and advanced capabilities.

69% of investment managers say the speed and accuracy of fund data shape which distribution partners choose to work with them. Consistent, validated data helps keep your funds trusted on distributor platforms.