E-07 — Valuation

A point-in-time value of a holding (E-04) — and the record of how that value was arrived at. Every holding is valued; the difference across asset classes is the method, not the entity.

Purpose

A holding has a value, and the value changes over time. The Valuation entity captures one value at one date — and, crucially, its method, source and confidence, because not all values are equal. A liquid instrument is valued at an observable market price. An illiquid one — a private fund interest, a directly-held asset, an OTC derivative — is marked: estimated by a model, a manager or an appraiser, reviewed, and restated as new information arrives. The Valuation entity is universal; what differs is the method.

Because marks are estimates, OpenIM models valuation as an append-only history: a new valuation does not overwrite the prior one, it is added alongside it. The set of Valuations for a holding is its value trajectory — and the trajectory, with its confidence, is what time-series and J-curve analysis read.

Attribute schema

Column	Type	Definition
`valuation_id`	varchar	Primary key.
`position_id`	varchar (FK → E-04)	The holding being valued — the logical-holding identity `position_id`, shared across E-04’s two books of record, not a single book-row. A mark is a property of the instrument-in-a-portfolio and applies to both the IBOR and ABOR view, so the reference is to the logical holding, not to `(position_id, book)`. Null when the valuation is at instrument grain or share/unit-class grain.
`instrument_id`	varchar (FK → E-02)	The instrument or asset, where the valuation is at instrument rather than position grain. Null when the valuation is at position grain or share/unit-class grain.
`unit_class_id`	varchar (FK → FO-02)	The share or unit class, where the valuation is at share/unit-class grain — the NAV-per-unit record. Used when `method = manager_mark` and the struck value is the per-class NAV (class NAV ÷ units in issue). Null for position-grain and instrument-grain valuations.
`units_in_issue`	decimal	The number of units or shares outstanding for this class at the valuation date — the divisor in `NAV per unit = class NAV ÷ units in issue`. Populated only on class-grain (`unit_class_id` is non-null) records. Updated each dealing cycle as subscriptions create and redemptions cancel units; owned at this grain because it is the figure of record at the moment of the NAV strike, not static class reference data.
`valuation_date`	date	The date the valuation is as of.
`value_usd`	decimal	The valuation. For a class-grain record this is the NAV per unit in the class currency, translated to USD for the canonical layer.
`method`	varchar	How the value was determined — `observable_price` (a quoted market price) / `mark_to_model` / `manager_mark` / `appraisal` / `amortised_cost`. Class-grain NAV-per-unit records use `method = manager_mark`.
`valuation_level`	varchar	The fair-value hierarchy level — `level_1` (observable price) / `level_2` (observable inputs) / `level_3` (unobservable inputs).
`source`	varchar	The source the valuation came from — a pricing feed, an internal model, a manager report, an administrator statement, an appraiser.
`confidence_score`	float	A confidence score, where the value was modelled or extracted rather than observed.

Notes

The entity is append-only. The set of Valuations for a holding is its value trajectory; no row is overwritten when a new mark arrives. A restated value for a prior date is a new row — restatement detection compares the new value to the prior one for the same date.
The valuation grain is the logical holding, not the book-row. E-04’s identity is the composite (position_id, book) — the same logical holding carries an IBOR record and an ABOR record. A valuation’s position_id FK references the logical-holding identity (position_id, shared across both books), because a mark is a property of the instrument-in-a-portfolio that applies equally to both the real-time (IBOR) and accounting-basis (ABOR) view of the holding — the two books may differ on quantity or accrual timing, but not on the mark. So the same Valuation feeds the market_value_usd of both E-04 book-rows; the reference is book-agnostic by design, and is not the composite (position_id, book).
Three grains — one entity. E-07 accommodates valuations at three grains, distinguished by which of the three FK columns is populated: (a) position grain — position_id non-null, instrument_id and unit_class_id null (the primary case for holding-level marks); (b) instrument grain — instrument_id non-null, position_id and unit_class_id null (price-to-value at instrument level); (c) share/unit-class grain — unit_class_id non-null, position_id and instrument_id null (the NAV-per-unit record for an issued share or unit class, method = manager_mark). This follows the typed-extension pattern — one schema, three grain variants, discriminated by which FK is populated.
NAV per unit is a class-grain Valuation. The investor-reported figure NAV per unit = class NAV ÷ units in issue is a method = manager_mark valuation at the unit_class_id grain. It is a figure of record: it is externally reported to investors, disclosed in regulatory filings, and used for dealing at the pricing point — it must be answerable from a stored record with provenance, not recomputed from a mart. units_in_issue is carried at this grain because it is the divisor at the moment of the NAV strike and is itself a dealing-cycle figure (updated as subscriptions create and redemptions cancel units); it is not static class reference data and does not belong on the FO-02 master record.
method, valuation_level and confidence_score carry the mark-to-model governance: for an illiquid holding, every value is traceable to how it was produced and how far it can be relied on. For a liquid holding valued at an observable price, the method is simply observable_price and the confidence is implicit.
Private-markets specialisation. A fund NAV is a Valuation with method = manager_mark (later possibly adjusted or independently marked). The private-markets pack records the fund-level NAV trajectory and the multiples (TVPI, DPI, RVPI) derived from it, and the four valuation lenses — manager NAV, adjusted NAV, mark-to-model NAV, realisable NAV — as distinct Valuations on the same holding.

Out of scope

The market observation a valuation may be built from — that is E-08 Price & Market Data; a Price is a market fact, a Valuation is the value of a holding.
The appraisal-specific structure of a real-asset valuation — the valuer, the standard, the valuation approach — that is RA-05 Asset Appraisal, the real-assets specialisation of E-07.
Valuation policy, the fair-value-level adjudication and contested-mark governance — that is SD-08.4 Fair-Value Governance, not the valuation record.
A measured risk number — VaR, exposure, stress loss — that is E-19 Risk Measurement, the risk analogue of E-07, not a Valuation.

Owned and consumed by

Owned by: key-partitioned by the method attribute, using the same vocabulary the attribute schema declares. SD-08.1 Security Pricing for method = observable_price (a quoted market price) and method = amortised_cost (the rule-based amortised-cost price of a debt holding carried to maturity). SD-08.2 Independent / Mark-to-Model Valuation for method = mark_to_model (a quant-modelled mark). SD-08.3 Private-Asset Valuation for method = manager_mark (the manager- or administrator-reported mark of a private fund, private-credit or directly-held private interest) and method = appraisal (the real-asset appraisals RA-05 Asset Appraisal specialises). SD-12.9 Fund Accounting & NAV produces the official struck NAV of a vehicle the institution operates — recorded as method = manager_mark, distinguished from SD-08.3’s marks not by a different method value but by being the NAV the institution strikes on a fund it operates (its investor capital accounts are PM-13), as opposed to the reported mark it consumes as an investor in an externally-managed interest. SD-12.9 also produces the NAV-per-unit record at the share/unit-class grain (unit_class_id FK → FO-02, method = manager_mark, units_in_issue populated) — the investor-reported figure of record for each class of an operated open-ended fund. Each Service Domain is the sole authoritative source for the instances it produces; the schema is the model’s, common across methods so the value trajectory is same-shape. The full pattern is documented in ownership-map.md.
Governed by: SD-08.4 Fair-Value Governance.
Consumed by: SD-05.2 Portfolio Management & Monitoring, SD-07 Investment Risk, SD-09 Performance & Analytics, SD-12 Investment Operations & Servicing, SD-13.10 Investment Reporting & Dashboards, SD-16.2 Owner & Investor Reporting (the NAV-per-unit series and disclosed figures in the regulatory disclosure documents).

Open extensions

Restatement modelling — how a corrected mark for a prior date relates to the original, and the lookback window for restatement detection.
The confidence envelope — expressing valuation uncertainty as a range, not a point.
The four-lens NAV detail in the private-markets pack.