Approving or returning a worksheet

Decide each that’s waiting on you: approve it, or return it to its manager with what needs to change. You need a worksheet that its manager has submitted and the has brought to you. Read it first — see Reviewing a rollup worksheet.

Find what’s waiting on you

On Home, Needs you lists every decision that’s yours, across every cycle, such as Approve Dana Reyes’s worksheet or Approve Sam Ortiz’s , beside anything you have to plan yourself. Review on one opens it. When there’s nothing, it reads You’re all caught up.
On the tab of Worksheets, a sees Approve and Return on each section waiting on them.

You can decide a worksheet from its section in the rollup, or from the worksheet itself, where Approve and Return are its header’s actions. You can’t decide a worksheet you plan yourself: if its step comes to you, a Total Rewards Admin reassigns that step to someone else.

Approve

Select Approve. You see Worksheet approved, and the step on the approval chain reads Approved.

What happens next depends on where you are in the chain:

When you’re the last step, the worksheet is Approved.
When there’s a step above you, the worksheet stays Submitted and is held for you, and its section shows Release onward. Nothing moves until you send it on.

Send approved worksheets onward

A manager of managers sends approved worksheets up the chain in one of two ways:

Release onward, on a held section or on the worksheet page, sends that one worksheet to the next step. You see Worksheet released to the next approval step.
Submit rollup, on the Rollup tab, sends every section you’ve approved and held, together with your own worksheet, to the next step as one package. You see Rollup submitted, with how many worksheets were released.

Submit rollup also judges your whole rollup against each ’s limits, as one total across your own worksheet and every worksheet beneath you:

Past a soft limit, Submit rollup opens Submit your rollup and asks for a note for each such pool, under Why is merit past its soft limit across your teams? The note is required, up to 2,000 characters. Select Submit rollup in the dialog and the rollup is released with your notes. The Final Approver reads them on your package.
Past a hard limit, Submit rollup is unavailable and the page says Cannot submit the rollup, naming each pool and the amount over, such as Merit: $2,100 over the $162,300 hard limit. Adjust lines on your teams’ worksheets, or return a worksheet to its manager, until the pool is back under the limit.

Releasing a single section with Release onward checks no limit.

Submit rollup is refused while any section waiting on you is still undecided: Cannot submit the rollup: the following section(s) are still undecided. lists the managers whose sections need your decision. It’s also refused until you’ve submitted your own worksheet.

Return

Select Return. Return, the manager’s name, worksheet opens — for example, Return Dana Reyes’s worksheet.
In What needs to change?, say what the manager should change. A comment is required: Return worksheet stays unavailable until there is one.
Select Return worksheet. You see Worksheet returned to its manager.

The worksheet reopens for its manager straight away, carrying your comment, and they’re notified by email and in the product. When they submit it again, it starts from the first step of the approval chain, so each approver sees the corrected plan. See Working a returned worksheet.

To change one merit increase yourself rather than return the worksheet, adjust it — see Reviewing a rollup worksheet.

When an adjustment goes past a hard range

A manager can’t submit a line outside the the cycle sets, but your adjustment isn’t refused for it. It saves, and the worksheet is flagged. The flag names what it breaks, such as Merit hard range, on the worksheet’s header and on its section in the rollup. The row for your adjustment gains a Flagged line.

A Total Rewards Admin sees the worksheet under Flagged worksheets on the cycle’s Overview and in the close checklist, each linking to the worksheet. A flag doesn’t stop you approving the worksheet or the cycle , and it clears as soon as every line is back inside the range.

When an adjustment goes past a pool’s hard limit

A manager can’t submit a plan whose team is past a funding pool’s hard limit, but your adjustment isn’t refused for it. It saves, and the worksheet is flagged. The flag names the pool, such as Merit pool hard limit, on the worksheet’s header and on its section in the rollup, and the audit trail row for your adjustment gains a Flagged line. The flag clears as soon as the team is back under the limit, whoever changes the line, or when a Total Rewards Admin moves the limit. It doesn’t stop you approving the worksheet or the cycle finalizing.

Decide a package

A package is what a manager of managers sends with Submit rollup: their own worksheet and every section they approved. The Final Approver opens it from Approve, the manager’s name, package under Needs you on Home. The package page shows Contributing managers, Planned increase, Outside and Awaiting decision, and one section per worksheet in it, read the same way as a rollup. When the manager’s rollup went past a pool’s limit, the page also lists the pool, such as Merit rollup $4,240 past the soft limit, with the Rollup note they wrote at Submit rollup, above the sections.

Approve opens Approve, the manager’s name, package. Comment (optional) is carried onto every worksheet’s step. Select Approve package: every worksheet in it is approved, and you see Package approved.
Return opens Return, the manager’s name, package. What needs to change? is required. Select Return package, and you see Package returned to its submitting manager. Only the submitting manager’s own worksheet reopens, with your comment. The other worksheets go back to that manager, approved and held, to send on again with their next Submit rollup.

When no one set up the routing

Nobody has to configure who approves what. The approval chain is built from your reporting lines when the cycle launches: each manager above a worksheet’s owner who plans in the cycle is a step, in climbing order, and the last step is the Final Approver. So a director decides the worksheets of the managers who report to them without anyone assigning it, and a manager at the top of the organization goes straight to the Final Approver.

The last step belongs to the Final Approver rather than to a person. Anyone who holds that role can decide it, including someone given the role after the cycle launched.