Reviewing and submitting the worksheet

Check your team’s whole plan and send it to your approvers. You need a worksheet that’s In progress or Returned, with a decision on each person — see Entering a merit increase.

Before you submit

Look at the summary strip above the table first, and select any chip to jump to the rows it counts. Need a justification should be gone: those proposals are still waiting for a reason code, a rationale or both, as your compensation team’s guardrails ask, and the worksheet can’t be submitted while there are any, nor while a proposal is outside the hard range. Not yet reviewed counts the people you haven’t decided yet. Outside guardrails can stay once each proposal is explained and inside the hard range; it doesn’t stop you.

The Approval chain card shows who your worksheet goes to, in order.

Review and submit

1. Select Submit in the worksheet’s header. Review before you submit opens.
2. Read what it tells you:
   • how many proposals still need documentation, with one line per person naming what’s needed;
   • a Budget line for each pool your compensation team set limits on, saying whether your plan is within its limits, past its soft limit or past its hard limit;
   • This team’s merit spend is over budget (or promotion, or bonus), one line for each funded pool your plan spends more than its budget on, the same pools the summary strip shows over. This is advice only and doesn’t block submission;
   • or, when there’s nothing to fix, Nothing is outstanding.
3. If a pool is past its soft limit, write the note it asks for under Why is merit past its soft limit? (or promotion, or bonus). Your approver sees it beside that pool, and the worksheet can’t be submitted without it. A pool past its hard limit has no note to write: the line names the amount over, and you bring your plan under the limit to submit.
4. Check the Full proposal table: each person’s Current base, Proposed increase and New base.
5. Select Submit for approval, or Cancel to go back and change something.

When it’s accepted, you see Worksheet submitted for approval and the status changes to Submitted.

If something still stands in the way — a proposal outside the hard range, or one missing what it owes — the review shows The server refused this submission and lists each person with what’s wrong. A pool past its hard limit is refused too, naming the pool and the amount over its limit, and so is a pool past its soft limit with no note. Nothing is submitted. Fix those rows and submit again. See Reading the guidance and guardrails and Providing a rationale.

After you submit

A submitted worksheet belongs to your approvers. Submit goes away, every input on it is locked, and your numbers stay exactly as you submitted them. Under Worksheets, the My worksheets tab lists it as Submitted.

The Approval chain shows each step’s decision as it’s made. If an approver sends the worksheet back, it reopens for you — see Working a returned worksheet. Once the last step approves it, it reads Approved.

A manager above you can adjust a person’s merit increase while the worksheet is submitted. If they do, your worksheet names who changed which person’s merit, as the amount or the percentage they typed, from what to what.