Definitions

Every term the guides define, in one place. The first time an article uses one of these terms, you can select it to read the same definition without leaving the page.

Access scope: The part of your organization a person's role applies to — the whole company, or one department, team or business unit. It bounds whose records they can see and act on.
Account owner: The one person who owns the workspace. Ownership can be transferred to another administrator, and nobody in your own workspace can view as the owner.
Acting on behalf: Your compensation team completing or reassigning someone's worksheet for them, for example while they are on leave. The audit trail records it as done on that person's behalf, never as them.
AI client: An AI assistant or coding agent, such as Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code or Codex, that you connect to Mitratech Comp. It reads and acts on your comp data as you, within your role and the connection scopes you grant it.; Read more
Approval chain: The people who decide a submitted worksheet, in order: each manager above its owner who plans in the cycle, then the Final Approver. It is built from your reporting lines, so nobody has to set it up.; Read more
Audit trail: The record of who did what and when, with the before and after of every change. Entries are added and never edited or deleted.
Award letter: The PDF letter that tells one employee what a finalized cycle decided for them — their current and new base pay, any increase or bonus, and the date it takes effect. An employee whose pay did not change gets one too.; Read more
Compa-ratio: An employee's pay divided by the midpoint of their pay band. A compa-ratio of 1.00 means they are paid exactly at the midpoint, and below 1.00 means they are paid under it.; Read more
Connection scope: One of the nine permissions you choose when you connect an AI client, such as reading worksheets or generating the payroll export. A client can use only the scopes you granted, and never more than your own role allows.; Read more
Consolidation currency: The single currency a cycle's pools, rollups and reports are totalled in. Amounts in any other currency are converted to it at the rates the cycle carries.
Cycle phase: Where a cycle has reached: Setup, Planning, Submission, Approval or Finalized. A cycle moves to its next phase only when an administrator advances it.; Read more
Data health: The check Mitratech Comp keeps running over your employee data, listing what needs fixing. A blocker keeps a cycle from launching until it is fixed or dismissed; a warning never does.
Delivery state: Whether an award letter has reached the employee: Not sent, Sent, Undeliverable when they have no work email, or Withheld when their employment has ended.; Read more
Divergence: A recommendation that falls outside the soft range your compensation team set. It is allowed, and never unexplained: the row is flagged and carries both a reason code and a written rationale.; Read more
Eligibility rules: What a cycle states about who it plans — a hire cutoff date, and any employees named as excluded. They fix when the cycle launches.; Read more
Employee data: The record of your employees, their managers, departments, pay and ratings that pay bands, cycles and reports all read from.; Read more
Employee data template: The fixed set of columns Mitratech Comp reads employee data into. A file laid out any other way is mapped onto them for you to review before anything is written.; Read more
Field-level permission: The setting that decides which roles can read each field on an employee record, such as current pay or the performance rating. What someone may see and change about themselves is set separately.
Finalize: Closing a cycle for good, once every worksheet is approved and every funding pool is within budget. A finalized cycle is read-only and can never be reopened.; Read more
Funding pool: The money a cycle authorizes for pay changes, usually a percentage of eligible payroll. A cycle can carry three — merit, promotion and bonus — and each becomes a budget for every manager at launch.; Read more
Governed AI: The way AI works in Mitratech Comp: it drafts, a person decides, and every suggestion lands on the audit trail with the model that made it. No suggestion takes effect on its own.
Grade code: The code on an employee's record, such as E2, that matches them to the pay band for their grade.; Read more
Guardrail: The limits your compensation team sets on what a manager can recommend, a soft range inside a hard range. Outside the soft range a recommendation is allowed but has to be explained; outside the hard range the worksheet cannot be submitted until the number comes back in.; Read more
Hard range: The outer limit of a guardrail. A worksheet with a proposal outside it cannot be submitted until the number comes back inside.; Read more
Hire cutoff: The date an employee must have started on or before to be planned in a cycle.; Read more
Manager of managers: A People Manager whose team includes other managers. They plan their own worksheet and review, approve or return the worksheets of the managers beneath them.; Read more
Merit cycle: One round of planned pay changes, from the snapshot of your workforce through manager worksheets and approvals to the payroll file. A cycle on its own means a merit cycle.; Read more
Merit matrix: The grid that turns a performance rating and a compa-ratio into a recommended increase, so every manager starts from the same guidance.; Read more
Model Context Protocol: The open standard AI clients use to connect to other software. Mitratech Comp offers an MCP server, so a client that supports it connects with nothing to install.; Read more
Named exclusion: One employee your compensation team removes from one cycle, with a reason only System Admins and Total Rewards Admins can read. Their manager sees the row greyed out, without the reason.; Read more
Package: The worksheets a manager of managers sends up the approval chain together: their own and every one they approved. The next approver decides it in one go.; Read more
Participant: An employee with a sign-in to your workspace and a role, such as People Manager, who takes part in every cycle you launch.; Read more
Pay band: The pay range for a job level — a minimum, a midpoint and a maximum.; Read more
Pay currency: The currency an employee is actually paid in. Worksheets plan in it, and every line of the payroll export carries it.
Pay effective date: The date approved increases start being paid. It is set on the cycle, apart from the dates the approvals run to.
Pay equity: Paying people alike for comparable work once the legitimate reasons for a difference are accounted for. Equity here always means pay equity, never shares or options.
Pay guidance: The increase a cycle suggests to a manager for each employee, from the merit matrix: a percentage, or a range in a cycle that plans ranges. An employee the matrix does not price starts with no guidance.; Read more
Payroll export: The CSV file of approved pay changes a finalized cycle produces for your payroll system, one line per employee whose pay changes, each carrying the pay effective date.; Read more
Performance rating: The option an employee holds on a performance review, in your own words. It arrives with the employee data and feeds the merit matrix; an employee can be carried as not rated.; Read more
Performance review: One round of ratings, named and dated by whoever brought it in, with its own rating options in your own words and a Not rated entry for anyone it doesn't rate. A cycle's merit matrix plans from one review's options.; Read more
Planning basis: What a cycle's guidance is worked out from: the merit matrix, which reads performance and compa-ratio, or performance alone. It fixes at launch.; Read more
Product tour: A guided walk through a feature, step by step, on example data. Nothing you do in it is saved, and your own data is back when it ends.; Read more
Product update: A short note in the Product updates list at the foot of the navigation that says what a release added for your role, and either starts a tour of it or says where to find it.; Read more
Range penetration: Where an employee sits inside their pay band, as a percentage from the minimum at 0% to the maximum at 100%. Pay outside the band reads below 0% or above 100%. Unlike compa-ratio, it measures against the whole band rather than the midpoint.; Read more
Range spread: How much wider a pay band's maximum is than its minimum, as a percentage of the minimum. With the midpoint, it sets the band's minimum and maximum.; Read more
Rate basis: Whether an employee's pay is recorded as an annual salary or an hourly rate. Bands, compa-ratio and guidance are all worked out on their own basis.
Rationale: The manager's written explanation for a recommendation. It is required on a promotion and on anything outside the soft range, alongside a reason code.; Read more
Reason code: The reason a manager picks from a set list for a pay change, so reasons can be reported on. It sits beside the written rationale rather than replacing it.; Read more
Recovery code: One of ten single-use codes you are given when you first set up two-step verification, to sign in with when you cannot reach your second factor. Using one spends it, and you can replace the whole set from your profile.; Read more
Role: What a person does in a compensation cycle, and what the product lets them see and do. There are seven, they are lateral rather than a ladder, and everyone who signs in holds one.
Rollup worksheet: A manager of managers' view of every worksheet beneath them, grouped by manager, for review and approval.; Read more
SCIM: The standard your identity provider uses to create, update and switch off people's access here automatically as they join, move and leave.
Second factor: A second proof of who you are at sign-in, on top of your password — a code from an authenticator app, a text message, or an email.; Read more
Segregation of duties: The rule that nobody approves their own pay change.
Single sign-on: Signing in with your own company's identity provider instead of a password kept here, so joining and leaving stay under your control.
Soft range: The expected range of a guardrail. A proposal outside it is allowed, but it is flagged and needs a reason code and a rationale before the worksheet can be submitted.; Read more
Viewing as another user: A System Admin taking on another person's session to see the product exactly as they see it, for a short window. Every audit trail entry written during it names both people.
Workforce snapshot: The frozen copy of your employee data and ratings a cycle plans against, taken as of a cutoff date so a later import cannot move numbers mid-cycle.
Worksheet: A manager's planning page: their own people, the inputs for each pay change, and every derived number recalculated as they type.; Read more
Workspace address: Your own web address for Mitratech Comp, built from the short name you chose when you signed up — acme.mitratechcomp.com, for a company that chose acme.