Creating funding pools

Fund the cycle before it launches, so every manager plans against a budget. You need the System Admin or Total Rewards Admin , and a cycle in the Setup phase — see Creating a cycle.

A cycle can carry three : Merit, Promotion and Bonus. Each one you fund becomes a budget for every manager when the cycle launches. A manager can only start a new promotion on a when the cycle funds a promotion pool; a cycle that doesn’t still shows a promotion already on a worksheet, with a warning that it has no funding behind it.

Fund a pool

Open the cycle, choose the Setup tab, and select Edit on 2. Budget.
In Funding pools, tick the pool you want to fund.
Enter its % of payroll, or a Fixed amount in the cycle’s currency.
Select Save at the foot of the section.

The section’s summary then reads, for example, Merit 3.50% of payroll. A new cycle starts with its merit funding pool at 3.5% of payroll.

Set a soft and a hard limit

A pool’s budget is what the cycle plans to spend. A limit is how far a manager’s team can go past it before something happens. Each pool funded by a % of payroll has two optional limits beside its funding, in the Soft limit and Hard limit columns of Funding pools:

Soft limit — past it, the manager must write a note when they submit. The worksheet submits with the note.
Hard limit — past it, the manager can’t submit until their spend comes back under it.

Each limit is a share of the team’s eligible payroll, in the same terms as the pool’s own % of payroll. Enter them in the same Edit and Save as the funding: a 3% merit pool might have a soft limit of 3.5% and a hard limit of 4%. A soft limit can’t be below the pool’s own %, and a hard limit can’t be below the soft one. Leave a limit empty and it isn’t applied.

A pool funded by a Fixed amount takes no limits. Its two inputs are disabled, and hovering them says why. It keeps the over-budget warning on the worksheet instead. To limit it, fund it by % of payroll.

Each manager is judged on their own team when they submit, and a is judged again on their whole .

Limits don’t move the budget. the cycle still needs every pool within its budget, so spend you allow past the budget has to come back under it before you can close the cycle.

A rate or a fixed amount

Fund a pool by rate wherever you can. With % of payroll, every manager gets that same percentage of their own team’s eligible payroll, which divides exactly.

A Fixed amount is split across managers in proportion to each team’s payroll, and the split can leave a few cents of rounding against the pool’s total.

If you enter both for one pool, the section warns you: launch allocates by the rate, and the fixed amount is saved but not used.

What draws from each pool

A pool is charged amounts. The merit pool draws each person’s merit amount and the promotion pool their promotion amount, whether the manager typed amounts or percentages. A percentage is priced to an amount first, and merit is measured on the base after any promotion, so on a promoted person the merit pool draws the merit that lands in base. The bonus pool draws the bonus amount.

What managers see

Each manager’s worksheet shows their budget and how much of it their proposals use, with a mark on the meter at each limit you set. Going over the budget is flagged to the manager and does not stop them submitting; going past a limit asks for a note or stops the submit, as above. Where the cycle stands against each pool is on its Overview and Worksheets tabs — see Monitoring budget and approvals.

Funding fixes at launch, limits do not

Each manager’s budget is worked out once, when the cycle launches, from the pools as they stand then. After launch the pools and their funding can no longer be changed, and the 2. Budget section is marked Funding frozen at launch. The soft and hard limits stay editable until the cycle is finalized or cancelled. A change to a limit on a running cycle first shows which worksheets it would send back or flag, and asks you to confirm — see Changing a cycle after launch.