Compensation Management App Overview

Compensation Management

1. What it is

Compensation Management is where you maintain every employee’s pay record, route compensation changes through an approval workflow, and track the full history of who changed what. It covers salary, hourly, commission, and contract compensation types.

• Enablement: requires a license and is disabled by default. An admin enables it from Admin → Apps → All Apps.
• What it is not: this app does not run payroll. For payroll integration and paychecks, see Payroll Connect. For merit-cycle planning and performance-linked compensation recommendations, see Employee Performance Management — EPMS has its own approval chain that writes pay directly; its approvals do not appear in this app’s Approvals queue.

2. Standing it up

1. Enable the app. Go to Admin → Apps → All Apps, find Compensation Management, and enable it. The app requires a license.
2. Set up pay grades (optional but recommended). Go to Admin → Compensation Management → Pay Grades. Create your compensation bands — each grade needs a code, name, minimum, midpoint, and maximum salary. If you don’t have grades yet and your organization is paid in US dollars, click Start from a standard ladder to generate a standard 11-grade ladder of dollar bands you can edit; otherwise click Add Pay Grade. Pay grades power comp-ratio analytics; without them, those charts are disabled.
3. Assign employees to pay grades. Go to Admin → Compensation Management → Grade Assignments to assign employees to their bands in bulk.
4. Configure policies. Go to Admin → Compensation Management → Policies to set who can see what:
   • Whether employees can view their own compensation
   • Whether employees can submit compensation change requests (and how often)
   • What managers see: Full salary amounts, Salary ranges only, or No compensation details
   • Who can view team compensation (a capability picker: App admins only, Managers, or Specific people/groups)
5. Configure advanced settings. Go to Admin → Compensation Management → Advanced Settings to set approval thresholds, default pay frequency, and auto-approval rules. New compensation records start in the organization currency, set in Admin → General Settings → Financial Settings.
6. Verify it works. Go to Admin → Compensation Management — you should see the employee compensation list. Employees see their own pay at My Compensation in the app sidebar.

Pay grades and policies are independent — enabling one does not require the other. But an employee assigned to a pay grade without pay data will show no comp-ratio, and a manager with the team compensation toggle on but no reports will see an empty list.

3. How it fits together

Compensation types — every employee has exactly one: Annual Salary, Hourly Rate, Commission-Based, or Contract Rate. The type determines which amount field applies. New employees start as Hourly Rate, in the organization currency (set in Admin → General Settings → Financial Settings), at the Default pay frequency from Advanced Settings — Monthly unless you change it, and Weekly for an organization that has never saved Advanced Settings. Salary employees store an annual amount; hourly employees store a per-hour rate (converted to annual at 2,080 hours/year for analytics and comp-ratio calculations).

Pay grades — a band with a minimum, midpoint, and maximum salary. Grades are organized by level and optionally by job family. An employee assigned to a grade gets a comp-ratio (their current salary ÷ the grade midpoint), which the analytics page plots across five bands: Below Range (under 80%), Below Market (80–95%), At Market (95–105%), Above Market (105–120%), and Above Range (over 120%). A grade has a currency (its Currency field, else the organization currency). Comp-ratio, range penetration and quartile appear only when the employee is paid in the grade’s currency; pay in another currency is not converted, so it shows none — no band card and no below-band alert either. A grade still in use cannot be deleted — move its employees (current or former), step schedules and job titles to another grade first.

Approval workflow — any compensation change can be routed through approval before it takes effect. The flow works three ways depending on how the change was initiated:

• Manual edit by an admin: applied immediately, no approval required.
• Bulk update: the initiator chooses an approval mode — apply immediately (admin override), route each change through approval, or submit them all together (approvers are notified once, then decide each employee’s change individually).
• CSV import: the same choice, plus Auto-Approve Small Changes (available once auto-approval is on in Advanced Settings), which applies raises within the configured thresholds and routes the rest. Auto-approval applies only to CSV imports a business admin or super admin runs in that mode — never to bulk updates or employee requests. In that mode a row skips the approval queue only when:
  • it raises one pay figure within both the percentage and the amount ceiling — or, for an employee with no pay on file, within the amount ceiling alone; or
  • it changes only the effective date or the notes.

  Everything else goes to an approver: any decrease, a change of pay type, pay frequency or currency, a row that moves both the salary and the hourly rate, and any employee paid in a currency other than the organization currency (the ceiling is set in the organization currency and is not converted).

• Employee request (when enabled in Policies): the employee submits a request, it goes to an auto-assigned approver (an admin who is neither the requester nor the beneficiary), and the approver approves or rejects it.

When a change is approved, it is applied to the employee’s record and a history entry is created — unless the employee’s pay changed after the request was filed, they left, the request sets pay for a pay type they are not on, or their pay already matched it. Then the approval is recorded as Approved — not applied, their pay is unchanged, and an employee who asked about their own pay may file again. The requester and the employee are notified when your notification settings allow.

Example: you import a CSV with raises for 25 employees, choosing auto-approve. The system checks each change against the auto-approval thresholds (say, 5% and 2,000 in the organization currency). A 1,500 raise on a 50,000 salary (3%) passes both — applied immediately. A 6,000 raise on the same salary (12%) exceeds both — routed to the approval queue for manual review.

Sensitive data protection — compensation pages are behind a step-up verification gate. Viewing any page that shows per-employee pay requires the admin to re-verify their identity (the session stays elevated for 15 minutes). Every page view is audited: who viewed whose compensation, when.

Manager visibility — when the team compensation toggle is on, managers see their direct reports’ pay, scoped by the visibility level set in Policies:

• Full salary amounts — exact numbers
• Salary ranges only — each amount shown as a range at least 10,000 wide for a salary and 5 for an hourly rate, wider for larger pay (about a tenth of it, rounded), in the employee’s own currency
• No compensation details — hidden entirely

Managers never see company-wide data. Pay grade administration, grade assignments, CSV import, and sample data are restricted to the function tier (admins, super admins, and app admins). HR staff get access through the Admin role, an app-admin grant, or the Policies page’s Specific people option.

4. Running it

Reviewing and approving compensation changes

1. Go to Compensation Management → Approvals. The dashboard shows pending, approved, and rejected counts.
2. Click a pending request to review the current vs. proposed values, the justification, and the effective date.
3. Click Approve (with optional notes) or Reject (a reason is required).
4. For multiple requests, use Bulk Review — select requests and approve or reject them in batch.

A pending request waiting more than 7 days is counted under Waiting over 7 days on the Approvals page and shows how long it has waited. A request whose effective date is within the next 30 days carries a Soon badge; one whose date has already passed carries Retroactive.

Updating compensation in bulk

1. Go to Admin → Compensation Management, select employees (or use Select All Filtered).
2. Click Bulk Update. Choose the update type — percentage increase, flat increase, or set a new value.
3. Choose the approval mode: apply immediately, route through individual approvals, or batch approval (sent together; each change is still decided on its own).

Importing compensation data via CSV

1. Go to Admin → Compensation Management → Import.
2. Upload a CSV file (maximum 10 MB). The file must include an Employee ID column. Supported columns: Compensation Type, Annual Salary, Hourly Rate, Pay Frequency, Currency, Effective Date, Notes.
3. Choose how to handle duplicates (update existing or skip) and the approval mode.
4. The import matches employees by Employee ID, applies or routes each change, and reports the count.

Exporting compensation data

Go to Admin → Compensation Management and click Export. The CSV includes employee name, job title, compensation type, salary/rate, pay frequency, currency, effective date, and notes. Export can be disabled in Policies (CSV export toggle).

Step schedules

Step schedules move employees up a ladder of pay steps as they build hours worked or tenure.

1. Turn the page on first: in Admin → Compensation Management → Advanced Settings, switch on Step Increases (Pay Progression). Step Schedules then appears in the app sidebar under Pay Structure.
2. Click New Step Schedule. Give it a name, the pay type it applies to, and a Step Trigger — hours worked, the anniversary date (months from hire), or both. Under Who This Applies To, narrow it by department, location, employee type, scheduling group, pay grade or job classification.
3. Under Pay Steps, click + Add Step for each rung: its rate, and the hours or months needed to reach it. Click Create Schedule. The rates are in the currency of the schedule’s pay grade (your organization currency when it names none), and a schedule matches only people paid in that currency. The Matched Employees card says how many more are paid in another currency, and Run Evaluation Now lists them as refused.
4. Decide what happens when someone reaches a step. With Auto-apply increases (skip approval) on (only an admin can turn it on), the new rate is written to their record. With it off (Flag for Review), the increase waits as a pay change request in Approvals and on the schedule’s page, where an admin can click Approve or Reject.

Schedules are evaluated every night. To check a schedule straight away, open it and choose More Actions → Run Evaluation Now; More Actions → Manual Override puts one employee on a chosen step at once (Assign Step). An applied increase appears in the employee’s pay history; one waiting for approval is listed on their My Compensation page when Tell employees when their own pay changes is on in Advanced Settings.

Acting assignments

An acting assignment records an employee temporarily covering a higher role, and the extra pay for the hours they work in it.

1. Acting Assignments appears in the app sidebar under Pay Decisions once premium pay is on (Enable premium pay in Timesheets settings).
2. Click New Acting Assignment. Choose the employee, their current job title, the role they are acting in, the start date and (optionally) the end date. Enter the acting hourly rate, or leave it blank to use the acting role’s pay grade midpoint ÷ 2,080 — only when that grade is in the employee’s pay currency.
3. Link an Acting Pay Premium Type. Acting pay reaches a timesheet only through one; without it the assignment records the role but pays nothing extra. Click Create Acting Assignment.

The employee sees the cover on My Compensation (desktop and phone), with the acting rate only when it is above their own rate and a premium type pays it. The cover ends by itself after its end date (checked every hour). Click Revert to end it early and put them back in their original role; Cancel Assignment is for one entered by mistake (it cannot be reopened). An ended cover can be reopened with Reopen.

Viewing analytics

Go to Admin → Compensation Management → Analytics. Charts include salary distribution, 6-month compensation trends, department breakdowns, and comp-ratio distribution (requires pay grades). Managers see analytics only if the Manager analytics access policy is on, and their data is scoped to their own reports.

Viewing the audit trail

Go to Admin → Compensation Management → Audit Trail. Every compensation change is logged with who changed it, when, the previous and new values, and the reason. Managers see only their reports’ history. Filter by employee, date range, or change type (salary increase, decrease, type change).

5. Settings

Advanced Settings (Admin → Compensation Management → Advanced Settings)

Setting	Default	What it changes
Auto-approval enabled	Off	When on, a CSV import a business admin or super admin runs in Auto-Approve Small Changes mode approves raises within the thresholds below automatically. Bulk updates and employee requests are never auto-approved (a bulk update in Admin Override mode applies at once, with no approver)
Auto-approval percentage threshold	5%	Maximum percentage change for auto-approval
Auto-approval amount threshold	2,000	Maximum change for auto-approval, in the organization currency (for an hourly rate, this ÷ 1,000 per hour — 2.00 by default). Both thresholds must be met; pay in another currency always goes to an approver
Maximum retroactive days	30	How far back an effective date can be set on a new approval request
Approval reminder days	3	Days after which the approver receives a reminder notification for a pending request
Step increases enabled	Off	Turns on Step Schedules — pay steps that advance on hours worked or tenure. Each schedule decides whether an increase applies by itself or goes to approval (see Step schedules above)
Currency	The organization currency (USD until one is chosen)	Pre-filled on new compensation records; set in Admin → General Settings → Financial Settings, and still changeable per record
Default pay frequency	Monthly	Pay frequency pre-filled for new records (Weekly, Bi-weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Annually)
Pay transparency enabled	Off	When on, employees see where their pay sits in their pay-grade band on My Compensation and in Ask AI; when off, Ask AI gives only the grade name

Policies (Admin → Compensation Management → Policies)

Setting	Default	What it changes
Employee self-view	On	Whether employees can see their own compensation in My Compensation
Employee compensation requests	Off	Whether employees can submit compensation change requests
Employee request frequency	Once per year	How often an employee can submit a request (Once per year, Twice per year, No limit)
Manager team compensation	On	Whether managers can view their direct reports’ compensation
Manager visibility level	Salary ranges only	What managers see: Full salary amounts, Salary ranges only, or No compensation details
Manager analytics access	Off	Whether managers can access the analytics dashboard (scoped to their reports)
CSV export enabled	On	Whether admins can export compensation data as CSV
Session timeout	30 minutes	Inactivity timeout for the compensation session (15, 30, or 60 minutes; or no timeout)
Mobile compensation access	On	Whether employees can view compensation on mobile devices

Who can view team compensation (Admin → Compensation Management → Policies)

A capability picker that controls which non-admin users can see their team’s compensation. Options: App admins only (default when team compensation toggle is off), Managers (default when team compensation toggle is on), or Specific people/groups.

6. More help

• Compensation Management FAQ — specific setup, approval, and operating questions
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Compensation Management from these articles.