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 Marketplace.
• 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 (the EPMS app’s merit matrices and compensation recommendations feed into this app’s approval workflow but are configured separately).

2. Standing it up

1. Enable the app. Go to Admin → Apps Marketplace, 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, click Seed Starter Grades to generate a standard ladder you can edit. 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 currency, default pay frequency, and auto-approval rules.
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. The default for new employees is Hourly Rate with a currency of USD and a pay frequency of Weekly. 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 with employees assigned cannot be deleted — it must be cleared 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 or CSV import: the initiator chooses an approval mode — apply immediately (admin override), route all changes through approval, or auto-approve changes within the configured thresholds and route the rest.
• 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, a history entry is created, and in-app notifications go to both the requester and the employee.

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). 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 — amounts shown in $10,000 bands (salary) or $5 bands (hourly)
• 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, HR, and app admins).

4. Running it

Reviewing and approving compensation changes

1. Go to Admin → Compensation 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 request is flagged as Urgent when it has been pending more than 7 days or its effective date is within 30 days.

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.

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).

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, changes within the thresholds below are approved automatically during bulk updates and imports
Auto-approval percentage threshold	5%	Maximum percentage change for auto-approval
Auto-approval amount threshold	$2,000	Maximum dollar change for auto-approval (both thresholds must be met)
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	Enables step-increase scheduling (automatic grade-based pay progression)
Default currency	USD	Currency pre-filled for new compensation records (supported: USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, AUD)
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 additional pay context on their compensation page

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.