This page lets you create and manage spending budgets for your comp cycle. Budgets give planners visibility into how much they can allocate and let you track spend against a defined pool.

This page lets you create and manage spending budgets for your comp cycle. Budgets give planners visibility into how much they can allocate and let you track spend against a defined pool.


 ![image.png](https://support.pave.com/api/attachments.redirect?id=4a929427-273e-495d-920a-1413d601e3f3 " =1411x496")


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**Budget philosophy (set once per cycle)**

Before creating any budgets, you choose how budgets will be assigned across the cycle. This is a cycle-wide setting, not per-budget.

* **Top down (Per planner):** You assign a specific budget amount to each individual planner. Budgets are distributed per-planner, and each planner sees their own allocation in the worksheet.
* **Bottoms up (Per employee):** Budget values are calculated or generated on a per-employee basis, then summed up to show planners their total budget.

The philosophy you choose determines which display options, visibility settings, and allocation tools are available when you configure each budget.

> **Changing the budget philosophy deletes all existing budgets.** If you switch philosophies after budgets have been created, you will see a confirmation warning: "Updating budget philosophy will clear all existing budgets. This cannot be undone and all cleared budgets will have to be re-created from scratch." The change is irreversible. All budgets must be rebuilt from scratch after switching.

Once budgets exist, the current philosophy is shown in the page header. You can click it to change it (disabled once the cycle is finalized).


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**Creating a budget**

Click **Create new** in the top-right corner to open the budget configuration drawer. The "Create new" button is disabled once the cycle is finalized.

Each budget is configured through the following fields, which appear progressively as you make selections.


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**Budget name**

A free-text label for this budget. This is how the budget is identified in the list and in the planner worksheet. Required.


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**What type of budget do you want to create?**

Choose the category of compensation this budget covers:

* **Cash:** Covers merit, promotion, bonus, or other cash award columns. Requires that cash raise columns already exist in your cycle configuration. If no cash raise columns have been added, this option is disabled with the tooltip: "You must add cash raise columns before configuring a cash budget."
* **Equity:** Covers performance, promotion, refresh, or other equity award columns. Requires equity raise columns in your cycle. Disabled with tooltip if none exist.

Changing this selection resets the column assignments below.


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**How would you like to display your budget?**

Controls whether planners see a budget amount alongside their spend, or only the spend total:

* **Display budget and spend:** Shows planners a budget target and tracks their total spend against it. For top-down cycles, this means specifying a budget for each individual planner. For bottoms-up cycles, it displays a calculated budget alongside the total spend for the comp type.
* **Only display spend:** Shows the running total spend for this comp type without any budget target. No budget limit field appears when this is selected.


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**Do you want to show equity in shares or currency?** *(equity budgets only)*

* **Number of Shares**
* **Currency**


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**Do you want to set a spend limit for this budget?** *(only shown when "Display budget and spend" is selected)*

Select **Yes** to enable the limit fields:

* **Percent limit:** Enter a percentage (must be 100% or higher). This represents the maximum spend as a percentage of the total budget. Required if the limit is enabled.
* **Excluded role(s):** Optionally select one or more planner roles that are exempt from this spend limit.

Select **No** to remove any limit. Planners can exceed the budget without a system-enforced cap.


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**Which columns are spent from this budget?**

A checklist of the raise/award columns in your cycle that count against this budget. At least one column must be selected. The available columns are determined by the budget category (cash or equity) and which columns you have configured in your cycle.


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**How should each column be calculated on a per-employee basis?** *(bottoms-up cycles only, when "Display budget and spend" is selected)*

For each column selected above, you define how the budget total for that column is calculated. Each column expands in an accordion panel with the following calculation method options:

* **Apply a percentage of Current Pay** *(cash budgets only; disabled if the cycle has no pay columns):* Calculates the budget as a percentage of one or more pay types. When selected, you specify the pay types to include (Base Pay, Variable Pay, Annual Bonus) and the percentage to apply.
* **Sum values stored in a column:** Uses values already stored in another column in the cycle as the budget source. You select which column from a dropdown filtered to columns eligible for budget calculation.
* **Sum target recommendation values:** Uses the sum of the target recommendation values for that column as the budget.
* **Sum uploaded values:** Uses values uploaded via Data Upload.


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**Permissions (who can see this budget?)**

Controls which planners can see this budget in their worksheet. Options differ by budget philosophy.

**For top-down cycles**, each planner role can be configured with one of:

* **Can view this budget for all planners:** The role sees budget data for every planner.
* **Can view this budget for themselves:** The role sees only their own budget.
* **Can view this budget for all planners below them in approval chains:** The role sees budget data for everyone below them in the approval hierarchy.
* **Can view this budget for specified planners:** The role sees budget data only for the planners you explicitly select.
* **Can view this budget for all planners below the specified planners in approval chains:** Scopes visibility to the reporting chains of specific planners you select.
* **Can not view this budget:** The budget is hidden from this role entirely.

The default permission for new budgets in a top-down cycle is "Can view this budget for themselves."

**For bottoms-up cycles**, options are:

* **Can view this budget**
* **Can not view this budget**

The default permission for new budgets in a bottoms-up cycle is "Can view this budget."

Role-level overrides can be added to give different roles different visibility rules for the same budget.


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**Budget Allocation tab** *(top-down cycles, after saving a "Display budget and spend" budget)*

Once a top-down budget has been saved, a second tab, **Budget Allocation**, appears in the drawer. This is where you assign specific budget amounts to each individual planner.

From the Budget Allocation tab, you can:

* Enter amounts directly in the allocation table
* Upload allocations via CSV
* Use **Populate with Bottoms Up Logic** to auto-generate per-planner amounts based on a bottoms-up calculation method (same options as described above). Clicking **Populate** replaces all existing allocations with the generated values. This action cannot be undone from within the modal.


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**Saving and unsaved changes**

The **Save** button in the drawer footer is enabled only when changes have been made. If you close the drawer with unsaved changes, a confirmation prompt asks whether you want to discard your edits.


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**Editing and deleting budgets**

Existing budgets are listed on the Budgets page. Click any row to open it for editing. Each row also has a three-dot menu with:

* **Edit budget:** Opens the drawer.
* **Delete budget:** Opens a confirmation modal before permanently deleting the budget.


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**Finalized cycles**

Once a cycle is finalized, the entire budget form is disabled. No fields can be edited and no new budgets can be created. The "Create new" button shows a tooltip: "This cycle is finalized. You can no longer create new budgets." The budget philosophy switcher is also hidden.


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**Audit log**

An **Audit log** button in the page header opens a drawer showing the history of budget changes for this cycle.

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