Configurations overview

What this article covers

When you create a merit cycle, the Configurations section is where you define how the cycle works: what data planners see, how decisions flow through approvals, what guardrails enforce your compensation philosophy, and how outcomes are communicated. This article gives a brief overview of each configuration area and the core concepts behind running a cycle. Detailed setup instructions for each area are covered in dedicated articles.

Cycle lifecycle

Every merit cycle moves through three stages. The stage controls what planners and admins can do.

Stage	What it means
Inactive	The cycle is hidden from planners. Admins can configure all settings, but no one outside the admin team sees the cycle or its data. Use this stage while you are still building out the cycle.
Active	The cycle is visible to planners with access. Planners can view their worksheets and submit compensation decisions. Admins can still update most configurations. Employee data from your HRIS integration does not refresh automatically while a cycle is active.
Finalized	The cycle is read-only. No further compensation changes can be submitted by planners or admins. Finalizing the cycle unlocks reward letter sharing.

You control the stage from General settings. Moving a cycle from Active to Finalized is a significant step, so confirm that all approvals are complete before changing the status.

General settings

The General tab is where you set the cycle's foundational properties.

• Cycle name: the display name planners see when they open Compensation Planning
• Start date: used for tenure calculations, proration, and equity vesting projections
• End date: displayed as part of the cycle header
• Cycle status: controls the lifecycle stage (Inactive, Active, or Finalized)

Currency and equity

If your company operates across multiple currencies or grants equity, configure these settings before adding columns or building recommendations.

• Exchange rates: conversion rates from other currencies to the cycle's base currency. You can upload rates via CSV or verify them using the built-in currency converter. Rates are frozen as of the cycle start date.
• Share price: the value per share, used to calculate equity valuations across the cycle.
• Lock equity currency: by default, planners can toggle equity values between cycle currency and employee local currency. You can lock equity to a specific currency so all planners see the same view.
• Share rounding: how fractional share quantities are rounded (up, down, or nearest).
• Equity display options: choose whether to show share counts alongside cash values, and whether to show projected next-year vesting in equity summary columns.
• Program-specific details: configure individual equity programs with grant type (options, RSUs, RSAs), vesting schedule, vesting interval, cliff end date, and exercise price. You can set a default program and add overrides for specific grant types.

When you add equity columns to the cycle, they reference these settings to calculate grant values.

Cycle access

By default, any user with Compensation Planning permissions can see all active cycles, but they only see employees they have been given access to (through approval chains and role-based permissions). If you need to restrict an entire cycle to specific roles (for example, an executive compensation cycle or a department-specific cycle), enable cycle-specific permissions.

• Toggle cycle access restrictions on from the General tab under Cycle access
• Select which roles can view the cycle. The Admin role is always included and cannot be removed.

Users whose roles are not selected will not see the cycle anywhere in Compensation Planning.

Employee eligibility

The Employee eligibility configuration determines which employees participate in the cycle.

• Employees are typically pulled in from your HRIS integration automatically.
• You can add or remove employees manually via CSV upload or by searching for individual employees.
• Ineligible employees remain visible in planner worksheets but are read-only. They cannot receive compensation adjustments.
• Hidden employees are a separate state. Hidden employees do not appear in planner worksheets at all.

Review eligibility before activating the cycle. Changes to eligibility after planners have started submitting may affect approval chain status and budget calculations.

Columns

Columns define the data fields that appear in the planner worksheet. Each column has a type, display settings, and role-based permissions.

Column types

• Static columns display data from your HRIS integration or uploaded data (for example, current salary, department, job level, start date)
• Input columns let planners enter compensation decisions (for example, salary raise, equity refresher grant, one-time payment)
• Calculated columns derive their values from other columns using formulas (for example, new salary = current salary + salary raise + market adjustment)

Key capabilities

• Role-based permissions: for each column, set whether a role can edit, view, or not see the column. Use role overrides to customize visibility by role (for example, equity columns visible only to a specific planner role).
• Column defaults: control whether a column is visible by default and whether it is pinned (frozen) when planners scroll horizontally. Planners can still toggle column visibility as needed.
• Column ordering: drag and drop columns into the order you want planners to see them. The Employee column is always first and cannot be moved.
• Audit log: view a timeline of all column additions, edits, deletions, and reordering.

Data upload

Data upload lets you import cycle-specific employee data via CSV. This is one of two ways to get input data into a cycle that does not come from an integrated system (the other is making a column directly editable by planners in the worksheet). Use data upload when you want to centrally control the values rather than having planners enter them.

Common use cases:

• Performance ratings
• Promotion decisions (who is promoted and into which band)
• Last compensation adjustment dates (for proration in recommendations)
• Custom employee attributes (for example, flight risk flags)
• Initial values for pay increases or equity grants
• Budget allocations for per-employee budgets

When uploading, you select which columns to populate, download a template with existing data, update the template, and re-upload. The upload portal validates data and flags errors before import. By default, uploaded data does not overwrite planner inputs. Enable Override planner inputs with uploaded data if you want the upload to replace any values planners have already entered.

All uploads are logged in the audit trail with timestamps.

Approval chains

Approval chains define the hierarchical workflow for compensation decisions. They determine which planners review which employees and in what order.

How approval chains work

Each employee is assigned a chain of planners (typically their manager, then their manager's manager, and so on). The first planner in the chain reviews and submits, then the employee moves to the next planner. This continues until the final planner submits, at which point the employee is finalized.

Approval statuses

As employees move through the chain, their status updates:

Status	What it means
Pending submission	An earlier planner in the chain has not yet submitted. The current planner cannot make changes for this employee.
In worksheet	The employee is in the current planner's active worksheet and can be edited.
Submitted	The current planner has submitted. The employee has moved to the next planner in the chain.
Finalized	The final planner in the chain has submitted. Only admins can make further changes.
Ineligible	The employee is not eligible for compensation adjustments and has no approval chain.

Setting up approval chains

Start by generating chains from your HRIS integration, which creates chains based on your existing manager hierarchy. From there, you can make modifications wherever needed using in-app bulk actions or by uploading a CSV for larger changes.

You can edit approval chains after the cycle is active, but changes affect where employees sit in the workflow. If you reassign an employee to a new chain, their current planner updates to the first planner in the new chain who has not yet submitted.

Planning windows

Planning windows create a staggered timeline for different levels of the approval hierarchy. Instead of all planners working at the same time, you assign time windows so that front-line managers complete their work before senior leaders begin reviewing.

• Auto-generate: create windows based on the depth of your approval chains. Each level of the hierarchy gets its own window.
• Manual setup: create, edit, or delete windows with custom date ranges.
• Pull-up behavior: by default, employees move to the next planner automatically when a planning window closes. You can toggle this to manual pull-up, where senior planners actively pull employees into their worksheet.

Planning windows require approval chains to exist before they can be configured.

Recommendations

Recommendation logic generates suggested compensation values for each employee. Suggestions appear as floating text above the relevant input column in the worksheet, giving planners a starting point based on your compensation philosophy.

Two approaches

• Classic: a guided, step-by-step configuration. You select a compensation philosophy (for example, performance only, performance and range penetration, performance and compa ratio), define groupings, and fill out a recommendation matrix. No formula writing required.
• Advanced: a code editor where you write Handlebars expressions that can reference any column in the cycle. Includes syntax highlighting, inline error descriptions, and a live employee preview panel.

Each pay type in the cycle is configured independently. You can use classic for some pay types and advanced for others.

Prefilling

You can optionally enable Prefill target recommendations, which populates the worksheet with recommended values automatically. Planners can still override prefilled values. Without prefilling, recommendations appear as guidance text only.

Budgets

Budgets set spending targets for the cycle and give planners visibility into how much they have to allocate.

Budget philosophies

• Top-down: budgets are assigned at the planner level. Each planner receives a budget for their entire worksheet. Two planners looking at the same employees may see different budget amounts depending on their position in the approval chain. Top-down budgets support holdbacks.
• Bottom-up: budgets are assigned at the employee level and roll up across planners. Two planners looking at the same employees always see the same budget. Easier to set up but does not support holdbacks.

You choose one philosophy per cycle. Switching philosophies deletes any existing budgets.

Budget types

Each budget tracks a specific compensation type:

• Cash: salary raise, variable raise, market raise, promotion raise, one-time bonus, annual bonus
• Equity: refresher grant, promotion grant, performance grant

Calculation methods (bottom-up)

• Create budgets from your recommendation logic
• Create budgets as a percentage of compensation
• Create a custom budget amount per employee

Budgets include role-based permissions (control who can see budget data) and an audit log.

Smart Flags

Smart Flags are rule-based visual indicators that highlight employees who meet specific conditions. They help you surface compensation decisions that need attention, require justification, or should be blocked.

How Smart Flags work

Each flag has a name, color, and one or more logic rules based on cycle columns. You can combine conditions with AND/OR operators. Examples: flag employees whose proposed salary falls outside their band, flag managers whose pay is within 10% of a direct report, flag any raise above a set threshold.

Compensation controls

Optionally attach a control to a flag:

Control type	Behavior
Soft stop	The planner must add a justification comment before continuing. The worksheet can still be submitted.
Hard stop	The planner cannot submit the worksheet until the flagged value is corrected or an authorized user overrides the stop.

When you add a control, you also write planner guidance that explains what the flag means and what the planner should do.

Visibility

By default, flags are visible to all roles. You can override visibility per role to hide specific flags from certain planners while keeping them visible to admins.

Worksheet settings

Worksheet settings control what planners see and can do in their worksheet.

Display options

• Monthly salaries: show salary values in monthly terms instead of annual
• Hourly salary raises: display hourly rates for employees paid hourly
• Percent toggle: let planners switch between entering values as cash amounts or percentages
• Employee detail view: enable a popout panel with detailed employee information when a planner clicks an employee's name

Features

• Worksheet returns: allow planners to return an employee to a previous approval level
• AI-generated employee summaries: provide planners with an AI-generated summary of each employee's compensation context, history, and relevant flags
• Priority Sort: configure AI-powered sorting to highlight high-priority employees for planners based on criteria you define
• Comparison metrics: choose whether planners see compa ratio or range penetration as the default compensation comparison metric, and select which dimensions (department, level, location) are available in peer comparison views

Reward letters

Reward letters communicate each employee's compensation changes after the cycle is finalized.

Configuration

• Template editor: customize the reward letter template using an HTML and Handlebars code editor. You can reference cycle columns as dynamic variables (for example, new salary, equity grant value) and preview the rendered letter in real time.
• Eligibility criteria: define which column values determine whether an employee receives a reward letter.

Sharing

Reward letter sharing is only available after the cycle is finalized. Once enabled, planners can release letters to individual employees through their worksheets. Employees view their reward letter in the Total Rewards portal.

Employee confirmation

You can optionally require employees to confirm receipt of their reward letter. When enabled, Pave tracks each letter's status:

• Released or unreleased: whether the planner has shared the letter with the employee
• Viewed or unopened: whether the employee has opened the letter
• Confirmed or unconfirmed: whether the employee has acknowledged the letter

Cycle Insights

Cycle Insights provides real-time dashboards that help you monitor the cycle as it progresses and analyze outcomes after it closes.

Cycle Progress

Track how many employees have been submitted, where worksheets are in the approval chain, and which planners still have outstanding work.

Budgets dashboard

Monitor real-time budget consumption across the cycle. View how much of each budget has been allocated, filter by department or planner, and identify where spending is over or under target.

Cycle Outcomes

Available during and after the cycle, Cycle Outcomes visualizes:

• Performance rating distributions across the organization
• Average compensation increases by performance rating, grouped by any dimension (department, level, location)
• How compensation decisions affected band adherence (pre-cycle vs. post-cycle)
• The relationship between performance ratings and employees' positions within their pay bands

Access to Cycle Insights is controlled through the Cycle Dashboard permission. Assign this permission to roles that need visibility into cycle-wide progress and trends.