Budget Pools

overview budget pools allow you to configure spending budgets within a comp cycle budgets are optional — a cycle can have none, one, or multiple budget pools each budget is independent and can be configured with its own scope, calculation logic, and visibility rules common examples a base salary increase budget, a promotion budget, a bonus budget, an equity budget budget scope who does the budget apply to? when creating a budget pool, you first define which employees it applies to the default is all eligible employees, but you can narrow it by department, location, or team using a custom cql filter (e g , only employees where a "promotion" field is set to yes, or only employees outside the usa) if an employee does not apply to a budget they do not contribute to that budget's total any raise they receive does not count against that budget's spend scope affects both the total and the allocation simultaneously budget currency# you can set a default display currency for the budget in practice, this almost never needs to be changed from the org default (usd for most orgs) charthop's currency logic if all employees in a pod are paid in the same non usd currency , the budget defaults to that currency if there are mixed currencies in a pod, the budget always defaults to usd managers can also switch the budget currency themselves at any time using the currency dropdown within the cycle view budget visibility who can see the budget? by default, anyone with an employee who applies to the budget can see it if no employees in your pod apply to a budget, that budget simply won't appear for you you can restrict visibility further by role — e g , only final approvers, owners, and collaborators see it (reviewers/approvers do not) by specific people — name specific individuals who can see the budget custom filter — any cql based rule role + filter combination — e g , final approvers, owners, and collaborators, plus anyone in the tree matching a specific filter how budget allocation is tracked this setting tells charthop how to count spend against the budget — i e , when someone receives a raise or change, how much does that count toward the budget? option 1 change and track field select a field (e g , base annualized) charthop calculates new value of the field − current value of the field = amount counted against the budget for a straightforward base salary budget, this works well always use base annualized (not base comp) when tracking base salary budgets using base comp on hourly employees would count their hourly rate (e g , $25) instead of their annualized salary, producing meaningless budget numbers option 2 custom formula write a formula directly to define what counts against the budget this is the most flexible option and is now the recommended approach for complex scenarios examples reference a specific field in the cycle whatever that field's value is counts as the spend combine fields 3% of new base + one time bonus amount use ternaries for conditional logic if department is marketing, count 4% of new base; otherwise count 3% this allows precise control over what gets counted per employee without relying on the change minus current calculation how the budget total is calculated this section defines the total pool of money available there are a few approaches calculated budget (same for everyone) the most common setup define a percentage or fixed amount per employee and charthop sums it up across everyone who applies to the budget examples 3 5% of base annualized for every eligible employee $2,000 flat per eligible employee custom formula if the logic is more complex calculated budget (varies by field value) the budget percentage or amount varies based on one or more field values, such as department, location, or performance rating — all within a single budget pool examples engineering 4% of base | marketing 2% of base | people 3 5% of base outstanding rating 5% | meets expectations 3% | etc multiple fields combined department + location (e g , chicago + cx = 5%, dallas + cx = 3%) this is very common and avoids needing to create a separate budget pool per department or rating tier static budget (based on reviewer pods) use this when the customer's finance team has defined a fixed dollar amount per manager rather than a formula based total you manually enter the budget amount for each reviewer/approver in the tree there is no import for this — it must be entered manually important when entering budgets for higher level approvers, remember they inherit the budget totals from everyone submitting to them if you want a manager to have $10,000 of their own to allocate on top of what rolls up to them, their entered budget must equal $10,000 plus the sum of all budgets submitting up to them you need to account for rollups all the way up the tree this method is the most flexible (any number goes) but the most manual the calculate button every budget pool has a calculate button that generates a preview of the budget — showing the total and how much each reviewer/approver would see based on the current configuration use this to verify the setup is working as expected before launch help customers sanity check totals against their finance targets quickly iterate on percentages if the total is coming in too high or low multiple budget pools a cycle can have multiple budget pools, each configured independently with its own scope, calculation logic, visibility, and label common combinations include a base increase budget, a promotion budget, a bonus budget, and an equity budget running simultaneously within the same cycle