Key Dates

overview the key dates section is one of the quickest parts of a comp cycle configuration most of the dates here are purely for reference and have no system functionality tied to them — with one important exception timeline dates you'll see four timeline dates in this section review start all reviews due final approval due payroll effective date these dates populate the cycle timeline for reference purposes only they do not drive any system behavior for example, if the review start date passes and no one has clicked launch, the cycle will not launch itself after a cycle is launched, these dates can still be edited skip incomplete reviews after due date this is an optional checkbox tied to the all reviews due date when enabled, any manager who has not submitted their review by that date will have their review automatically skipped — not just to the next approver level, but all the way to the top of the cycle this happens at approximately 9 30 am utc the day after the due date we generally do not recommend using this setting within the cycle, you can manually skip individual reviews up one level at a time, which gives far more control the auto skip is all or nothing — everyone who hasn't submitted gets escalated to the very top simultaneously, with no ability to be selective if a customer does use this setting, the all reviews due date becomes functionally important, as the auto skip triggers based on it ⚠️ org data reference date — most important field this is the most important date on the entire key dates screen it determines what org data the comp cycle will use any data effective on or before this date will be recognized by the cycle any data effective after this date will be ignored example if an employee is in the product department on august 14th (the reference date) and moves to engineering on august 20th, the comp cycle will show them as being in product — because that's where they were as of the reference date why this date exists# once the comp cycle ends, all pay changes are written back to the org with an effective date without a reference date cutoff, those new pay values would get pulled back into the cycle and it would appear as though no changes occurred the reference date prevents this by locking what data the cycle sees how to set it correctly confirm with the customer when this cycle ends and pay changes go into effect, what will the effective date of those changes be? the org data reference date must be set to a date before that payroll effective date example if pay changes will be effective september 1st, the reference date can be set anywhere up to august 31st — but not september 1st or later, or the incoming pay changes will corrupt the cycle a warning flag will appear in the ui if the reference date is set on or after the payroll effective date ⚠️ this date cannot be changed after launch once the cycle is launched, the org data reference date is locked and cannot be modified it must be confirmed and set correctly before clicking launch edge cases to keep in mind retroactive pay changes if a cycle runs in august but pay changes are retroactively effective to august 1st, the reference date may need to be set to july 31st — even though the cycle spans all of august backdating data changes mid cycle if a customer needs to update a field (e g , a csv uploaded performance rating) after the cycle has launched, they must backdate that change to on or before the reference date for the cycle to recognize it unreleased performance data if the customer uses charthop's performance module and form responses have not yet been released, that unreleased data can still be pulled into the comp cycle since unreleased data doesn't carry an effective date, the reference date does not apply to it