Set up budget pools
Budget pools are budgets that you can create to establish the amount that can be spent within the compensation review.
You can set up an overall budget for all spending or set up several budget pool allocations for specific uses. For example, you can configure the following for your compensation review:
- a cost of living budget pool that applies to all eligible employees, and
- a separate merit budget pool that reviewers can use for performance-based compensation adjustments.
ChartHop also allows you to configure budget pools so that they’re applicable to specific categories of employees (for example, based on department, team, level, location) or even based on the definition of built-in and custom fields. These allow you to create individual budget allocations for each reviewer.
Your reviewers and approvers see the budget pools you establish when they perform the employee compensation reviews and work within those budgets.
Setting up budgets also allows ChartHop to provide your reviewers and approvers with real-time visualizations of the financial impact of compensation changes against those budgets. Learn more.
If you choose not to set up budgets, ChartHop still displays a visualization of how much is spent within the compensation review but does not compare that against a specific budget.
To establish budget pools, open an existing compensation review with a status of Not started or Paused. Select the Budget pools tab.
You can set up multiple budget pools to allocate and track specific budgets within your organization (for example, merit increases and market adjustments).
To create a new budget pool:
- Select New budget pool.
- Configure the budget pool settings according to the parameters you want to implement. See below for a description of all fields.
- Once you are finished, select Calculate to process the calculations and display the calculated budgets for each reviewer based on the settings you entered. You can scroll horizontally to see the full view of the calculated budget.
An overall budget tracks overall spend. Depending on your organization's compensation policies and planning, you can set up an overall budget to track the total spend in the compensation review.
To establish an overall budget:
- Select New budget pool.
- Configure the overall budget settings according to the parameters you want to implement. See below for a description of all fields.
- Once you are finished, select Calculate to process the calculations and display the calculated budgets for each reviewer based on the settings you entered. You can scroll horizontally to see the full view of the calculated budget.
You can delete a budget pool when you'd rather start over with a new configuration. Deleting a budget pool doesn't affect any other budgets you've created.
To delete a budget pool:
- Select the Budget pools tab.
- Expand the budget pool you want to delete.
- Select Delete.
- Select Confirm to delete the budget pool.
The following table describes the configuration fields you can apply to your budgets:
Field | Description | Example |
Basics | | |
Budget label | The name of your budget. | Merit - US |
Employees the budget pool applies to | Establishes the group or category of employees to which the budget pool applies. Reviewers and approvers can edit compensation based on availability within this budget pool. Select from the following dropdown options:
| Only specific locations
Only specific departments
|
Fields | | |
Field the budget is calculated based upon | Determines the ChartHop field (either built-in or custom) upon which the calculations are based. For example, if you choose Base, then ChartHop uses the current values of that field to perform the calculations you enter in the Calculation section. | Base Base - annualized
|
Field budget is allocated from | Determines the ChartHop field (either built-in or custom) from which the budget spend is tracked. For example, if you choose Base - changed, when reviewers and approvers change the contents of the the Base - changed column in the reviewer workbook, ChartHop uses the difference between the new entered amount and the previous amount (in other words, Base versus Base - changed) to figure out how much is being spent. That amount is tracked and shown within the budget allocation visualizations. | Base - changed Base - raise amount |
Calculation | | |
Are calculations dependent on one or more field values, like department? | Determines whether the amount is calculated based on how a specific built-in or custom field is defined (for example, department, performance). Select Yes to establish additional considerations for the budget calculations based on specific fields. Selecting Yes displays the Which field affects the calculation? field underneath. Select No, the calculation is the same for everyone to apply the calculations evenly across all eligible employees for the budget pool. | Yes |
Which field affects the calculation? | Determines the built-in or custom field that affects the calculation. When you select a field, you can define how the values of this field specifically affect the budget calculations. Only fields with the following data types can be selected:
| Performance rating Division Business Operations 2% Customer Support 2% Sales 4% Finance 2% Legal 2% Marketing 3% Product 3% R&D 4%
|
Calculation | Determines the specific calculation that is processed to affect the budget. Select from the following dropdown options:
| Percent |
Target value | Establish a target value for the calculation. | 1.5% |
