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.



To establish budget pools, open an existing compensation review with a status of Not started or Paused. Select the Budget pools tab.

Set the budget allocation type

Before you create any budget pools, you should define how your budgets will be allocated. You can choose to have your budgets allocated proportionally or sequentially:

• When your budgets are allocated proportionally, ChartHop allocates proportionate amounts from each applicable budget pool (when multiple budget pools apply). For example, allocating proportionally from both a Market and Merit budget pool.
• When your budgets are allocated sequentially, ChartHop tries to fully allocate from the first applicable budget pool before allocating from the next one. The order in which amounts are allocated depends on the order in which you create your budget pools. For example, allocating first from a Market budget pool and then from a Merit budget pool for the remainder.

To set the budget allocation type:

1. In the Budget pools section, navigate to the Settings section. These settings apply globally to all budget pools you create.
2. In the Allocation Type field, select how you want your budget allocation to be made. Choose from the following:
   • Proportional
   • Sequential
3. Your settings are saved automatically.

Create a budget pool

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:

1. Select New budget pool.
2. Configure the budget pool settings according to the parameters you want to implement. See below for a description of all fields.
3. 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.

Establish an overall 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:

1. Select New budget pool.
2. Configure the overall budget settings according to the parameters you want to implement. See below for a description of all fields.
3. 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.

Delete a budget pool

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:

1. Select the Budget pools tab.
2. Expand the budget pool you want to delete.
3. Select Delete.
4. Select Confirm to delete the budget pool.

Budget settings

The following table describes the configuration fields you can apply to your budgets:

Configure budget bar visualizations

You have the ability to hide budgets that don’t apply to reviewers so that reviewers only see the budgets that apply to them. The Budget bar visualizations dropdown in the Budget pools settings lets you configure how budgets display to reviewers. 

To set up budget bar visualizations:

1. In the Budget pools section, navigate to the Settings section. These settings apply globally to all budget pools you create.
2. In the Budget bar visualizations dropdown, select how you want budgets to display:
   • Show all - Indicates all budgets display. When a budget is not applicable for the reviewer’s eligible employees, it displays as an empty bar without any values.
   • Only show applicable - Indicates only applicable budgets display for the reviewer. The reviewer can see budget headers and values for the budgets that apply to the reviewer’s eligible employees. This is the default option.
3. Your settings are saved automatically.