Stock grants
ChartHop tracks stock grants over time to plan and manage employee compensation, including:
- Valuations: the current value of the company's stock
- Planned Grants: for open roles, new hires, or existing employees -- the amount that has been communicated or targeted, but not yet issued
- Actual Grants: the grants that have been actually issued, including vesting schedules
From the Org Settings page, org Owners can set the stock price history of your company over time.
You can set three types of prices:
- Common FMV: Fair Market Valuation performed, usually by an outside firm, to value the company's common stock for safe harbor under IRS 409A. These prices are used as the strike price for stock option grants.
- Preferred Fundraise: This is the price most recently paid by investors for preferred stock, entered when the company raises outside investment.
- Grant: This should be the price used to determine employee compensation value -- the company's "best value" (as described by Fred Wilson in this classic blog post). When determining the present value of a stock option grant, grant price will be calculated against strike price.
If you're not sure what to set Grant Price to, it'd be reasonable to set it to the most recent preferred price (if it's been 6+ months since last fundraise) or the most recent preferred with a 20% discount for common (if coming immediately off a fundraise).
- For public companies, the Public Market Price will automatically be pulled on a daily basis, and a 60-day rolling average will be used when displaying the current value of compensation.
- However, you will still want to set Grant Price, which will determine the formula used to calculate the amount and value of a stock grant that was issued in a given period.
These are grants that are planned but not yet issued:
- For open roles, the expected target compensation
- For new hires, the amount that was communicated in the offer package
- For employees, any planned refresh grants
To set Planned Grant value, select a job, click Edit Job, and edit the value in the Compensation tab. Planned Grants can be set in dollars or shares, and can be specified as RSUs or options.
An employee's Planned Grant value will appear on their employee profile, under the Equity Grants tab. When an employee receives any actual stock grants, Planned Grant as of that date will automatically reset to zero.
These are the record of each grant issued to employees, including RSUs, ISOs, and NSOs and including the vesting schedule.
- If you are using cap table management software, such as Carta or E*Trade, to track your cap table, you can sync grants automatically by installing the appropriate app.
- If you're not using cap management software, you can upload the grants after they are issued via a CSV spreadsheet import.
Grants will appear on the employee's profile, under the Equity Grants tab.
For purposes of calculating Annual Equity Compensation, the system will calculate, based on current Grant Price (private companies) or Public Market Price (public companies), the value vested in the upcoming year for any given employee.
Example: If Sarah has a grant for 10,000 ISOs on a four-year vesting schedule with a strike price of $0.50 and the most recent Grant Price is $5.00, Sarah's Annual Equity Compensation will be ($5.00 - $0.50) * 10,000 / 4 = $11,250, for a year's worth of vesting. If Sarah only had six more months before being fully vested, Annual Compensation would be $5625.
Stock grants are considered sensitive compensation information. Grants (both planned and actual) are visible to the grant recipient, their managers, and those with special access to view equity compensation.
Stock prices are normally considered org-public information so that employees can understand the value of their compensation. However, if you do not wish your org to have access to stock prices, email us at support@charthop.com.
