Adjust Raise Budget in an Active Compensation Cycle

How to change budget, allocated budget, and guidance in an active compensation cycle

The Budget page displays dynamic charts to help you track budget and spend for each of the pay types included in your compensation cycle.

The Raise budget shows the entire budget for merit increases and promotion increases in a compensation cycle, which are applied to base pay and variable pay (if applicable). You can increase or decrease this total amount. Raise budget does not include any budget allocated for bonus payouts. 

Before you start

• The Budget page is based on the overall cycle's budget. The Spend column reflects the sum of actual recommendations that have been submitted by recommenders and approvers.
• The Budget page includes a Budget Spend chart that shows the current spend based on submitted recommendations against the total raise budget. Drafted recommendations are not included in this visual.
• If the distribution or spend ever goes over budget, Lattice will notify you via a callout, however, being over budget will not stop the cycle from running. Admins can adjust your total or distributed budget using the steps below.

Adjust budget in an active cycle

1. Navigate to Admin > Compensation > Compensation Cycle.
2. Select View Progress to enter the desired cycle.
3. Under Manage, enter the Budget and currency page. 
4. Expand the Raise budget section.

There will be up to three rows under the Raise Budget category depending on how budget was allocated during setup:

1. Merit increases - Target Increases (budget) and/or Guidance that is allocated for all non-promoted employees in the cycle on a per-employee basis. 
2. Promotion increases - Target Increases (budget) and/or Guidance that is allocated for all promoted employees in the cycle on a per-employee basis. 
3. Distributed budget - Budget that was allocated directly to Recommenders and Approvers in the cycle. 

Each of these can be adjusted while the cycle is active.

Raise budget

Raise budget refers to the total raise budget for the cycle, including merit increases and promotion increases. Changing this number will not automatically adjust any existing allocation of budget to specific recommenders or approvers. 

1. Next to Raise budget, select Edit budget to bring up the Total budget modal. 
2. Calculate the overall target budget using an average percent (%)  increase on total pay under % Increase/employee for each eligible employee or entering a lump sum amount under Total raise budget.
3. Select Save changes.

Merit increases

The Raise guidance budget is calculated as the sum of merit raise guidance for all eligible employees.

1. Next to Merit increases, select Upload changes.
2. Download the Merit and Promotion CSV template. 
3. Update the CSV file. The format of this template will be determined by how the compensation cycle's budget was initially set up:
   • If set pay increase targets for eligible employees was selected, the editable columns will be Min Raise Guidance, Max Raise Guidance, and Target Increase. The value in Target Increase will control the overall budget, and the two Guidance columns will adjust guidance that is displayed to managers, but will not adjust the overall budget. 
   • If allocate budget directly to managers was selected, the only editable columns will be Min Raise Guidance and Max Raise Guidance. Changing these values will adjust guidance that is displayed to managers, but will not adjust the overall budget. 
     
     Notes: All columns other than the Guidance and Target columns are included only for reference. They cannot be modified via this upload. 
     
     Numbers for Guidance and Target must be a monetary value (not a percent %) and must not include any currency symbols or commas.
     
     If you are not uploading guidance ranges and want a single static value, put the single guidance value in the Min Raise Guidance column, and leave the Max Raise Guidance column blank.
     
     If you have a mix of Hourly and Salary employees in your cycle, you will see two sets of Min and Max columns; one labelled (Salary) and one labelled (Hourly). Ensure to put values in the correct set of columns based on each employee's Pay Type.
4. Upload the updated CSV.
5. Select Save.

Promotion guidance

The Promotion guidance tracks budget and spend on promotion raise increases.

Changes to an individual employee's promotion Guidance or Target Increase can be made by the same file upload as Merit Increases. Follow the steps in the section above to upload changes.

Distributed budget

The distributed budget shows budget that was allocated directly to Recommenders and Approvers in the compensation cycle. You can increase or decrease the amount per Recommender. Changes made on this page will impact budget, but will not impact Guidance for any employees.

1. Next to Distributed budget, select Edit distributions. 
2. Adjust the distribution of your budget to recommenders and approvers by entering an amount under Additional. Values entered here will automatically save.