Run a pay review

Getting set up for Pay Reviews

Pay reviews are run at company level.

Three roles may be involved:

• Senior Manager can start and submit a review but not approve it;
• Senior Manager Approver can start, submit and approve for their own team;
• Master User can do all three, company-wide.

Granting Permissions

If you are the Master User you can set up new permissions as needed:

1. Master User Permissions are set in Settings > Users, select the user, and tick Master under the People Management section.

2. Senior Manager Approver can be set in Smartly under Settings > Employee permissions > Set permissions tab.

3. Tick the Senior Manager Approver column for the relevant employee.

Log in and go to Manage > Pay reviews.

1. There are three Pay Review Tabs; Salaried employees, Waged employees and History.

2. Use Search and the filters (Department, Tenure type, Status, Previous review date, Pay group) to find who you're reviewing.

3. Some columns are shown by default (Employee, status, current rate, proposed rate, effective date) you can toggle on additional columns (Department, Pay group, Tenure, Previous review date)

4. Each employee has a Pay Review status; Ready for Review, In Review, Pending Approval and Approved. 

Declined reviews move automatically to History Tab.

You can only start a review if they are Ready for Review. 

2. Choose Percentage or Amount, enter the increase, and optionally set an effective date — it applies to everyone selected for now, and can be changed individually later.

3. Click Continue to open Review calculations, where each person's current rate, proposed rate and effective date can be adjusted individually.

(Proposed rate can't be negative or exceed $10,000,000.)

4. Click Save draft to save progress — employees move to In Review. Details can still be edited via the pencil icon.

1. Select everyone In Review and click Submit for approval for one more chance to adjust rates and dates.

2. Senior Manager sees Notify approvers only; Senior Manager Approver and Master also see Continue to approval to approve their own submission directly.

3. Notify approvers emails everyone eligible to approve, with a direct link. Status changes to Pending Approval.

4. An approver selects Pending Approval employees, reviews the submitted pay changes and clicks Approve or decline, with an optional comment against each person.

After approval: Status changes to approved, the change passes to Pay Rate Changes (back pay calculator) in payroll.  A notification is sent to the creator and submitter.

After decline: the employee (Senior Manager Approver/Master) returns to Ready for Review and a new review can start immediately. No notification is sent on decline.

Note: A Payroll admin can decline a pay review through the Pay Rate Change process. 

Note: A pay review is not considered fully processed until the pay packet it has been applied to has been processed in payroll. The effective date reflects when the pay increase applies from, not necessarily the date it is processed in a pay run. These two dates may differ.