Incentive Compensation Plan Document Approval and Acceptance Process

Typically, your compensation plan isn't valid until it has approvals, and then participants accept or reject their plans. This topic covers the approval and acceptance process activities for participant plan documents.

These activities include when and what types of actionable and informational notifications the process sends to incentive compensation (IC) analysts, managers, participant managers, and participants. Here's the sequence of approvals:

1. Analyst and analyst's management hierarchy

2. Participant's manager and management hierarchy

3. Participant acceptance

Settings That Affect Plan Document Approval and Acceptance

You can configure the plan approval parameters.

1. Use the Manage Parameters task in the Setup and Maintenance work area:

   • Offering: Sales

   • Functional Area: Incentives

2. Set Enable Plan Approval and Acceptance Workflow to Yes.

3. Enter the analyst approval hierarchy levels and supervisor approval hierarchy levels.

   The values that you enter specify how many levels to include in the approval part of the process. The default value is 1 for both fields.

   Analyst approval uses the Manage Analyst Hierarchy. It's possible to have more than one person on a single level of this hierarchy. The supervisor hierarchy is derived by setting the Manager option when creating a user. The Analyst assigned to the participant as-on date (the date the plan document is published) routes the approval notification. The effective dates from the Analyst Hierarchy aren't used.

   This table shows examples of setting approval hierarchy levels.

   Approval Hierarchy	Level	Sequence
   Analyst	0	No approval. Participant is notified and accepts.
   Analyst Analyst 2	1	Analyst's Manager approves
   Analyst Analyst 2	2	Analyst's Manager approves Analyst's Manager's Manager, and an administrator on this level approve
   Supervisor	1	Participant's supervisor approves.
   Supervisor	2	Participant's supervisor approves. Supervisor's manager approves.
   Supervisor	0	No supervisor approval. Participant is notified and accepts.

   The Refresh Manager Hierarchy process updates the supervisor hierarchy information. Someone with the job role Human Resource Specialist can run the process in the Scheduled Processes work area.

4. Select the default template to be used when publishing a plan document. You can change the template for a compensation plan when editing the plan.

Also, the participant must be assigned an incentive compensation analyst and participant manager. Don't edit the standard workflow for the Plan Document Approval and Acceptance workflow. Editing the task configuration leads to incorrect workflows.

How Plan Documents Are Approved and Accepted

You submit a plan document for approval and acceptance for each participant compensation plan assignment within a fiscal year. If one participant is assigned to multiple plans, you submit each plan for approval.

Here are the job roles at each sequential step in the process with the corresponding human and workflow tasks.

Job Role	Human Task	Workflow Task
Incentive Compensation Analysts	In the Participant Snapshot work area: Individualize plans. Submit the plan documents for approval, which initiates the approval process. You can also withdraw plan documents, as required if the plan status isn't Accepted. If accepted, the analyst can submit the plan again for approval and acceptance. You submit or withdraw on the Edit Compensation Plan page. You can also initiate the plan document approval and acceptance process by going to Manage Plan Document Distribution Requests. This task is available in the Participant Assignment work area. Click Create to create a new request. The date range you enter in the participant search is for compensation plan assignment dates. In the Included participants region, click Add. Enter at least one value to search. The search finds participants that match your criteria and who have compensation plans assigned within the date range. It doesn't include plans in the In Progress or Submitted status. To exclude plans that are accepted or rejected, go to Advanced Search and add the Approval Status field. For criteria, use Approval Status Does not equal Accepted (or Rejected). Submit your request.	Sends plan documents submitted by reporting analysts to IC managers' worklists for review and approval or rejection.
Incentive Compensation Managers	In their Worklist: Notifications and Approvals section, review submitted plan documents and approve or reject them.	For approved plan documents, sends actionable notifications with attached plan documents to the participants' managers. For rejected plan documents, sends information notifications to the initiating IC analysts.
Participant Managers	Review plan documents and approve or reject them.	For approved plan documents, sends actionable notifications with attached plan documents to the participants. For rejected plan documents, sends information notifications to the initiating IC analysts.
Participants	Review plan documents and accept or reject them.	For accepted plan documents, sends participant managers, IC analysts, and IC managers information notifications. For rejected plan documents, sends information notifications to the initiating IC analysts.

Participant managers and participants can view their plan documents on the My Compensation Plans tab of the Sales Compensation work area. Participants see all versions of accepted and rejected plan documents for a given compensation plan. Analysts can review plan documents in the Participant Snapshot Manage Compensation Plan task. Work with all your notifications in your Worklist, found under Tools in the Navigator.