What is Pequity all about? 

Start Here: Your Employee Data

Before you kick off any comp cycle, you'll want to make sure the platform knows who your employees are (their names, job levels, locations, and teams.)

All of this lives in the People Page, your organization's central employee roster inside Pequity. You can get your data in two ways:

• Upload a CSV — a quick way to get started
• Connect your HRIS — Pequity integrates with ADP, Workday, BambooHR, UKG, and more

Pro Tip: Load your pay ranges into the Ranges Tool so Pequity can show managers exactly where each employee falls within their pay band and flag anyone who'd fall outside it after a proposed change.

Admins and Users

Pequity has two main types of users:

• Admins — configure the platform, manage settings, and oversee comp cycles. Set up during onboarding and responsible for inviting everyone else.
• Planners & Partners — managers, HR partners, and others who participate in the planning process.

Running a Compensation Cycle

A comp cycle is where all the planning action happens. Whether you're running merit increases, bonuses, equity refreshes, or promotions. Pequity streamlines your process. Cycles are fully self-contained, so you can run multiple at once without any overlap or interference.

What admins set up

Before a cycle opens, admins configure:

• Which pay components are in scope (salary, bonus, equity, etc.)
• What columns managers will see in their workbook
• Budgets are either formula-driven (e.g., 4% of each employee's salary) or fixed dollar amounts per team
• Formulas for automated recommendations, like a merit matrix that suggests higher increases for top performers at the bottom of their range. Pequity even has a built-in AI assistant to help write and test these.

What managers see

When a cycle is open, managers see a workbook, a clean table of their direct reports with columns for current salary, proposed changes, remaining budget, and more. Managers can:

• See where each employee falls in their pay range
• Enter or adjust recommendations
• Leave comments for context

Managers only see their own group. No peeking at other teams' data. Once a manager submits their workbook, it locks. If changes are needed afterward, an admin can reopen it.

Heads up: Pequity is a planning and decision-making tool, not a payroll system. Once a cycle closes and recommendations are finalized, they're exported back to your HRIS or payroll system for processing.

Planning Hierarchy: Waves, Groups & Roles

Planning Groups

A planning group is a set of employees that one manager is responsible for. Every employee in a cycle belongs to exactly one group. Admins create groups manually or by importing a spreadsheet, and each group has an assigned Planner who owns the recommendations.

Waves

Waves control who is planning and when. Think of them as phases:

• Wave 1 — Managers enter recommendations
• Wave 2 — HR or Total Rewards reviews and approves
• Wave 3 (optional) — Executive pre-approval before managers begin

Admins open and close each wave manually — nothing activates on its own.

Roles at a Glance



Reward Letters

Once planning wraps up, Pequity can generate personalized reward letters for every employee. Letters are built from templates that automatically pull each person's data from the cycle (salary, bonus, equity, effective dates, and more.)

• Admins control when letters go out
• Managers can download letters for their own team
• Letters are sent as PDFs either directly from Pequity via email, or as a bulk download you distribute through your own channels

Ready to go deeper?

Once you've got the basics down, check out the Pequity Comp Cycles and Pequity Features & Workflows sections of the Help Center — they cover every feature in detail, including formulas, budget setup, data exports, email notifications, and more.