Overview

Configuring budgets within a comp cycle can be a tricky process for clients.

In Deel Compensation, we support top-down (manual) and bottoms-up (automatic) budgets. Your comp cycle can be configured for either type - or with no budget at all - by selecting budget type in the first configuration step of a comp cycle.

Automatic budgets

In Deel Compensation, an Automatic budget is a way to automatically calculate your total salary review budget based on the specific guidance you set for your employees.

Instead of an executive team handing down a single lump sum for the whole company, the system looks at every eligible worker within guidance populations, applies your compensation rules, and adds them all up to create the final budget.

Configuring Automatic ("Bottoms-up") Budgets

Step 1 - Select the Automatic budget in the setup flow

In the configuration flow, choose Automatic budgets

When you choose this path, the manual top-level budget fields are disabled to prevent conflicting numbers and ensure your budget is 100% data-driven.

Step 2 - Set Your Guidance Populations

Here, you will:

• Identify groups of employees based on specific criteria.
• Assign a Percentage (%) budget calculation for each group.

If you don't want to use performance scores or compa-ratios to calculate your budge, you can choose an “N/A” Performance score value for all workers

Step 3 - Review the Aggregate Total

The system will automatically display the total salary budget for the entire cycle by adding up all your Guidance Populations. This gives you an instant view of the cycle’s total cost before you launch.

Tracking Your Automatic Budget

Once the cycle is live, you and your managers can track spending in real-time:

• Plan Page: View live "Budgets vs. Requests" to see how much of the budget has been used and how much remains as managers submit their recommendations.
  • Note: Both assigned and unassigned managers will show in Budgets vs. Requests. But if a manager’s HRIS profile is missing key information like a compensation amount or gaps in their reporting hierarchy, the manager will not show
• Dynamic Filtering: If you filter the view to a specific Manager, the budget display will automatically update to show only that Manager’s specific team budget.

Manual budgets

In a Manual approach, the total budget for the compensation cycle is determined by leadership and then manually assigned to specific budget owners (Managers).

Instead of the system calculating a budget for you based on worker rules, you specify the exact currency amount that each Manager is allowed to spend.

In short, you "push" specific funds down from the top of the organization to each department or team lead.

Configuring Manual Budgets

Step 1 - Select the Top-down Path

Choose Top-down Budgets from the configuration options. 

When you choose this path, the "Guidance Populations" budget calculations are disabled to prevent conflicting numbers between your manual assignments and automated rules.

Step 2 - Set Your High-Level Totals

When you arrive at the budgets step, first, enter the top-level salary budgets for your enabled categories, such as Market, Merit, and Promotion.

Step 3 - Assign Budgets to Managers (via CSV)

To ensure accuracy across large teams, you will assign these budgets using an Export/Import CSV flow:

• Export: Download the template CSV that includes your full reporting hierarchy and every Manager participating in the cycle
• Assign: In your spreadsheet, enter the specific currency amounts for each Manager per adjustment type (e.g., how much "Merit" budget Manager A receives).
• Import: Upload the updated spreadsheet back into Deel. The system will automatically validate your data.

How to avoid upload errors

To keep your budget organized, our system uses a Hierarchy Validation rule:

• A Manager-of-Managers cannot have a total budget that is less than the sum of the budgets assigned to their direct reports.
• Example: If the CEO gives three VPs $10,000 each, the CEO’s total budget must be at least $30,000.

Viewing and Tracking

Once live, Admins can view the "Budgets vs. Requests" for any Manager in the organization to see how much of their assigned funds have been used in real-time.