A cycle is one round of salary review — your Q3 review, for example. As the Owner, you decide who's in scope, what the budget is, what guidance managers work to, and when they can propose. You don't fill in a blank form to do it: you describe the review you want, check the preview the agent builds from your description, and confirm.

Where to start

There are two entry points.

From the Inbox — ask One to start a new salary review cycle and describe the review you want to run.

From Financial planning:

1. In the sidebar, go to Financial planning.
2. Open the Salary reviews tab.
3. Click Add new cycle.

Either way, you describe the cycle in your own words and One builds it. The cycle starts in Draft — visible only to its Owners until the request period opens.

What to tell to ONE

The more One knows up front, the less you'll adjust afterwards. A useful description covers:

• Who's in scope — everyone, a legal entity, a department, a population you name.
• What you're reviewing — merit, equity adjustments, promotions, or some combination.
• The budget — the total you're willing to spend on this round.
• The dates — the cycle period, when the raises take effect, and the window when managers can propose.
• Your guidelines — the rules managers should follow, such as a 3–15% increase range.

You don't need all of it in one message. Start with what you know and One will ask for the rest.

Preview before you create

Before anything is created, One can show you who would be eligible and what it would cost. Ask to preview eligibility first, and you'll get a draft view with three figures at the top:

• Budget — the limit you set.
• Preview increase — what the proposed increases add up to.
• Remaining — what's left of the budget.

Below them, a table of everyone in scope with their Current role, Current salary, Merit amount, Merit percentage, Proposed salary, Currency, and a Verdict with an explanation of how it was reached.

A verdict is one of:

• Eligible — meets your guidelines.
• Not eligible — doesn't meet them, with the reason given alongside.
• Not judged — your rules couldn't be applied because information is missing. If your guidelines look at someone's last three performance reviews and they only have two, there's nothing to judge them against.

You can filter the preview, Export employee data, or Save in Analytics to keep the view.

Read the report before you confirm

One summarises what it's about to do and asks you to Confirm or Cancel. Nothing exists until you confirm, so this summary is worth reading properly — it's where the problems surface. It tells you:

• How many proposals will be created, over what dates, and when the raises take effect.
• The eligibility split — how many Eligible, Not eligible and Not judged.
• Anyone excluded, and why. People with no current salary recorded can't be given a proposed salary, so they're left out.
• How much of your budget the proposed increases use.
• Whether a cycle like this already exists. Overlapping cycles are allowed, so One tells you when one is already running rather than stopping you.

The settings that shape a cycle

Scope

Who the cycle covers. Everyone in scope appears in the worksheet of whichever manager they report to.

Budget

The total you're willing to spend. One suggests increases that fit inside it, and running totals stay visible as the cycle fills up.

Guidelines

The rules managers work to — your merit bands, your promotion criteria, how equity gaps should be treated. Guidelines also decide the verdict each person gets in the preview. They flag; they never block.

The request period

The window when managers can propose. This setting moves the cycle through its statuses:

• Set a period that starts in the future and the cycle becomes Scheduled.
• Set one that has already started and the cycle goes straight to Open requests.
• When the start date arrives, a Scheduled cycle opens to managers on its own.
• When the end date passes, the cycle moves to Under review and managers can no longer propose or edit.

You can still change the end date while the cycle is open, so a period that turns out to be too short can be extended.

Roles

Assign who does what. One person can hold more than one role — a department head often proposes for their own team and approves for the teams below them.

• Owner — runs the cycle: its guidelines, its budget, its dates, and who else holds a role in it.
• Approver — decides the proposals put forward for the people they cover.
• Manager — proposes and edits raises for the people reporting to them.
• Viewer — reads the cycle and the proposals in their line, and changes nothing.

Whoever creates the cycle is automatically an Owner. You can add more.

Asking for new suggestions

You can ask One for fresh suggestions at any point in the cycle, not only at the start. It's worth doing after anything that changes the arithmetic:

• You raised or lowered the budget.
• The scope changed — a team moved, people joined or left.
• Performance results landed after you set the cycle up.

One re-suggests against the current budget and scope.

Changing a cycle after you've created it

Every setting stays editable while the cycle is live — in Draft, Scheduled, Open requests and Under review. That includes the scope: you can add or remove people mid-cycle if a team moves or someone joins.

Once the cycle is Closed, nothing can be changed. The decisions are final and the approved changes have already gone to contracts.

Deleting a cycle

An Owner can delete a cycle at any stage, including after it's closed.