Salary Reviews is a module inside Financial planning that lets HR, Finance and managers run a complete compensation cycle together. Instead of building the review in a spreadsheet and agreeing increases over email, you create a cycle, managers propose changes for the people they manage, approvers sign off in the same flow, and every approved change is written straight into the employee's contract with its effective date.

Overview

A cycle is one round of salary review — your 2027 merit review, for example. It holds the people in scope, the dates, the budget, the guidelines everyone works to, and every proposal made along the way.

You don't build a cycle from a blank form. You describe the review you want to run and Factorial's AI agent sets it up for you, then suggests increases that fit the budget you've set. You can ask for fresh suggestions at any point — after you change the budget, say, or after the scope shifts.

Three kinds of change travel together in one cycle:

• Merit — a raise based on performance and position in range.
• Equity adjustment — a correction to a salary that has fallen out of line with comparable people. Factorial flags the pay gaps it finds, and you decide what to do about them.
• Promotion — a move to a new level or role, and the pay change that comes with it.

Each one has its own Amount and % fields, so you can see at a glance how much of someone's increase is merit and how much is a correction.

Who is it for

Four roles interact with a cycle:

• Owner — runs the cycle: its guidelines, its budget, its dates, and who else holds a role in it. Typically HR, Finance or C-level.
• 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.

One person can hold more than one role. A department head who proposes for their own team and approves for the teams below them is both a Manager and an Approver.

When it's useful

• You run merit reviews on a fixed calendar and need HR, Finance and managers working to the same numbers and the same deadline.
• You need to show who approved an increase and on what basis, months after the decision.
• You want pay gaps between comparable people surfaced during the review, while you can still do something about them.
• Your managers currently propose raises by email, with the reasoning living in the thread rather than the record or do it in an unplanned fashion with no general overview from contracts inside Factorial.
• You want the approved change to reach the contract without anyone retyping it.

Where to find Salary Reviews

There are two ways in.

From Financial planning:

1. In the sidebar, go to Financial planning.
2. Open the Salary reviews tab.
3. Select an existing cycle, or click Add new cycle to start one.

From your Home page: 

Ask One to start a new salary review cycle and describe the review you want to run. The agent creates the cycle and takes you to it.

If no cycles exist yet, you'll see a zero state inviting you to create your first one.

Before you start

Salary Reviews works on its own, but two other modules change what it can do:

• Performance — each proposal shows whether the employee is eligible, based on your guidelines and their performance. Without it, managers propose without that signal.
• Headcount Planning — keeps every approved change tied to your workforce plan.

Neither is required to run a cycle.

How a cycle works, end to end

1. An Owner creates a cycle — through the agent, or from the Salary reviews tab — and describes the review: who's in scope, the dates, the guidelines. The cycle starts in Draft, where only the Owner can see it.
2. The Owner sets a budget limit for the cycle. The agent suggests increases that fit within it.
3. The Owner assigns the other roles — who proposes, who approves, who can only read — and sets the request period: the window when managers can propose. The cycle opens to them on its own when the start date arrives.
4. Managers open the cycle and see only the people in their scope. For each person they propose a change across the three types, add a justification, and leave comments if there's more to say. Flagged pay gaps appear here, so a correction can be made in the same pass as the merit decision.
5. Approvers review the proposals for the people they cover, and approve or send them back.
6. Throughout, the Overview shows the cycle's progress and its total cost; the table view lets you edit proposals directly.
7. When a change is approved, the employee's contract is updated with its effective date.
8. The change also appears as an update in Compensation, the same way contract updates and promotions do today.

What the employee sees

Nothing, until the change is final. The cycle, the proposals and the comments are never visible to the person being reviewed. Once a change is approved, it appears on their contract with its effective date, like any other contract update.

Cycle statuses

A cycle moves through five statuses, shown on the cycle card and at the top of the cycle itself.

• Draft — the cycle exists but managers can't see it yet. You're still setting the scope, the budget and the guidelines, and you haven't set the request period.
• Scheduled — the request period is set, but its start date hasn't arrived yet. Managers still can't propose.
• Open requests — the request period is running. Managers propose changes for the people they manage.
• Under review — the request period has ended. Approvers decide who receives an increase or a promotion.
• Closed — every proposal has been approved or rejected, and the approved changes have gone to contracts.

The usual order is Draft → Scheduled → Open requests → Under review → Closed. A cycle goes from Draft straight to Open requests if you set a request period that has already started.