This article provides a high-level overview of budget maintenance and will help you plan for yearly spend on employee recognition. Attached here is a Budgeting Best Practices slide deck to give you more of an idea of how much money to set aside for employee recognition.
Managing Budgets
Points are the lifeblood of your platform and proper budget maintenance ensures recognition programs run smoothly. The infographic above demonstrates the movement of points through the platform starting with adding points to the Company Account, and ending employees redeeming points. The acts of adding points and allocating those points to budget are two particular foundational responsibilities. Reference the sections below for simple steps on how to accomplish both.
Adding Points to Your Platform
- Log in.
- Select the Admin settings button at the top right of the screen.
- Click on the Budgets tab.
- Click the Add Points button in the Points Summary or select the dollar icon at the top right of the screen. If you're following the latter instruction, click Add Points on the Points Management page.
- Enter the amount of points you wish to add to the Company Account and a note. Select Add Points and Confirm.
For more information on this process, reference the Adding Points to Your Platform article.
Allocating Points to Budgets
Your recently deposited points should now be found in the Company Account under the Budgets tab.
To move these points from the Company Account to Budgets:
- Click the "..." icon to the right of any budget
- Select Add/Remove Points. Enter a positive value to add points (e.g. 500) and negative value to remove points (e.g. -500).
For more information on this process, reference the Managing Budgets article.
Budgeting Best Practices
When you set up employee recognition programs through Awardco, it’s important that you consider the budget amounts you plan on allocating. Having these discussions internally and establishing a yearly spend on employee recognition will ensure your budgets are sufficient for your needs. Doing so will prevent disruptions to your programs. Attached below is a slide deck of best practices and suggestions on employee spend for service awards, spot recognition, onboarding, among other programs.
After the annual expenditure has been determined, the Awardco platform can easily help you keep track of points added to your platform through the Funding and Points Summary Sidebar. As soon as these points are allocated to a budget, you’ll be able to establish budget owners, configure cost centers, and specify specific users with budget access. Once budget access is arranged for an automated service award or recognition program, those with budget and recognition program access will be able to freely recognize their coworkers and/or direct reports.
In addition, we recommend that Awardco admins establish a budget refill cadence to ensure that budget owners are made aware of how often budgets will be replenished and if points in budgets rollover. This prevents budgets from running dry and further aids in a smoother recognition process.
If you have any questions, please contact Awardco Admin Support.