Get your data house in order: the foundation to a smooth year-end compensation cycle

When it comes to compensation planning, the biggest challenges at year-end often don’t come from budgets or manager decisions—they come from bad data. Incomplete employee records, outdated salary ranges, and broken reporting lines can derail the entire process before it even begins. Let’s get your data house in order with these tips.

Validate manager hierarchies

If approval chains aren’t set up correctly, the entire cycle grinds to a halt. Imagine a manager trying to approve compensation for their team only to discover that half of their direct reports aren’t showing up—or worse, they’re reporting to the wrong leader altogether.

What to do now:

• audit reporting structures in your HRIS to ensure accuracy
• confirm interim managers or special reporting relationships are accounted for, and
• check that managers have the right access and permissions in your compensation tool.

Pro tip: Partner with HR business partners—they often have the most up-to-date knowledge of recent moves or dotted-line reporting structures that may not yet be reflected in the system.

Audit employee eligibility rules

Eligibility mistakes can cause major employee relations issues. If someone is wrongly excluded from a bonus or promotion pool, you can expect frustration—and potentially costly corrections.

What to do now:

• review eligibility files against company policy, especially for bonus participation, promotion eligibility, and full-time vs. part-time status
• check that hire and service dates are consistent since these often determine eligibility, and
• flag and document exceptions so you don’t waste time scrambling for one-off approvals later.

Pro tip: Create a single source of truth for eligibility rules with HR, finance, and leadership aligned. That way there’s no confusion about who should be included.

Confirm salary ranges and bonus targets

Using outdated salary ranges or bonus targets can undermine pay equity and erode trust in the process. Managers need clear, accurate guidelines in order to make fair and consistent decisions.

What to do now:

• cross-check salary ranges against your latest market data or compensation philosophy updates
• validate bonus targets by job family, level, geography, or a combination, and
• confirm that any mid-cycle adjustments—such as promotions or re-levels—are reflected in the current data.

Pro tip: Even if you don’t anticipate major changes, double-check now. An outdated salary range discovered mid-cycle can stall approvals and force you to retrace steps you could have handled much earlier.

Clean up legacy records

Inactive records, old job codes, and inconsistent naming conventions can create hidden traps in your data. These small errors often go unnoticed until a system load fails or a manager raises a red flag.

What to do now:

• remove terminated employees from eligibility files
• align job codes with your current HRIS structure, and
• standardize naming conventions for departments, levels, or locations.

Pro tip: Automate data checks where you can. Even simple scripts to identify duplicate or inactive records can save hours of manual review.

Test your data in the system

Even clean spreadsheets can produce unexpected results once they’re loaded into a compensation tool. Testing ahead of time ensures you catch errors before the cycle begins.

What to do now:

• run a sample load of your data into your planning system
• verify that reporting hierarchies and eligibility rules work as expected, and
• spot check individual employees to ensure they appear in the right plans with the correct guidelines.

Pro tip: Don’t just test the administrator view—log in as a manager to make sure the experience is intuitive and matches expectations.

Why it matters to get your data house in order

By getting your data house in order now, you’re doing more than just cleaning up spreadsheets—you’re building confidence. Managers trust the process when the right people, ranges, and rules show up the first time. HR saves hours of troubleshooting and escalations. Finance gets peace of mind knowing that pay decisions are accurate and aligned.

It’s a win across the board—and it all starts with data.

At RedCAT Systems, we’ve built our compensation planning tool to make data validation and updates simple—even when last-minute changes arise. That way, you can move into your year-end cycle with confidence, knowing your data and process are solid.

Ready to eliminate data headaches from your year-end cycle? Contact us to learn how RedCAT can help you build a process that’s accurate, flexible, and stress-free.