FAQ: Why is my merit budget extremely high?

If your merit budget is way out of proportion, the first thing to check is the FLSA_STATUS setting for your employees. This tells SimplyMerit how to calculate the number in their WAGES field, either as an annual amount (exempt) or as an hourly rate (non-exempt).

If an employee is set to non-exempt in FLSA_STATUS but has an annual amount in WAGES, SimplyMerit will assume they earn that annual amount every hour, which would result in an extremely high annual wage. If SimplyMerit then calculates a 3% merit budget for that person, for example, then your budget would be way too high. This is exacerbated if multiple employees are misconfigured in this way.

For example:

Joe is an hourly worker, so his FLSA_STATUS is set to non-exempt, however his annual wage was uploaded into WAGES at $50,000. Now SimplyMerit thinks he makes $50,000 an hour, or $104,000,000 a year, and the standard 3% merit budget is granting his manager $3,120,000 merit budget.
 

To check for this, run a Basic Employee Data export under Config > Standard Exports. Review the FLSA_STATUS and WAGES columns for accuracy. If you find misconfigured employees, you can either upload a CSV with their EMP_ID and corrected FLSA_STATUS or WAGES, or edit the employees in SimplyMerit under Config > Employee Information.