Bonus Budgets allow admins and employees to send Spot Bonuses directly from the mobile app.
Admins can now send spot bonuses on the go, providing flexibility to reward employees without using the admin portal.
For Essentials Plus customers, employees can also be given individual bonus budgets that come from a company budget, allowing them to recognize peers directly in the field or on the job site.
This update simplifies recognition, fosters a culture of appreciation, and makes it easy for teams to celebrate exceptional work in real time. The release also improves in-app guidance, making it easier for mobile users to discover how to give bonuses within the app.
What is a Spot Bonus?
A spot bonus is a one-time, discretionary reward given to an employee for going above and beyond their normal work. It recognizes exceptional contributions, such as helping a teammate, delivering outstanding results, or stepping up in a critical moment. Unlike regular pay or standard bonuses, spot bonuses are immediate, tangible acknowledgments of extraordinary effort and impact.
Example: You might have an employee who stays late to complete extra services. To reward dedication and great service, you may give that tech a spot bonus of $20 and with a note that says “I really appreciate you staying late to help pick up extra services! Treat yourself to lunch on me.”
What’s Included in Bonus Budgets
Available for everyone:
Admins can send spot bonuses directly from the mobile app
Assign individual bonus budgets to admins
Enhanced in-app prompts to guide users in sending bonuses
Seamless, mobile-friendly bonus sending experience
Available for Essentials Plus customers:
Everything in Essentials, plus
Assign individual bonus budgets to employees
Ability to enable employees to send funds to each other
How To Set Up Bonus Budgets
Navigate to Bonuses → Settings → Budgets
This section groups together Spot Bonus Budgets and the new Employee Spot Bonus Budget settings.
Once in the “Employee Spot Bonus Budgets” Section, configure the following sections.
Enable Employee Spot Bonus Budgets: Set the toggle to enable/disable this feature, allowing employees to give to each other using company funds from an allocated budget.
To edit Admin Spot Bonuses, select Edit bonus budgets. This opens the Spot bonus budgets – per admin settings, where you can set a default budget, assign budgets to specific admins, and customize settings for each listed admin.
Monthly Budget: This shows how many employees have a monthly bonus limit configured, either using the global default or a custom amount.
Employees: Allows you to see the number of employees allowed to use employee spot bonus funds
Total Budget: Combined total of all monthly bonus budgets assigned to employees
Edit Budgets: Opens the budget settings modal for managing individual employee spot bonus budgets.
Default for all employees: Set the default value for the maximum amount that any employee can give in a single spot bonus, if they're set to use the default budget settings.
Add Budget: Toggle on to set monthly and per-bonus limits for this admin. Toggle off to allow them to continue issuing spot bonuses without any budget restrictions.
Use Default: Toggle off to set a different budget amount than the default budget. This toggle also controls the monthly limit amount.
Single Give Limit: Set the maximum amount this employee can send to an employee in a spot bonus transaction. Use this to control the amount of any individual spot bonus transaction.
Monthly Limit: Set the total dollar amount this employee is allowed to send in spot bonus funds per month. This helps manage the overall company budget spending.
Reset Budgets Each Month
At the beginning of each month, the amount of budget a user has will be reset to what is set for them in the employee spot bonus budget settings.
This change will happen at 12:01 a.m. on the first of every month