Issuing Equity Awards (In Bulk)

Capdesk offers administrators the convenience to bulk issue equity awards in-app to multiple recipients. 

Capdesk offers you the possibility of issuing Options, Share Grants, Warrants, RSUs and Phantom (Virtual) Shares in bulk using our in-app workflow. This saves time as administrators do not have to switch between different apps to issue grants to various stakeholders at the same time. 

Equity Awards can be issued in two ways:

• Online equity awards issuance - an online issuance can be used when the entire signing process will be done through Capdesk (i.e. the agreements will be uploaded on the account and the signatures will be completed via Capdesk).
• Offline equity awards issuance - an offline issuance can be used when the signing process will take place outside Capdesk (i.e. the agreements have already been signed).

For the purpose of this support article, we will use online issuances of option grants as an example. 

1. Navigate to Equity Awards > Options.

2. Click Issue Grant > Choose a method of issuance.

3. Alternatively, Navigate to Dashboard > + Issue Equity.

Note that this dashboard shortcut will direct you to make an online issuance. 

4. Check the boxes and use the search bar to select the individuals who will be awarded equity.

5. Click Add optionholder if you are issuing options to a new individual. 

6. Complete with the grants issuances information.

• Grant Template: You will be able to select a specific template of vesting schedule you have created to be applied to your grants. Note that this is not a required step if you do not have one. 
• Option Plan: Select the plan that options will be issued from. When issuing equity in bulk the same set of options must be issued from the same plan. In case some options need to be issued from a different plan, please open a new bulk issuance workflow.
• Document Set: This field will only appear when bulk issuing online grants. Once you select the plan the equity will be issued from, this field will show so you can send the right document set for your optionholders to sign via DocuSign. 
• Grant date: You will select a default grant date for the set of grants you are issuing in the platform. Notice that grants you are bulk issuing in-app do not necessarily need to have the same grant date, you will be able to select a grant date for each grant individually later on this workflow.
• Currency for exercise price: The currency e.g Pounds, US Dollars etc that the exercise pric 
• Exercise price: The value (per share) that the optionholder needs to pay in case they are interested in purchasing shares.
• Expires: Select a default expiry date. Notice that grants you are bulk issuing do not necessarily need to have the same expiry date, you will be able to select an expiry date for each grant individually later on this workflow

7. Proceed filling in the information on the vesting schedule and click Next to proceed.

Note that if you selected a Grant template the vesting schedule will be automatically populated.

Similarly to the grant date and the expiry date, you will also be prompted to select a default vesting start date on this workflow. However, you will still be able to select a specific vesting start date for each of the grants you are bulk issuing later on this workflow. 

8. Review/modify the grants' individual details:

• Options: Number of options being granted.
• Vesting start: Each grant's vesting schedule's start date.
• Expires: Expiration dates of each grant.
• Document Set: This will only show if you are issuing options online. Select the document template to send for signing. 

9. Click Send for signing to send documents for parties to sign or Publish and notify grantholder if you are reflecting offline issuances.