How do I pay incentives to employees?

On Remote, it is possible for you to pay incentives such as commissions, bonuses, stipends, allowances, and other onetime payments to employees outside of their salary. You can make onetime payments to any employee or schedule future payments for an employee in seconds within Remote. You can bulk upload one-time incentives. Recurring incentives are not supported through bulk upload, but you can set them up individually in Remote.                   

You can schedule payments, and edit or delete incentives within Remote until 11:59 PM UTC on the cutoff date (or the Friday before the cutoff date if it falls over a weekend or a holiday) of the effective payroll month.

See also: When is the payroll cutoff?

Please note that the Incentives page is being discontinued and will be replaced by Pay Items by the end of 2026. To learn more, see How to create and manage pay items.

1. To input an incentive, go to the Incentives tab.
2. Click on the Add incentive pay button on the right-hand side and input the incentive details. You can also choose if the amount to be paid out should be the gross or net amount.
   
   
    

When creating a one-off incentive, you can select a period for the incentive.

Note that:

1. • In some countries the period field is mandatory for bonuses and commissions for compliance purposes
   • Options for period are a year, half-year, quarter or a month. There are options automatically generated for the previous and the current year.
   • The period and effective date are independent and do not affect each other

1. If you want the incentive to be paid out in the same month you're making the request, the effective date chosen has to be on or before the cutoff date of the month. If you choose an effective date after the cutoff date of the month, we will process it in the following or subsequent months, depending on the month chosen. From the modal, you can use the underlined text as guidance to confirm when the employee will receive the incentive.
   
2. The net amount here is the estimated amount an employee will receive after taxes. Remote will apply the estimated amount of taxes to calculate the approximate gross amount. Due to the complexity, there could be some variation in the gross amount an employee will see once the payroll is finalized.

1. If you'd like to pay out a recurring incentive to an employee while filling out the incentive details, as shown above, click on Payment Frequency. 
2. By choosing Monthly, you can set an end date or the number of times you want the incentives paid out.
3. If you prefer the recurring incentive to be effective at a future date, you can indicate what month you want the payout to start and how many times you want it paid out.
   
   

You can now upload multiple one-time incentives at once with our bulk upload feature, making the process faster and minimizing errors for payroll readiness.

Here's how to bulk upload one-time incentives:

1. Go to the Incentives tab
2. Click on the Add Incentives button and choose Bulk import incentives
3. Download the spreadsheet template
4. Fill out the template with your approved one-time incentives
5. Upload the completed template
6. Review any formatting or data issues highlighted by the system
7. Make corrections if needed and submit

Note: Bulk upload supports one-time incentives only. To set up a recurring incentive, follow the steps in the recurring incentive payments section above. You cannot delete or edit incentives in bulk. Make corrections individually.

If the country where your employees reside does not support the function to process net incentives, you will see a screen prompting you to enter the gross amount directly. The Remote platform only supports gross incentive options in those countries to maintain transparency and compliance.

You can edit or delete incentive payments within Remote until 11:59 PM UTC on the cutoff date of the effective payroll month, or the Friday before the cutoff date if the date falls over a weekend or a holiday. After the cutoff date, you will not be able to make changes to incentives scheduled for that month’s payroll. (The cutoff dates for Bulgaria, Germany, and countries where we have a semi-monthly payroll are different, please refer to When is the payroll cutoff?)

For recurring incentives:

• The effective date cannot be edited.
• To make changes to when and with which effective date recurring incentives are auto-created, you need to delete all future incentives and re-create the recurring incentive.

In the Incentives tab, you can view upcoming, processing, paid, and canceled incentives.