From payroll export to pay review

The record

One row per employee, already in payroll

Jonas Wittkamp is one of about 500 rows in the export your payroll team runs after the annual pay review: his name, team and office, a base salary of €78,000, a 10% bonus target, €180 a month into the company pension and €1,180 of his €1,500 learning budget spent.

The rates sit in the design. The 2025 social security rates, the 15% pension subsidy and the €58 Deutschlandticket are set once, so the €15,880 Fennholt paid in employer contributions for Jonas is calculated from his pay rather than typed in.

The statement has 22 fields: 13 arrive with the row and 9 are calculated from them, including the €8,190 bonus and the €105,950 total. The total on the cover and the one under the rows on page 2 are the same field.

Arrives as a CSV or spreadsheet from your HRIS or payroll system, or over the API.

The page

Four pages, issued 2 March

One design, filled once per row. Jonas gets four pages at an address of his own: the €105,950 total on the cover, the split by component on page 2, then salary, bonus, pension and benefits in detail.

Hover notes carry the rules behind the figures, such as the contribution rates and ceilings for 2025.

The reading

Jonas reads it and asks one question

He opens his link the day it arrives and again the following week. You can see which pages he read and for how long, and most of his time sits on page 3, where the salary history and the bonus calculation are.

He leaves one comment against the bonus: does the 105% company result factor apply to the whole year? Deniz Arslan, People Partner for Hamburg, replies in the same thread on 11 March, nine days before the deadline for questions.

Each of the 500 statements keeps its own record of opens and comments. Deniz works from the questions left on the Hamburg statements, and an employee who has not opened theirs by mid-March is someone she can speak to before the review.

The outcome

Review-ready, before 23 March

Jonas goes into his review conversation with the figures checked and his question answered in writing. The statement is still at the same address, with the €81,900 salary from 1 April and the €8,190 bonus paid on 27 March.

The comment thread stays with the statement. If the bonus question comes up again at next year's review, the answer Deniz gave in March is on the page Jonas read.

Next year the 2026 export runs through the same design. A rate that changes, such as the Deutschlandticket moving to €63 a month, is one edit to the design before the run.

Questions closed on 20 March. Review conversations run from 23 March to 2 April.