Organizations issuing signing bonuses, starting bonuses, and retention agreements are managing some of the most underadministered obligations in HR. BonusBridge brings structure, visibility, and accountability to every bonus agreement — from execution to final forgiveness. One platform. Every agreement type. Nothing falling through the cracks.
Signing bonuses are one of the most powerful tools organizations have to recruit senior talent — and one of the most poorly administered. The agreement takes weeks to negotiate and minutes to lose track of. Imputed income gets calculated manually, if at all. When someone leaves early, there's no documented process. Whether you're managing five agreements or fifty, the gap between what was promised and what gets administered is the same.
Bonus agreements scatter across HR systems, Finance spreadsheets, and Legal shared drives. Nobody holds the full picture — until it matters.
Payroll calculates taxable imputed income by hand, every pay period, for every active agreement. One formula error creates a W-2 problem.
When an employee leaves before full forgiveness, many organizations have no documented process — and outstanding balances go unresolved.
What was the forgiveness schedule? When was the note signed? What was the rate? These questions become expensive to answer after the fact.
Signing bonuses — particularly those structured as forgivable promissory notes — are our core. The amortization, the imputed income calculation, the departure response process when someone leaves early. That's where we go deepest. And because the infrastructure is built for the most complex case, every other bonus type is well within reach.
Structured as a forgivable promissory note and issued before the employee starts. Requires amortization, interest calculation, per-period imputed income tracking, DocuSign execution, and a clear departure response process when employment ends early. BonusBridge administers the full lifecycle — and ensures every step is documented, communicated, and traceable.
Primary FocusAny upfront payment that carries a forgiveness obligation — starting bonuses paid through payroll, relocation support for a new hire, or tuition and CE reimbursements tied to a service commitment. BonusBridge handles these on the same promissory-note rails as signing bonuses: amortization schedule, interest where applicable, imputed income per period, and a structured departure response if the recipient leaves early.
Promissory NoteMilestone-based bonuses — retention payouts tied to service dates, performance awards tied to measurable output, and referral bonuses paid in installments as the referred hire stays on. Simpler than a promissory note: straight-line, no interest, no amortization. Every payment date, amount, and eligibility condition is tracked in BonusBridge with clear visibility for both parties.
Milestone TrackingHave a bonus structure that doesn't fit a standard template? Good — neither did most of our clients' signing bonus arrangements before we worked with them. If there's an agreement, a recipient, and an amount to track, we'll figure it out. Custom engagements are a core part of how we work.
Let's TalkBonusBridge manages the complete signing bonus lifecycle — structure, execute, track, and close. Every step documented. Every stakeholder informed.
Configure bonus type, amount, interest rate, forgiveness schedule, and eligibility terms. BonusBridge generates the full amortization schedule instantly.
Generate the promissory note and send for e-signature via DocuSign. Every signed document is stored in a secure vault — timestamped, retrievable, and audit-ready from day one.
Monitor forgiveness in real time. Export per-period imputed income amounts directly to your payroll team — calculated, formatted, and ready to apply. Every event is timestamped and audit-ready.
At full forgiveness, BonusBridge closes the file. If a departure is triggered before full forgiveness, the platform initiates a structured notification workflow — balance statements, formal repayment notices, and a documented communication record your team can act on.
BonusBridge was built by finance and HR professionals who spent years managing bonus programs in spreadsheets, chasing imputed income calculations, and learning the hard way what happens when someone leaves before their note is up. Every feature exists because we needed it.
Any forgiveness frequency — biweekly, semi-monthly, or monthly. Supports fixed rates, AFR short and mid-term, prime-based, and 0% non-interest structures.
Per-period amounts calculated and ready to hand to payroll every cycle. BonusBridge does the math — your payroll team applies it. Eliminates manual calculation risk and gives payroll a clean, reliable number every period.
Issuer and recipient views update together. Every stakeholder sees the same forgiveness balance, next period amount, and projected close date.
Define eligibility and employment conditions upfront. BonusBridge alerts when conditions change and initiates the resolution workflow automatically.
Generate and execute promissory notes, agreements, and resolution letters directly within BonusBridge. No third-party document workflow required.
When a recipient leaves early, BonusBridge surfaces their outstanding balance, personal contact information, and complete acknowledgment history — everything your team needs to initiate a structured, documented response from a position of clear evidence.
Every document, transaction, and status event retained in a secure vault — audit-ready for as long as your organization needs it.
One-click exports for payroll, accounting, and tax teams. Amortization PDFs, imputed income summaries, and reconciliation reports at any time.
HR, Finance, Legal, and recipient access levels fully separated. Each party sees exactly what they need — and nothing outside their role.
Every client gets the full platform — no feature restrictions, no artificial limits. The only choice is whether you want electronic document execution via DocuSign.
Every agreement type has its own rate — promissory notes carry more complexity, departed agreements are billed at a reduced rate while they sit in departure response. No hidden fees, no volume tiers.
Most organizations issuing bonuses have no clear picture of what's been fully forgiven, what's still active, and what left with a departing employee and was never tracked. BonusBridge works directly with your team to audit your full bonus portfolio — reconstructing agreement history, calculating current balances, and documenting what's outstanding versus what's been resolved. You leave with a complete, accurate picture of where things stand. What you do next is up to you.
No fixed menu, no forced packages. Every engagement is scoped to your situation. No standard rate card — just a conversation about what you need and what it takes to deliver it. Here are the kinds of engagements we take on.
We inventory every active agreement, reconstruct amortization schedules, and bring your full portfolio onto BonusBridge regardless of how — or whether — it was documented before.
If imputed income was never calculated or reported correctly, we reconstruct the record period by period — providing documentation your payroll or tax advisors can act on with confidence.
Not sure whether a promissory note, a payroll bonus, or a structured repayment arrangement is right for your situation? We consult on the administrative and operational trade-offs before you commit to a structure — so you're set up to administer it cleanly from day one.
We develop standard promissory note templates, forgiveness schedules, and internal collections policies tailored to your organization — ready to use inside BonusBridge or hand off to legal for review.
We configure BonusBridge exports to match your payroll system's format — so imputed income amounts flow directly into your existing workflow without manual re-entry or reconciliation.
For organizations that want continued access to expertise — new agreement structures, policy questions, edge cases, or just a knowledgeable voice when something unusual comes up. Engaged on an as-needed basis.
The recipient portal is a core part of what makes BonusBridge valuable to the people you're investing in. Every recipient gets a clear, professional portal that answers the questions they'd otherwise be asking your HR team.
Ask any organization who owns the signing bonus process end to end. You'll get a different answer depending on who you ask — and none of them will be fully right. Talent Acquisition negotiated the offer. Legal drafted the note. HR processed the hire. Accounts Payable issued the check. Payroll handles the imputed income — or assumes someone else does. Finance tracks the amortization schedule — somewhere. Tax is aware it exists. And when an employee leaves before their note is forgiven, every department looks at every other department, and nobody moves.
This isn't a failure of effort. It's a failure of structure. Signing bonuses are genuinely cross-functional — and in most organizations, that means they belong to everyone in theory and no one in practice. The result is a process managed in fragments: spreadsheets that only one person understands, documents filed in the wrong place, imputed income that never makes it to payroll, and outstanding balances that sit unresolved for years because no one has the full picture or the clear authority to act on it.
BonusBridge was built by people who recognized this gap for what it was — not a minor administrative inconvenience, but a genuine source of tax, legal, compliance, and financial risk that organizations were absorbing without fully understanding it. Professionals with careers spent working across the finance, compensation, and operations functions that this problem touches. People who saw the compartmentalization clearly enough to understand why no single department had ever solved it — and who decided to build the infrastructure that finally could.
Accounting. Payroll. Legal. HR. Talent Acquisition. Accounts Payable. Accounts Receivable. Tax. Hiring Managers. Every function has a stake in the signing bonus — and every function assumes someone else is managing it end to end. The handoffs are where it falls apart.
Imputed income never reaching payroll. Outstanding balances abandoned because no department claims ownership. Promissory notes never properly executed. Administrative exposure accumulating quietly in the background. Not hypothetical — the predictable result of a fragmented process with no single point of accountability.
"I didn't know I still owed money." "Nobody told me how this was calculated." "Why is this on my W-2?" Recipients sign agreements without truly understanding them — and receive no visibility until something goes wrong. BonusBridge changes that. Real-time balances. Clear calculations. No surprises.
Start with the product that fits today. BonusBridge is operational — most organizations are live within a single business day using the CSV import.