This guide covers setting up electronic exercise requests for your company and reviewing stakeholder-submitted requests through Pulley's approval workflow. This feature is available on Growth plans and above, allowing employees and former employees to exercise their options electronically via ACH or manual payment.
What you'll learn:
How to enable electronic exercise requests
Connecting your company bank account for ACH payments
Reviewing and approving requests with ISO/NSO splits
Managing tax withholding for NSO exercises
Accessing ISO/NSO split reports for compliance
Prerequisites
Before stakeholders can submit exercise requests, you need to complete a one-time setup for your company. This configuration establishes who approves requests, how payments are processed, and turns on the ability for employees to exercise directly within Pulley.
👉 Note that the electronic exercising options within Pulley are not supported on the Startup plan. All options exercises will need to be facilitated by the company and recorded in Pulley once completed. If you're on Startup plan or need to record historical exercises, see Record an exercise in Pulley instead.
1. Add an exercise approver
Designate one company admin to review and approve exercise requests. This person receives notifications when stakeholders submit requests and has permission to approve or reject them.
To add an exercise approver:
Navigate to Hire and Retain → Exercise Requests
Select Edit Settings and find the Exercise Approvers section
Press Add Approver and add the admin(s) who should review requests
Select the Admin from the dropdown, designate their Title, and specify their Approver Type (
Equity & Tokens,Equity, orTokens).
Press Invite to invite the new exercise approver.
**You can only designate one approver. The designated approver can review and approve pending exercise requests.
2. Connect your company bank account
To enable ACH payments (where stakeholders pay directly through Pulley), connect your company's bank account through Stripe by selecting "Connect with Stripe" in the Bank Accounts section. All exercise payments will be deposited directly into the connected account.
To connect your bank account for exercise request payments:
Navigate to Hire and Retain → Exercise Requests
Scroll down to Bank Accounts and select Connect with Stripe
Complete the Stripe connection flow
The payment verification process is handled by Plaid and Stripe
You'll authenticate your bank account through Plaid's secure interface
Once connected, employees can exercise their options via ACH vis Stripe directly to the linked bank account.
👉 Note on International payments: Currently, integrated ACH payment is available for US bank accounts only. International stakeholders must select "Manual" as their payment method when requesting exercises. Your company will need to provide payment information directly to international stakeholders so payment is conducted outside Pulley. After receiving payment, you'll mark the exercise as paid in Pulley to complete it. Pulley is actively exploring options for integrated international payments.
Additionally, you can Create wire instructions to as an alternative to connecting a bank account via Stripe. Input your bank details in the wire instructions, and they will be provided to the employee so they can send the payment through a bank wire.
3. Add Notice of Exercise (Optional)
You can upload specific documents for Notices of Exercise to be distributed during electronic exercise submissions. Pulley can accommodate two Notices of Exercise: Default and Early Exercise
Pulley does not provide a default Notice of Exercise template, but you can upload your own templates as desired. See our templating guide for more information
4. Enable electronic exercise for stakeholders
Once you've added an approver, connected a bank account (or decided to handle all payments manually), and designated the Notice of Exercise as desired, enable the exercise request feature:
Navigate to Hire and Retain → Exercise Requests → Edit Settings
Toggle Enable Exercise Requests to
OnSave your changes
Stakeholders will now see the Exercise Options option in their portal action when viewing their grants.
For information regarding reviewing and approving these exercise requests within Pulley, see our dedicated guide, here.