When processing online option exercises in Pulley, you're able to upload your own exercise forms and collect signatures from the company signatory, the optionholder, and their spouse, when applicable.
This article will focus on how to set up your documentation so that all parties can sign and how the signatures are collected. For an in-depth overview of the Pulley online exercise feature and its setup, please see this help article.
Step 1: Formatting the documents
Before uploading the forms to Pulley, our special placeholder codes for signatures must be included into the document. This will determine where the signature is shown once it's collected, and how it looks.
Each party has a corresponding signature code to use:
Signature type | Pulley placeholder code |
Company signature | {{signatory_signature}} |
Optionholder | {{stakeholder_signature}} |
Optionholder's spouse | {{spouse_signature}} |
Signatures are not the only information you populate in a Pulley template. For example, you can also populate the {{date_of_exercise}}, {{total_value_of_exercise}}, and many others. For a comprehensive list of the available codes and their uses, follow this link.
Some considerations to keep in mind when adding the codes are
The document to upload must be a .docx file. If the document is in a previous MS Word format, like .doc, it would have to be converted via the "Save as" function before uploading.
The font and format of the code in the document will impact how the signature looks once collected. Our recommended format for signatures is the Freestyle Script font in size 22.
You can add as many placeholder codes for each party as needed, allowing you to populate the same signature multiple times in the document. However, each signature type will only be collected once, which means there can only be one person signing for the company, one for the stakeholder, and another for the spouse.
Example of Pulley-formatted documents for signatures:
Step 2: Uploading the documents
If you're setting up the Pulley online exercises for the first time, you will see the buttons to upload your formatted exercise forms as soon as you click on the Exercise Requests tab, by scrolling to the very bottom of the setup page.
If you had previously enabled the feature, you can always access the setup page again by clicking Edit Settings on the top right of the Exercise Requests dashboard.
You will also notice there are two distinct "slots" for exercise forms. A Default one, and another for Early Exercises.
Pulley will automatically detect when an exercise should be considered an Early Exercise, and provide the appropriate form in that case. If no Early Exercise form is uploaded, the Default form will be sent for signing in all cases.
When you finish uploading the documents, you will get a confirmation text listing all the placeholder fields you included in the document. When no further changes are needed, you can click "Save" on the bottom right of the page to complete the process, or "Enable Exercise Requests", if during the first-time setup.
Step 3: Collecting signatures
This step requires no direct action from the company, but instead is triggered automatically when an optionholder submits an exercise request.
When submitting, the optionholder will be required to sign the document. Then, when the company's Exercise Approver approves the exercise, they will be asked to countersign the document in turn.
Additionally, if the {{spouse_signature}} placeholder was included, the optionholder will be asked if they are married when submitting the request. If they mark yes, they will have to input their spouse's email address.
The spouse will then receive an email with a button to see the exercise documents and stamp their signature on it. With that last signature, the process is complete. In the future, you will find all signed exercise documents available for download in the Exercise Requests tab.
Have any questions, suggestions, or feedback? Feel free to reach out any time to support@pulley.com. We'll be more than glad to assist.