For employees with vested grants, companies may open an "exercise window," allowing you to submit a request to exercise your options. During this period, you can purchase company shares at a predefined strike price and receive the shares through Ledgy.
This guide explains how you can easily submit an exercise request through your Employee Dashboard.
Step-by-step Guide
Once your company has opened an exercise window, go to your Dashboard.
1. Decide how many options to exercise
Employees with open exercise windows can view their grants with exercisable options on the dashboard.
Choose how many options to exercise (up to the maximum vested, based on the effective vesting date set by the company) — and
Click ‘Exercise’ button to open the submit modal.
Select desired Exercise method (if there are multiple options), and then click "Submit request".
Note: typically, you will receive an email from your company once the exercise window opens.
2. Wait for company approval
Once submitted, the request status is ‘pending approval’. You can cancel the request from your dashboard until the company responds to the request.
3. Receive company approval
Hooray! The admin has accepted your request, and you received an email update.
There are 2 possibilities:
Admin has accepted your request without edits
Admin has accepted your request and made an edit — for example, they can add a tax amount due upon option exercise.
If the admin accepts and makes an edit, you’ll have to ‘Approve and proceed’. If you no longer wish to proceed, you can always cancel the request.
4. Sign documents
Companies typically require employees to sign documents to complete the exercise request.
The status on the request will show ‘Signing Req’, clicking the signing icon will take you to the signature.
The status on the request will show ‘Signing Req’. Click on the signing icon to go to the signature request — or navigate to ‘Signatures’ directly from the sidebar.
5. Make payment
This step will only exist if the exercise method chosen was Hold all (Bank transfer). If you chose Withold to cover or Hold all (Payroll) you will not see this step.
Almost there! Once all the required documents are fully signed, the request status will show ‘Payment Required’. Click on the payment icon to view the company’s payment details.
Once the payment is transferred, click ‘mark as paid’ to notify the company.
Finally, you’ll see the status ‘Sent for approval’. Sit tight and wait for the company to confirm payment receipt.
6. Receive your share
After the company confirms receipt — you’ll be issued the share. Check it out in ‘Holdings’.
All done! The request is marked ‘Completed’, and can be viewed in the ‘Historic’ tab on your dashboard. You can request any remaining options in a new exercise request, should you wish to exercise more options within the window.