Award Agreements are the formal documents your employees receive when they're granted shares, options or other instruments. In Optio you can upload your own agreement templates per subplan, generate the right agreement for every award in a single action, and — when you need to — require employees to actively accept their agreement directly in the participant portal before it's considered in force.
This article walks through everything you can do on the Award agreements view of a subplan — from uploading a template to reviewing the generated documents per employee.
Before you start
To work with Award Agreements you need:
- A subplan with at least one award attached to it. Templates are scoped per subplan, so each subplan can have its own set of templates.
- An admin role. Customer admins, partner admins and Optio sysadmins can manage templates and generate agreements. Participants don't see this view.
-
Your agreement template as a
.docxfile, up to 10 MB. You can use{name}in the filename pattern so each generated file is named per employee.
Open the Award agreements view
- Go to Plans & instruments → Plans & subplans.
- Find the plan and expand it to see its subplans.
- Hover over the subplan row and click the three-dot menu on the right.
- Choose Award agreements.
The view opens in a modal showing the subplan name, the parent plan, the instrument type and the settlement type. From here you can move between two tabs:
-
Templates — the
.docxfiles you've uploaded for this subplan. - Documents — the agreement files generated from those templates for individual employees.
Upload a template
- On the Templates tab, click + Add template.
- Drag and drop your
.docxfile into the upload area, or click Upload a file. - Set the template properties:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Type | Choose Award Agreement for the standard grant document, or 7P Acceptance for Danish 7P-eligible plans where employees need to accept the 7P tax election. |
| Language (optional) | Pin the template to a specific locale (e.g. EN, NO, SV). Optio will match each employee's locale to the template with the same language when generating their agreement. Leave as Available for all languages if the same template applies to everyone. |
| Use as fallback template | Tick this to make this template the default when no language-specific template matches an employee. There is always exactly one fallback per type (Award Agreement or 7P Acceptance) on a subplan — if another template is already the fallback, ticking this option moves the fallback to the new template and unticks the previous one. |
| Filename pattern (optional) | The name each generated file gets. Use {name} to insert the employee's name, e.g. Agreement 2023 – {name}. If left empty, the generated file will use the template's filename. |
| Requires acceptance | Tick this if the participant needs to actively accept the agreement in the portal. Leave unticked for informational documents. Ticking this reveals three additional optional fields used to customise the participant's acceptance experience (see below). |
- Click Save.
When Requires acceptance is ticked
Three additional fields appear, each optional. They control how the agreement is introduced to the participant:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Document header | A short headline shown above the document in the participant portal — typically the title the employee should see, e.g. "Your 2026 PSU agreement". |
| Message header | The headline of the acceptance prompt itself — what greets the employee before they read the agreement, e.g. "Action required: accept your award". |
| Message body | The supporting text under the message header — a short explanation of why they're being asked to accept and what happens next. |
Uploading multiple language versions
If your tenant supports several locales, you can upload one template per language and set a fallback. When you generate agreements, each employee gets the version that matches their portal language, and anyone without a matching language gets the fallback.
Generate agreements
Once a template is in place, you can create agreement files for every award in the subplan in one action.
- On the Award agreements view, click Generate Agreements (top right).
- Optio creates one document per award, picking the right template based on each employee's language and the fallback rules.
- The generated files appear on the Documents tab.
What gets generated
- For each award, Optio renders the matching template and produces a PDF of the agreement, ready for the participant to view and (if required) accept.
- Agreements are only generated for awards that don't already have one. Re-running Generate Agreements is safe — it won't overwrite existing documents.
- If every award already has an agreement, you'll see "All awards already have an agreement — nothing to generate".
- If no template is uploaded yet, you'll see a prompt to add one before you can generate.
Review generated agreements
The Documents tab is where you check what's been generated, who has it, and whether they've accepted.
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| File name | The generated agreement file. |
| Employee | The employee the agreement belongs to. |
| Language | The locale Optio used to pick the template. |
| Source template | The template the agreement was generated from. Useful when you have multiple language versions. |
| Requires acceptance | Whether the participant needs to accept this document. |
| Accepted | Whether the participant has accepted (and when). |
| Created | When the document was generated. |
Use the search bar at the top of the tab to filter by file name, employee or language.
Update or remove a template
If your agreement wording changes:
- Open Award agreements → Templates tab.
- Use the row actions to remove the outdated template.
- Upload the new version using + Add template.
- Run Generate Agreements again to create updated files for any new awards.
Note: removing a template doesn't delete the agreement files already generated from it — those remain attached to the employees who received them. To regenerate for an existing award, remove that employee's agreement document first, then run Generate Agreements.
What participants see
When an agreement requires acceptance, the participant sees a banner at the top of their participant portal the next time they sign in. The banner uses the Message header and Message body you configured on the template, and links the employee to the agreement document (titled with the Document header) for review and acceptance.
Once they accept, the banner disappears and the Accepted column on your Documents tab updates with the timestamp.
Frequently asked questions
Can I upload more than one template per subplan? Yes — typically one per language, plus a fallback. You can also upload a separate 7P Acceptance template alongside your standard Award Agreement template.
What if an employee's language isn't covered by any template? They get the fallback template. Every subplan with at least one template has exactly one fallback per type, so there is always a default to fall back to.
Can I edit a template after upload? You can't edit the .docx content from within Optio — replace the template instead by removing the old one and uploading the new file.
What happens to existing agreements if I change a template? They stay as-is. Agreements are generated from the template at the moment Generate Agreements is run, so already-generated files reflect the template at that point in time.
Does this work for 7P (Danish tax-elected) plans? Yes. For 7P-eligible subplans, upload both your standard Award Agreement template and a 7P Acceptance template. Danish participants who fall under 7P will see both in their portal — the 7P Acceptance is presented first and must be accepted before the standard award agreement. Non-Danish participants only see the standard award agreement.
Related articles
- How to manage plans and subplans — how to set up the subplans these agreements live under.