Enable Employee Exercise Requests
Setting up your exercise request flow allows employees to request approval to exercise their vested options directly through their MyCake portal. This streamlined process helps you manage exercise requests efficiently while maintaining proper approval controls and reducing administrative overhead.
Set up your exercise request flow
Navigate to Exercise requests - From the main menu, click Plans, then select Exercise requests from the dropdown menu.
Start the setup - Click Exercise settings in the middle of the screen.
Choose your approvers - Select the company users who are authorized to approve exercise requests. These individuals will receive notifications when employees submit requests and can approve or decline them directly within Cake.
Add bank account details - Enter your company's bank account information where employees will transfer exercise payments. These details will be displayed to employees during the exercise process.
Generate your Exercise Notice template - Cake will automatically create an Exercise Notice template for your company. If you need to customize this document later, go to Documents → Templates, find the "Exercise Notice" document under My Templates, click on it, then click Edit.
What happens next
Once setup is complete, employees with vested options can submit exercise requests through their MyCake portal. You'll see all requests tracked on the Exercise requests screen, where you can review details and take action. Approved requests will guide employees through payment and document signing before you issue their shares.
Configure your exercise settings
Once set up, you can adjust your exercise request settings at any time. Click ⚙️ Exercise settings in the top right of the Exercise requests page to open the settings panel.
The following options are available:
Exercise requests toggle Turn exercise requests On or Off at any time. When turned off, employees will not be able to submit a request to exercise their vested options through Cake.
Set approvers Click Edit to update the users authorized to approve exercise requests.
Bank account details Click Edit to update the bank account where employees send exercise payments. A unique reference is auto-generated for each request so you can cross-check payments.
Show 'Tax to withhold' field Toggle this On or Off depending on your company's requirements.
On — Requesters will see an optional field to specify a tax amount to withhold when exercising. Use this if your company needs employees to indicate any tax amount that should be withheld.
Off — The tax withholding field is hidden from the exercise request form.
Exercise notice Click Edit to update the exercise notice recipients are required to sign during the request process.
Archiving exercise requests
Once an exercise request is complete, you can archive it to keep your Exercise requests screen tidy.
Locate the completed request in the Exercise requests table.
Under Actions, click the Archive icon.
To view archived requests, toggle on Show archived requests at the top of the screen.
Need to make changes? You can return to the Exercise requests tab at any time to edit your settings, including updating approvers, bank details, your Exercise Notice template, or archiving completed requests.
Still Need Help?
Contact our support team through the chat widget in your Cake account, or submit a support request through the help centre.