Granting Your Employee Options
Once you've created an option grant in Cake, you have two ways to issue it depending on whether your employee has already signed their agreement outside Cake.
Record a pre-signed or offline grant (Issue grant)
Use this if your employee has already signed their agreement outside Cake — on paper, through DocuSign, or in a previous system. Issuing a grant this way does not send any emails, offer letters, or notifications to the employee. It simply records the grant as accepted in Cake.
Go to Plans → Options → View pool.
Find the grant and click Issue grant.
Set the Grant Date (this should match the date on the signed agreement).
Attach the signed agreement (optional but recommended). The document is stored against the grant and visible to the employee in their My Cake portal.
Click Issue.
The grant is now recorded as accepted, vesting begins based on the grant's vesting schedule, and the employee's options appear in their My Cake portal. No grant letter or signature request is sent.
Don't have the signed documents handy? You can still issue the grant without attaching anything — this lets you finalise your option pool setup now and upload documents later. To add a document afterwards, find the grant, click on the grant holder name and attach the signed agreement by clicking No grant letter under the document preview section.
Send a grant for digital signing (Send grant)
Use this for new grants where the employee will sign digitally through Cake.
Go to Plans → Options → View pool.
Find the grant and click Send grant.
If you have multiple grant letter templates, select the relevant one and click Next.
Choose a delivery method:
Email: Cake sends the grant letter directly to the recipient
Share link: copy a link to share manually
Click Finish.
Company signature enabled? If your plan requires a company signature, the grant is sent to the selected company signee first. Once they sign, Cake automatically sends it to your employee.
Automatic granting
Once the employee signs their grant letter through Cake, options are automatically granted. The grant date is set to the date they signed, or a custom date you entered during grant setup.
Update a grant date
To correct the grant date on an existing grant:
Go to Plans → Options → View pool.
Find the grant and click Actions on the right.
Select Edit → Grant Date and update to the correct date.
Local variations
Australia / New Zealand
Button labels show Send offer and Issue offer rather than Send grant and Issue grant.