EASi Does It

EASi Expensing, SEC Reporting and Accounting

ASC 718/FAS123R

Designed as an industrial strength accounting product, EASi offers the most complete ASC 718/FAS123R solution available. We address all five pieces – Valuation, Expensing, Corporate Tax, Dilution, SEC Disclosure -- delivering extensive details at every stage. EASi gives you the flexibility to sort and filter reports in multiple ways, providing summary and detailed reports for a full audit trail.

Proxy Reporting

EASi’s proxy report discloses the grant date Fair Value in both the Executive Summary Compensation Table and the Directors’ Compensation Table. The Executive and Director Compensation tables display all awards granted during the given fiscal year and the corresponding grant date Fair Values. The reports save you hours by eliminating the need to run multiple reports and compile the information manually. EASi reports replicate the layout in SEC Regulation S-K so you have the output in the exact format needed along with the back-up details.

Section 16 Reporting and Notifications

EASi provides a full solution for your Section 16 pre-clearance and reporting needs with an interface to the EASi345 Filer for Forms 3, 4 & 5, as well as email notifications and tracking reports for transactions by Section 16 reporting insiders, System settings allow you to designate a special broker for your reporting insiders and implement automated trading restrictions, exercise approvals and automated notifications to a designated individual or role when a reporting insider exercises.

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Expense Modeling

EASi makes it possible to do complete fair value and expense modeling when considering the quantity and type of stock awards to grant. The system lets you see the Fair Value and future period-by-period expensing without actually creating a grant in the system. The modeling tool accepts the Fair Value parameters, expense parameters, and vesting schedule as inputs, and produces a report similar to the Award Detail Report. EASi's modeling functionality helps you make informed decisions about the equity compensation you offer employees.

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EASi When Your Company is Global

IFRS2

EASi first introduced support for IFRS2 expense reporting in 2009, giving customers the choice of running reports under either FAS or IFRS2. EASi expanded its IFRS2 support to include accounting for deferred tax assets and dilutive earnings per share calculations under IFRS2. EASi continues to develop compliance solutions for its customers worldwide and plans to introduce support for 10K and 10Q disclosure in late 2011.

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Chargeback Arrangements

EASi can address chargeback agreements to help companies with foreign subsidiaries maximize corporate tax deductions, repatriate cash and increase fully diluted earnings per share. The EASi platform makes it possible to establish tax entities with accompanying tax rates and designate net operating loss positions to effectively support chargeback agreements. EASi tracks the time of a participant’s employment in various subsidiaries so related tax jurisdictions can be determined and prorated for expense allocation purposes to enable accurate chargebacks.

The potential upside of chargeback agreements depends upon the local tax rules by country and other administrative requirements and regulations. EASi recommends that companies consult with their tax advisors and make a thorough analysis of these factors on a country-by-country basis.

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EASi Participant Tracking

Multiple Status Changes

With EASi’s date-sensitive tracking, a full history is available for employees who are terminated and rehired multiple times. Each hire date, termination date and reason is tracked. Tracking is also available for individuals who change from employee to non-employee status, but who aren’t considered terminated under the plan rules. Each title change, department change and officer designation change is tracked.

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Tracking for Insiders, Officers, Named Executives

EASi has date-sensitive designations for both Section 16 Insiders and non-officer “Insiders” who need to be subject to pre-earnings release blackouts. Designations are also available for Named Executives, Officer, >10% Shareholder and Director.

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Tax and Mobility

Country to country and state to state, mobility information is the first requirement for calculating an employee’s tax obligation on equity compensation. You need to know where your employees are – geographically and within the corporate structure. You need to correlate that information with grants, exercises and other taxable events.

EASi makes tracking possible by providing more than thirty fields of participant demographic information that carry a full date-stamped trail of all entries. Residence and work addresses are carried separately and you can set up an unlimited number of tax jurisdictions, each with its own tax rate and taxable event specifications. Combining all this information with activity reports gives you the most comprehensive mobility solution in stock compensation platforms today.

In terms of mobility, EASi keeps track of precisely when a participant worked in one country or subsidiary and when they move to another part of the organization. EASi supports the Managerial Accounting of country or subsidiary P&Ls – even departmental or product related share-based compensation cost can be generated with just a few clicks.

EASi allows for an unlimited number of subsidiaries or tax/legal entities, each with its own date stamped effective tax rate. Each entity can be shown as NOL and the participants associated with the entity are visible at any given time. This allows EASi to support chargeback or equity recharge agreements for share-based compensation. We even support some country-specific rules-based processing for Singapore, Great Britain, Italy, France and Spain. So you can get the entries you need for the tax books, the invoice amounts for the foreign legal entities, and the maximum tax benefit allowed from your stock plans.

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EASi to Work with the Broker of Your Choice

EASi provides multiple ways for you to work with the broker of your choice. Financial Advisor and Broker-CSR roles are available to assist participants with transactions. The Brokerage Operations role facilitates the settlement process using EASi reports and statements.

• Broker Direct Execution links the EASi.Share portal directly to the stock exchange using the Financial Information Exchange (FIX) protocol.
• Broker Direct Access using EASi Exercise WorkStream Notifications: Issuer companies authorize brokers’ access to EASi under the Financial Advisor role. Exercises entered by Participants can trigger email notifications. Brokers can enter exercises on behalf of Participants if allowed by the issuer company.
• Broker Direct Interface using file exchange: EASi interfaces with major brokerage firms’ systems using a daily file exchange process for issuer companies who use a dedicated brokerage firm.

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EASi Access with WorkStream

EASi.Share Participant Portal

From EASi.Share, our self-service portal, plan participants can view and accept grants, model exercise scenarios and exercise their options with designated brokers. They can also allow broker access to their EASi.Share account so the broker can use timely grant information and modeling tools to give their best advice. The system provides real-time exercise costs and tax calculations. So, plan sponsors can partially offload the time consuming processes of employee inquiry, execution, and settlement recording with their broker of choice. A special Customer Support Role provides the ability to see the same screens the participants see. This collaborative tool reduces the time spent by stock plan administrators addressing employee questions and dealing with settlement issues.

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Notification Engine

EASi has a powerful notification engine that allows you to create automated emails for a specific individual or all individuals under specified role(s) to be triggered for items like a grant expiring, a transaction for a Section 16 Insider, an exercise needing approval and an upcoming restricted-award taxable event.

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EASi Granting

Online WorkStream Grant Communications

EASi brings the power of its WorkStream approach to improve online grant communications. Stop chasing participants that have not signed their grant agreements. Eliminate manual processing.

You can control and manage every step in the process from one central command center. EASi’s smart software leverages a single, real-time data source with built-in triggers to move the grant process from start to finish. A grant can be created, sent to participants for review and acceptance and tracked for response.

The system uses a mail merge approach that lets you creat template-driven, customized grant packages for each recipient. The system notifies the participant when a grant has been offered and is ready for review. EASi’s WorkStream Grant Communications functionality lets you customize notification messages and track responses for tailoring follow-up to only those participants who have not responded. The system supports the attachment of an unlimited number of documents to a grant package. It also stores a copy of the accepted version of the grant package which is retrieved each time the grant recipient views the package in the future. The system identifies who hasn’t responded and lets you remind them with a push of a button. We give you the flexibility you need by supporting a manual, paper process for individuals who choose not to accept electronic grant package delivery and those who live in countries that don’t recognize electronic signatures.

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Grant Repricing and Accounting Modification

EASi makes it possible to properly account for and report on grants that are repriced or modified. EASi supports any modification to exercise (grant) price, shares, length of grant term, period to exercise after termination and extension of benefits after termination. For these types of modifications, there is a process that allows the user to select the grant to be modified and the parameters for the replacement grant. From there, a single command cancels the original grant and creates the new replacement grant. A link between the cancelled and new grant is maintained and identification flags are placed to indicate special accounting requirements. In addition, EASi has a simple process that does not require cancellation of the grant to accommodate vesting acceleration modifications.

To give you complete flexibility, EASi's system allows for the new grant to have different parameters and be of a different grant type from the original grant. When grants are cancelled, the software properly handles expense recognition and does not create a forfeiture for the cancelled grant. The incremental expense is calculated for the new grant with proper attribution based on the new vesting schedule. Cancelled shares go back into the plan share reserve pool for future use.

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Stock Splits

To make the stock split process easier and provide greater precision in post-split results, EASi revised its methodology for applying splits. As with the previous stock split methodology, original pre-split share and price numbers are still accessible after a stock split has been applied, even after multiple stock splits. You also benefit from greater flexibility in defining rounding preferences for shares and price fields as well as price precision preferences. EASi built in the intrinsic value preservation of split grants with the calculated result of pre-split "granted shares times grant price" maintained post-split. EASi introduced a new stock split application process which includes customer support during trial split balances using EASi's ECHO database prior to release to the production database.

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EASi Productivity Tools

Report Builder and Scheduler

You have enough to do when it comes to the close, so EASi lets you schedule a set of reports to run according to a calendar that meets your needs. Reports can be preconfigured and set to run as a batch overnight so they are waiting for you when you get to the office or on demand to respond to immediate requests for information. The platform also lets you create user-defined reports based on EASi’s comprehensive set of existing reports as well as build your own from EASi Data.Sources that provide more than 100 data elements to choose from.

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Comprehensive Reporting

EASi offers more than 300 standard reports. Administrative reports include activity details and summaries, plus payroll income and tax reporting. Financial reports cover FAS 123(R)/ASC 718 disclosure, the new SEC Executive Compensation tables and basic and diluted EPS including deferred tax for assumed share repurchases. You can generate accounting reports keyed on departments, branches, subsidiaries, multiple tax entities, countries, equity compensation plans, as well as award types for any date range, including past and future dates. The following are the major reporting categories and representative examples:

• Accounting – Valuation, Expense, Corporate Tax, Dilution, and Disclosures
• Activity – awards granted, awards outstanding, transactions, backdating analysis
• Administrative – demographics, experience group assignments, departments
• Capital – ownership percent, capitalization summary, stock ledger

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Automated Stock Price Feeds

Public companies traded on U.S. exchanges can initiate an automated once-a-day feed to upload High, Low, and Close stock prices. The system automatically calculates the High/Low average price. EASi also lets you input a "special" market price to accommodate multi-day averages, opening/closing-price averages or other non-standard Fair Market Value definitions. Plan-level FMV definitions by grant types and transaction types give you maximum flexibility to support automated calculations and plan amendments. A security price default of the average or closing price is also available for the company. For market holidays EASi lets you specify the setting required by your plan documents.

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Peer Group Volatility

EASi lets you build and maintain a peer group stock price profile of up to 12 weighted companies. This convenient time-saving tool provides the input needed to determine a fair value for awards using the Black-Scholes method. Once the peer group profile is established, the system makes it easy to perform automatic calculations of weighted average volatility required to determine fair value.

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Journal Entries, Drill-Down Details

EASi provides journal entries to streamline your accounting and detail reports and drill-downs to support your public disclosure numbers.

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EASi Support for Your Equity Compensation Programs

EASi supports nonqualified stock and incentive stock options cash-settled and stock-settled stock appreciation rights, stock-settled and cash-settled restricted stock units, restricted stock awards, performance awards, restricted stock purchase and ESPP.

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Performance Awards – Say on Pay Solutions

In light of the scrutiny over executive pay, EASi supports single and multiple-metric performance awards, plus performance periods with cycle dates that are different from the service-based time vesting. Performance versions of restricted stock awards, restricted stock units and cash-settled restricted stock units are supported. The EASi platform makes it possible to design and implement performance plans that inspire employees and please shareholders.

EASi gives you the flexibility to design awards with multiple measurement periods for performance goals and multiple performance goals with their own target, minimum and maximum multipliers for each performance measurement cycle. The beginning and ending dates for the performance measurement cycles can be tracked separately from the time-based cliff vesting date. Different performance factors can be assigned to individual awards if desired.

Performance Award reports are available for administrators and participants to communicate the earning information by performance cycle and metric.

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