Automated Awards in Guusto make it easy to recognize employees on important milestones—like birthdays, work anniversaries, or onboarding dates—without any manual effort. Once set up, these awards are sent automatically, saving time for program administrators while ensuring no special moment is missed.
This article will walk you through how Automated Awards work, how to set them up, and what to keep in mind regarding budgets, delivery, and data requirements.
Note: Automation is part of our Lite Tier plan. If you're interested in upgrading or just want to learn more, feel free to reach out to the Guusto team!
Set Up
Automated awards are created from the Workspaces menu drop down > Settings > Automated Awards Tab. Click here for the full implementation guide.
Note: While Automated Awards are available in CAD and USD, only one currency can be applied on a per Workspace basis.
Delivery
Depending on the award type selected during setup, recipients will receive either a Gift or a Shoutout. The award will appear as a custom banner over the standard gift or shoutout email template.
New Timezone Support for Automated Awards: Automated awards now respect your workspace’s timezone and send out gifts to recipients at 9:00am local time.
Automated awards use the inputs from the setup modal to display personalized banner messages, like:
Birthday awards: “Happy{Award Category}, {Recipient Name}”
Work Anniversaries “Happy {Award Interval} - {Award Interval Type} {Award Category}, {Recipient Name}”
Onboarding Milestones: “Congratulations on reaching your {Award Interval} {Award Interval Category} {Award Category} {Recipient Name}”
Example:
Other examples:
"Happy Birthday, Priyanka"
“Happy 5-Year Work Anniversary, Michael”
“Congratulations on reaching your 30-Day Onboarding Milestone, Sara”
Reporting
Whether an automated award is a gift or a shoutout determines where it is reported: gifts appear under the Manage Gifting section, while shoutouts are reported under Manage Shoutouts.
Automated award reasons are system-generated using the following format:
{Award Interval} - {Award Interval Type} {Award Category}
Examples:
1 - [Year] Work Anniversary
2 - [Month] Onboarding Milestone
Records are created when awards are sent and linked to the admin who created the award. This means all automated gifts and shoutouts will appear in reports with that admin listed as the sender. We recommend creating a separate user account specifically for sending automated awards if budget tracking is a concern.
Budgeting and Funding
All expenses from automated gifts are associated with the admin who created the award. To better manage budgets and tracking, it’s advisable to create a dedicated user account solely for sending automated awards.
Funds for automated awards are taken from Workspace Funds. If a user has a budget allocated through ‘access to Workspace funds,’ automated awards will use that budget first, then draw directly from the overall Workspace Funds once the user’s budget is exhausted. Any cost center or individual spending limits will be ignored by the system when sending automated awards.
If the Workspace balance lacks sufficient funds on the automated award date, awards will stop being sent until the balance is replenished. Awards missed during this period will not be sent retroactively. If this happens, please contact support to request reprocessing.
Manager Notifications
Managers receive alerts when their direct reports are recognized or awarded. These notifications help managers stay informed and celebrate their team’s achievements in real time.
Note: Managers automatically receive notifications for their direct reports. The connection is determined by the reporting structure in your workspace, so there is no separate toggle to enable this.
Notification Settings:
Notifications for managers can be set during the award setup or editing process.
Managers can be notified either on the day of the event or a chosen number of days beforehand.
Important: Make sure employee-manager relationships are accurately set up in your Guusto account. If a recipient doesn’t have a manager assigned in their Workspace, no notification will be sent.
Recipient Data
Automated awards are reliant on complete and accurate Birth date and Start date data.
Work Anniversaries and Onboarding Milestones require a start date
Birthday awards require a birth date
All date based data must be entered in the YYYY-MM-DD format. All dates must include a year.
No birth year? No problem! You may enter a dummy birth year for all recipients (ie: 2000). We do not publicly display the birth year anywhere in the platform when sending automated awards.
Ex:
Start Date | Birth Date |
2022-09-12 | 1989-10-03 |