Pay
A number that decides money changes what people write in the box above it. If a review informs a pay decision, that should be a conversation, not a formula.
No rating reaches payroll, and nothing in the product could carry it there.
Performance management
In November, nobody remembers March.
Review cycles do not fail because the form was wrong. They fail because eleven months have gone and everybody is reconstructing the year from a calendar and a feeling. The fix is not a better form. It is that something was written down while it was still happening.
What the cycle reads
Five dated check-insWritten in February, April, June, August and October — not
reconstructed in November.
The goal as it was setIncluding the month the scope was cut, which is the part people argue about
later.
And nothing elseNo rating feeds pay, no ranking, and no colleague can open any of it.
A year, written down as it went
The review reads this, not your memory.
One goal, across one year. Every dot is a check-in that was written on the day it happened. When the cycle opens in November it has all of them underneath it already, which is the entire difference between a review that takes twenty minutes and one that takes a fortnight of chasing.
Cut onboarding time for new engineers to under two weeks
Owned by one person · 2026
14 FebSet
3 AprBehind
19 JunBack on
11 AugScope cut
7 OctHit
21 NovReview opens
With the check-ins
Five dated entries, written by the person doing the work. The cycle opens with
the year already assembled.
Without them
One conversation in November about ten months nobody wrote down. Whoever has the
better memory wins the argument.
Who can read what
One row has a single tick.
This is the question people ask before they put their staff’s reviews in somebody else’s database, and it deserves a table rather than a paragraph. All of it is enforced in the database, not by what a screen chooses to render.
What
The person
Their manager
An admin
Anyone else
The goalAnd what good looks like
A check-inWritten on the day
The finished reviewBoth sides of it
Their self-assessment, before they submit itNobody. Not their manager, not an administrator, not us.
A manager reaches their own direct reports only, and only while they hold the manager role — being somebody’s line manager on the org chart is not on its own enough. A self-assessment becomes readable to the manager at the moment it is submitted, and not before.
Deliberate gaps
What it does not connect to.
Plenty of products in this category join performance to pay, to recognition and to a leaderboard. We have not. These are decisions, and we would rather defend them than let you discover them.
Recognition
Recognition is public credit for specific work. A review is private and comparative. Join them and thank-you quietly turns into evidence, and people stop giving it.
Separate module, separate record. Recognition never feeds a rating.
360 and peer review
The cycle today is self and manager. Peer and upward feedback are not in the product, and describing them as though they were would be the easiest lie on this page to tell.
Tell us if it is a condition and we will be straight about whether and when.
Before you ask
The practical questions.
Can we run a cycle without goals?
Yes, and many companies start there because goals take longer to get honest. The check-in history simply makes the cycle less of a memory test once you do have it.
Who writes first?
The person, then the manager, and that order is the default for a reason: a manager who has already written theirs tends to read the self-assessment as a negotiation. A manager cannot see the self-assessment until it is submitted, so the order holds in the database rather than by convention.
What about somebody who joined halfway through the period?
A cycle covers a period, and somebody who was not there for it is not expected to answer for it. Their joining date comes from the same employee record everything else reads.
Can an administrator read a review?
A finished one, yes. An unsubmitted self-assessment, no. If that distinction matters to your works council or your legal team, it is the one worth testing on the call, and we will show you the rule rather than describe it.
Bring last year
Bring your worst cycle.
The one where half the forms came back in the final two days and nobody could remember March. Walking through it tells us in ten minutes which part of this is genuinely useful to you and which part would just be ceremony with a nicer interface.
Where the edges are
Goals, dated check-ins, review cyclesLive in the product and exercised on our own account.
Self and manager assessmentWith the submission rule enforced in the database.
360, peer and upward feedbackNot built. We will say so rather than roadmap it at you.