Issue Shares to an Employee on Eqvista

It is common nowadays for employers to offer their employees shares at some point of time during the business. And you might reach a place where you too would want to offer your employees the benefits of having ownership in the company they work for.

With Eqvista, all this is easy to do. Just as you can add shareholders and investors to your cap table, you can do the same for your employees too. 

To help you understand how to issue shares simply to an employee, we have prepared a simple and direct process for the issuance of shares in this support article.

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to issue shares to an employee from an equity class named – ESOP using Eqvista

Step 1: To begin with, you need to create an equity class. As the shares would be used for the employees, we can name them ESOPs based on the employee compensation plan that your company chooses for the program.

After you have logged into your account on Eqvista, you would begin with creating an equity class– ESOPs. 

For this, click on “Securities” on the left-hand side panel of the dashboard. On the drop-down menu that comes up, click on “Equities”. 

Step 2: Once you click here, you will be directed to the following page: As you can see, there is an option that allows you to create a new equity class. Click on “Create New Class” to start the process of creating the new equity class, and issue shares to the employees.

Step 3: After you have clicked on this, you will be directed to the following page:

Here you would see the option to choose the kind of shares – – common shares or preferred shares that you want to add to the equity class. In this case, we would choose the option of “Common” shares.

Step 4: As soon as you select the equity type – common shares, another option will appear allowing you to name the equity class.

We have added the class name ESOP since this group of shares would be issued to the employees under the employee compensation plan selected by the company (and you, the founder). Once done, click on “Submit”.

Step 5: With this, you would be directed to the following page where you can move ahead to start issuing shares to the employee by selecting “Add New Grant”.

Step 6: This would take you to the next page where you now have to find the shareholder (investor) to whom you want to issue the shares.

Here, you have the option to search for a shareholder or to add a shareholder from here directly. 

Note: You need to have the shareholder profile already created. Check out the support article to add a shareholder. If you do not have it created, you can choose the option “Add New Shareholder” here too. 

METHOD 1

If you have already added the shareholder profile in the cap table, you can just type in the name in the search box and the name will appear on the side of it. Click on “Select” and begin the process of issuing the shares to this investor.

METHOD 2

The second way is by adding a new shareholder profile while issuing shares. This is when you have not added the shareholder profile in the cap table. In this case, we have not added the shareholder. So, we will click on the option that says, “Add New Shareholder”.

When you do this, you will get a new panel where you can now add the details of the shareholder. First, select if this investor you are adding is an individual or a company. For a company, you will need to add their name and their role. For an individual, it is the same with two fields for the first name, the last name, and the person’s role.

Here, we selected “individual” and added in the details. Once done, click on “Submit New shareholder”.

Step 7: Once done, you will reach the next page where you can begin the process of issuing the shares to the employee.

Here, add in the details like the number of shares, the price per share at the time of the issuance, the date of issuance, and the share name. After this, you will get the option to add a vesting schedule. 

Note: You can add a vesting schedule while issuing shares, options, and warrants. In addition to this, you can create your vesting plan or choose from six default plans. To know more about vesting plans, check out the support article here!

In this case, we selected “No” for the vesting schedule. 

Note: You can add another grant using the “Add new grant” button. This is if you want to issue shares from the same equity class to more than one shareholder. All you need to do is click on “Add new grant” and then select the shareholder profile or add a new shareholder and fill in the details. 

Most importantly, all this can be done without losing any of the first grant details. 

Once done, click on “Submit”.

Step 8: With this, the shares would have been issued and you will be directed back to the page where you can see the ESOP equity class and all the grants issued under it.

To view the grant you just issued, click on “E-001” which is the grant name. With this, you will be taken to the page where you can see the issuance details as shown below:

From the above, you can see that the shares have been issued to the employee. You can follow the same steps for any other employees if you want to issue shares to.

If you have any questions or want to know more, check out the other support articles here or contact us!