PLEASANTON, Calif., Sept. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Equity Administration Solutions, Inc. (EASi), the leading independent stock plan management software company, today announced it issued its third major software release for the year on August 31st, strengthening its premier solution with a range of reporting, administration and recordkeeping functionality to meet the evolving needs of customers and the global marketplace.

EASi now gives global companies and IFRS 2 early adopters the choice to run expense reports under U.S.-based FAS or IFRS2 by simply changing a setting. Companies with employees around the world also welcome EASi's support for cash-settled Restricted Stock Units and cash-settled Performance Stock Units. In addition to the liability award accounting for these cash-settled awards, EASi supports the taxation and full administration with reports, extracts and imports to support payments distributed through one or multiple payroll systems.

"Just as we did with FAS123R, EASi is first to support companies that already need IFRS2 functionality," explained Denise Vitale, Vice President of Product Development for EASi. "Our development roadmap is built with a balance of US and global company needs in mind. We plan to support the tax reporting (DTA), liability accounting and experience group assignments for IFRS 2 in the coming year."

EASi provides full flexibility in exercise elections. We went beyond the standard "net exercise" to allow the participant to select a grant price payment method that is different from the tax payment method, providing individuals maximum choice, including the ability to sell remaining shares. The exercise election choices available to participants, brokers and the administrator are driven by plan-level rules that can be set individually by grant type. Plan-level fair market value and rounding rules can be defined separately by grant type and transaction type.

EASi also enhanced its options/SAR exercise capabilities for administrators, financial advisors and participants. The new exercise functionality recognizes the different stages of an exercise from initial modeling to settlement and supports multiple roles that can add, edit and view exercise information. The company can designate whether the financial advisor role is able to elect an exercise on behalf of a participant. The administrator and financial advisor roles are able to monitor and correct an exercise elected by the participant or enter an exercise that didn't originate in EASi's Participant Portal. Once a transaction is settled, all information is locked down to preserve tax history and distribution of money and shares. Browser views and reports provide detailed gross-to-net information with currency and share details applicable to the participant, company and same-day sale brokerage firm.

"Customer flexibility is a key principle that drives EASi's product development," said Mark Ebersole, EASi's Chief Technology Officer. He noted that EASi now enables customers to create user-defined reports based on its comprehensive set of existing reports. "Customers can select specific data sorts and generate reports on demand or in batch mode. They can also take their user-defined reports and modify them to create a different user-defined report," explained Ebersole.

"It is clear that EASi is committed to continuously enhancing its software for partners and customers alike," said Marianne Brannock-Hill, President and CEO of FRS Equity Strategies, a partner to EASi that uses the software on behalf of dozens of their outsourced administration clients. "The August release brings a more user-friendly feel to the system and the new Report Builder is just what my team needed. You don't have to be a programming wiz or learn Access or Crystal to sort reports the way you need them. I haven't seen this type of customization for reports on any other system."

As part of this feature-rich release, EASi also implemented accounting and reporting changes for equity awards that are affected by employment status changes from employee to consultant and consultant to employee. For private companies, EASi enhanced its Capitalization Detail Report and Capitalization Summary Report to better assist in tracking capital.

Equity Administration Solutions, Inc. www.easiadmin.com sells industrial strength stock plan software designed to handle the accounting, tax and administration needs of companies that grant equity awards. Headquartered in Pleasanton, CA, EASi continues to lead the industry with second-to-none solutions in areas including FAS123R, IFRS 2, Performance Awards and WorkStream process automation. The company serves nearly one million participants in more than 60 countries spanning four continents.

    Contact: Amy Damianakes
    EASi
    amy@damianakes.com
    (925) 937-4561

SOURCE Equity Administration Solutions, Inc.