Introduction to Workday Payroll Training
Setting up payroll requirements according to the specifications of customers is an important part of the Workday Payroll Training program. As a Workday consultant, you need to be aware of the existing features in the payroll module of Workday and know how to perform earnings and deductions in the calculation engine, set up payroll whilst establishing roles and configuring security for the same. Though the basics of payroll accounting and setup are covered in Workday HCM, one needs to undergo the Workday Payroll training program separately to understand all the relevant concepts thoroughly and practice as required. Institutes like ERP Cloud Training provide additional coverage of concepts in Workday HCM and Finance in the instructor-led live training pertaining to this course.
Workday Payroll Training Process Workflow: An Overview
The payroll process workflow consists of input worker data, calculation of payroll, reviewing results, completing payroll, and the settlement of payroll. These elements are an essential part of the processing framework and they need to be configured before running regular payrolls in the system. The period schedule relates to the ‘when’ aspect of the process. It constitutes the frequency of processing, start and end dates of the period, payment dates and the forwarding of accruals.
Run category is defined with respect to the ‘what’ elements in payroll. It comprises of the type of payroll which is run like regular or bonus or adjustment, the definition of the default pay groups, eligibility criteria and the specific granular eligibility. The payroll groups define the ‘who’ aspect by mentioning the people who are required to process the payroll. Payroll Component Groups constitute of the aggregate values relevant to the set of payroll earnings, deductions and pay component related calculations which are used in further calculations or reporting.
Workday Calculation Engine and setting up of the Workday Payroll Processing Framework
Workday calculation engine is known as the foundation of Workday payroll training which provides elements for defining payroll calculations, business logic as well as rules governing such calculations. There are four categories of calculations in this engine inclusive of calculations that return numeric values, calculations that return date values, calculations that return Boolean value and specific payroll calculations.
Earnings include basic payroll components like basic pay, allowance, insurance, benefits, paid time-off, workday time tracking hours and workday input values from payroll. A payroll component group is a combination of earnings, deductions and payroll related values, which returns a single aggregated value. The important point to note here is that a PCG can contain earnings or deductions but not both.
Payroll settlement dates help in overriding the dates in the period schedule and manually entering them. It can be done specific to any country. iLoad is a Workday tool that is used in the migration of data via implementation tools. There are implementation suite templates in Workday which can be used for this purpose or you can create your own for the same. Payroll can also be processed for non-active workers using the payroll run (on cycle) or on-demand. Payment election rules need to be configured in a payroll run category before running it, so that you can avoid errors while running.
Earnings, Deductions, and Net Pay Validations
Earnings and deductions help in performing complex payroll calculations. There are one-time earnings which may have or have not been set up by the compensation side and recurring earnings which are inclusive of base pay, allowances, benefits and the like. Prerequisites in earnings include the setting up of compensation, benefit plans, time-off plans, calculation tags and the setting up of tenant to support multiple jobs. Deduction prerequisites include setting up payroll, benefit plans and the configuration of tenant. The terms ‘earnings’ and ‘deductions’ are referred to as ‘pay components’ in Workday.
Workday net pay validation is done to identify employees who have an amount below the minimum after adjusting for gross pay and adjust deductions as well as arrears to track and recoup payments. After the performance of both the gross-to-net pay calculations by Workday, you must set up net pay validations. It can be done by defining minimum pay, categorize calculations as priority deductions, and by setting up default limits on the recovery of arrears from the balance.
Setting up Federal, State, and Local Tax Reporting and withholding orders
Workday provides and maintains information on default federal, state and local tax data. There are several steps in the setting up of taxes including setting up the company’s federal tax ID, reviewing the pay component groups, setting up federal taxes, state taxes and local taxes and entering worker-specific data to manage wage tax components. The prerequisites for tax reporting consist of worker company assignments, worker personal data and the verification of the personal as well as resident states. The Workday delivered tax data is to be used for setting up of the various taxes. When an employee lives in one state and works in another, Workday checks for valid reciprocity agreements between the states. There is also an option to represent multiple work tax jurisdictions for reporting in Workday.
Withholding orders can be in various forms like bankruptcy orders, support orders, tax levies and the like. Steps for setting up a withholding order include identifying disposable income, creating deduction recipients, recording details of the order and reviewing the results in payroll to ensure correct reporting and withholding fees. The common fields associated with a withholding order include case number, order id, order number, order date, received date, begin date, end date, company, inactive status, amount type, pay period, total debt amount, originating entity and memo.
Setting up Payroll time, accounting, banking, and settlement
To set up time to payroll, the time should be tracked using Workday Time Tracking and such pay should be calculated relevant to the number of hours. The data retrieval elements involved are approved time sheet for earnings of sub period, approved time sheet for hours of earnings and time calculation tags. You can also run the retro pay calculation process before running payroll to include time outside the defined time period. All the corrections to time need to be approved before running the retro calculation process. Once you have reviewed the mapping of calculation tags, you can proceed to set up payroll accounting.
Payroll accounting setup is also a module in Workday Financial management. It comprises defining ledger account types, defining accounting setup for payroll, defining default accounts for posting, defining fiscal schedule posting intervals, creating fiscal years, defining ledger years and periods and assigning ledger types. Each time the payroll accounting process is run, Workday generates entries and stores in the draft status. You can review drafts, fix errors in journals and rerun it to get desired results. Banking and settlement is the process of setting up source accounts for employees and establishing payments.
Setting up roles, security, and business processes
Workday’s object management system has set up configurable security roles in Workday to access the application data. The security administrator can grant passwords to access applications, compensation partners can set up compensation roles, and provide access for viewing compensation data. Security groups also help in adding tasks and groups to business processes. There are various types of security groups classified as user-based, job-based, role-based, location-based, etc.
Business processes can be defined and implemented to suit the requirements of the customers. Different versions of the same processes can be created for different organizations. Subordinate organizations automatically inherit the business process defined for the superior organization. Workers can move into and out of roles in these processes, without disturbing the logic or framework of these processes.
Payroll input processing, off cycle processing and reporting
Using payroll input processing, changes can be made in the current on or off cycle payrolls. The payee data is entered into Workday with the help of payroll input processing to generate accounting, reports and aid in the processing of payments. The process comprises of payroll input, running retro pay, running payroll calculations, reviewing accounting results, completion of run pay, settlement of payments, and tax integration and garnishments.
Payroll off cycle processing is done to include payroll processes made not during the regularly scheduled periods. It is inclusive of on demand pay calculations, manual payments, and reversals as well as off cycle entries. These entries can be created and attached even to the current on cycle accounting to generate relevant results. Workday reporting can be done using the workday report writer tool. Items can be drilled down to obtain additional information and authorized actions can be performed on them within the report. Such reports can be downloaded as excel or PDFs.
Conclusion
To become a Workday Payroll Consultant, one needs to undergo workday training from any of the prominent training institutes. Workday Payroll not only helps in understanding important concepts of payroll but also includes some modules from Workday Financial management. The mastery of all the concepts mentioned in this blog is very essential to become a successful well established Payroll Consultant in Workday.
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