Workday Finance Terminology

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A glossary of financial terms used in Workday. Use the links below to jump to a particular section.

Financial Data Model

Financial Accounting

Internal Service Delivery

Financial Data Model

Term	Definition
Ledger Account (Related)	Natural accounts are where debits and credits are recorded in the general ledger. Ledger accounts are summarized into hierarchies for financial reporting and are managed by the Controller's Office for financial reporting. A ledger account is associated with each revenue and spend category selected in a transaction.
Gift (Driver)	External source of funds whose usage may be restricted or designated for a specific purpose or time period, but does not require the donor to receive anything in exchange for the funds.
Project (Driver)	Project is used to accumulate funding for an identifiable deliverable over a specific period of time. Projects will be sub-divided into phases. As with grants, they have their own multi-year budgets. Projects are the detailed worktag for Plant Funds and are usually associated with capital budgets.
Foundation Data Model (FDM)	Data structure used for accounting and financial reporting; contains elements known as worktags.
Worktags	An FDM dimension that is used to facilitate Workday transactions and create financial reports.
Cost Center (Driver)	An identifier for financial responsibility and oversight of a managed and budgeted entity (e.g. CC00167 English)
Revenue Category (Driver)	Provides a granular view of revenues earned at the University. Grouped into hierarchies and mapped to ledger accounts for financial reporting. Required on all revenue transactions. These codes are used on customer contracts, billing, and accounts receivable that drives accounting behavior. Budget check step happens here.
Division (Related)	Identifies the Division of the University. Examples include CSAM, CEHS, CHSS, School of Business, Office of the President, and Provost Office. These hierarchies are maintained by the Controller’s Office and will default based on the cost center, grant, or project.
Fund (Related)	Represents a method of accounting based on the University’s designation of funding categorization. Funding categories include: Unrestricted (Operating), Restricted, and Plant. A fund is required on all financial transactions and will default based on the cost center, grant, or project.
Grant (Driver)	Tracks a specific funding source provided by an outside sponsor (e.g. federal, state, foundation, local) with detailed reporting requirements. Requires the sponsor to receive something of value in return for the funds.
Program (Related)	Used for external financial reporting for the classification of expenses in categories prescribed by NACUBO. This code is required on all financial transactions and will default based on the cost center, grant, or project.
Inherited/ Related Worktags	Related Worktags will help complete a business transaction. These are the worktags associated with the driver worktag within the Workday System (Division, Fund, and Program). These worktags do not need to be provided, they will populate automatically (default) upon input of the Driver Worktag.
Driver Worktag	One of six FDM worktags (Grant, Gift, Project, Cost Center, Revenue, and Spend Category) that are mutually exclusive and derive certain related worktag values (i.e. Division, Fund, Account) within Workday.
Custom Worktags	To capture additional data for reporting, control or reconciliation.
Spend Category (Driver)	Provides a granular view of expenses incurred at the University. Grouped into hierarchies and mapped to ledger accounts for financial reporting. Required on all expense transactions. These codes drive accounting behavior.
Term (Custom Worktag)	Used with revenue to identify the academic term.
Transaction Detail (Custom Worktags)	Used with grants to drive accounting for certain transactions (participant costs & equipment on grants). Also used in General Accounting to indicate specific Bond Issue.

Financial Accounting

Term	Definition
Accounting Adjustment	A Workday business process used to perform accounting adjustments for paid expenses. Accounting adjustments may be used to move funds from one cost center to another in order to correct transactions posted to the wrong cost center, or for other reasons such as correcting a spend category, revenue category, grant, gift or project.
Ad Hoc Bank Transactions	A business process to record after the fact cash deposits or withdrawals, including wire transfers, that appear on the Daily Bank Report sent by the Office of the Treasury.
Create Manual Journal	A Workday business process used to perform accounting journals. Accounting journals are manual journals that may be used to move funds from one account to another in order to correct transactions posted to the wrong account, or for other reasons such as correcting a spend category, revenue category or to record a transaction.
Accounting Journals	Accounting journals are manual journals that may be used to move funds from one account to another in order to correct transactions posted to the wrong account, or for other reasons such as correcting a spend category, revenue category or to record a transaction.

Expenses

Term	Definition
Expense Report	A business process used to facilitate expense reimbursements. Can be used to create new expense reports, copy previous expense reports, or create expense reports from Spend Authorizations.
Create Supplier Invoice Request	Request for payment for goods and services that do not require a purchase order (e.g., subscriptions, honorariums, memberships, etc.).
Expense Items	Provides operational detail of travel and expense activity that maps (usually in summary) to spend category. Expense items are used in spend authorizations and expense reports.
External Committee Member	A role that allows the University to Reimburse non- employees such as guest speakers for travel or student club expenses. Department submits an expense report. Disbursements processes payment in Workday.
Spend Authorization	Workday allows an employee (faculty/staff) or his/her delegate to pre-authorize a specific expense by creating a commitment of funds for a specific departmental expense or activity.
Supplier Invoice	Created in Workday as the result of a purchase order or supplier invoice request, and generates approvals through workflow.

Procurement

Term	Definition
Spend Category	Codes identifying the commodities being requested for purchase.
Cost Center Manager	Manager responsible for approving financial transactions within a cost center.
Dispatch	Purchase orders which have been approved by Procurement Services are Issued to the Supplier.
Gift Manager	A person who manages a gift from a Donor.
Grant Manager	Principal investigator who typically serves as the lead on a Grant.
Supplier Invoice Request	Request for payment for goods and services that do not require a purchase order (e.g., subscriptions, honorariums, memberships, etc.).
Create Receipt	Confirmation of receipt of goods and services in the system.
Request Non-Catalog Items	Request for goods and services not in a current MSU catalog.
Create Requisition	Request for a purchase of goods and services.
Connect to Supplier Website	Request for goods from a directly-linked supplier’s website (e.g. W.B. Mason, Grainger, etc.).
Workday Strategic Sourcing	Montclair State University’s electronic platform for certain procurement-related requests, including sourcing events, Waiver of Advertising requests, Board of Trustees approval requests, and procurement contract requests.

Internal Service Delivery

Term	Definition
Internal Service Delivery (ISD)	A Workday transaction that records critical information related to the item(s) that an ISP provides to a requester. When approved and passed budget checking, it generates revenue for the ISP and expense for the requester.
Internal Catalog	An ISP’s list of goods and services, their description, and associated prices.
Internal Service Provider (ISP)	Delivers internal goods and/or services to an internal or external entity. ISPs are set up at the department (Cost Center) level.

Budgets

Term	Definition
Division Budget Manager	This security role has multiple functions including the ability to approve budget amendments or enter them themselves for any cost center in their division. The amendment will then route to the Budget Office for final approval. Division Managers are also “ad hoc” approvers on amendments that need division-level approval.
Available Budget	Sometimes referred to as “available balance” this is the amount of budget remaining available to spend, after subtracting actual expenditures, requisitions, and POs that have occurred to-date.
Budget	A budget is a forecast of revenues and expenses for a specified time period such as a fiscal year, or the duration of a grant or project. Budgets also represent the approved dollar amount for spending, or an approved revenue target.
Budget vs. Actuals (Variance) Report	Report that displays the budget (plan), actuals, encumbrances and available budget remaining when actuals and encumbrances are subtracted.
Cost Center Manager	This security role has multiple functions including the ability to approve budget amendments or enter them themselves, for their own cost center(s). The amendment will then route to the Budget Office for final approval.
Budget Check	Budget check is a business process embedded within other business processes, such as requisitioning, for the purpose of checking whether there is sufficient budget for the purchase.
Cost Center Budget Specialist	This security role is for cost center employees who will initiate budget amendments and submit them for approval.
Budget Amendment	“Create budget amendment” is a business process to transfer budget. MSU has configured to allow users to submit requests for balanced budget amendments (increase equals decrease). Approval will be required of the Cost Center Manager and the Office of Budget and Planning (Budget Office).
Budget Amendment Type	Every budget amendment will be assigned a Budget Amendment Type which indicates whether the amendment is the Original Budget, a Temporary Amendment, or a Permanent Amendment.
Budget Exceptions	Budget exceptions are warnings or errors issued by Budget Check when a transaction amount exceeds the available budget or when there is no budget.
Financial Budgets	For Operating funds and Gifts, the Financial Budget will house non-personnel and temporary employee budgets. For Grants, the Financial Budget will include both personnel and non-personnel budgets.
Budget Structure	The budget structure organizes the budget control rules. There are separate structures for operating budgets, grants, and projects.
Budget Ledger Summary/Budget Control	A budget ledger summary is associated with a budget structure. It is a hierarchy of child ledger accounts that roll up to a Parent ledger summary, such as General Operating, Travel, Advertising and Marketing. Parent amounts are the sum of the child amounts. MSU will control budgets against the total available balance in each Parent.
Position Budgets	A position budget will be managed for each “permanent” position within the Position Budgeting function in Workday HCM. Reports will bring Financial Budgets and Position budgets together to display the full budget. Temporary positions are budgeted in Financial Budgets.
Commitments and Obligations	These amounts represent requisitions and purchases orders, which encumber the budget and reduce the available budget for future purchases.